The Dien Bien Phu Pants Incident

More than a year ago, thanks to a lot of luck I managed by way of a bargain seller to come into possession of canvas army cargo pants, of whose existence then no one here had any idea. At that time propaganda blew up the case of the battle at Dien Bien Phu and these kinds of pants I saw on film newsreels showing the fighting sides.

I and those like me sympathized with the French and with the splendid, effective and apparently hard-hitting French Foreign Legion, fighting in identical pants like mine. Propaganda, the party and the dark masses supported Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese nation, fighting in whatever pants and sometimes even without pants.

Unfortunately under the recalled Dien Bien Phu the French lost their match, but despite this my famous cargo pants continued as if nothing to attract universal notice, most likely being a theme of unending discussion among this ever dumber populace. Despite the lost French match, any way you looked at it in these pants I felt like a legionnaire.

I can’t remember at all what town it had been. I had to go there for some week-long tournament. It could’ve been Opel, it could’ve been Gliwice, or even Bielsko.

After the war within the borders of western Poland there were many new towns and hamlets, creating in my geographical imagination a bit of chaos, because of which this could have even been somewhere else. 

Because it had been just the middle of a relatively hot summer and I had a lot of free time, I took off to a local pool with two girls I had met the other day. 

I don’t have to add that in my opinion these were definitely the best girls in this particular town. The pool looked strange—large, irregular, rather a kind of lido with crystal clean water, in which nevertheless the swimming was grand. 

A rather wide path led to it, at its entire length divided from the building by a sizeable channel, which most likely provided the lido with water. When we were more or less half way there, a large motorcycle of the brand NSU suddenly appeared behind us. 

With all certainty it was produced many years still before the arrival of Hitler to power, because the large angular gas tank was under the frame of the motorcycle, which already meant that the piece was rather museumly. 

On the NSU sat three local playboys, more or less my age. This time they were not any ZMPers, but they acted provocatively enough and I got the feeling that they knew well the girls that accompanied me. 

When the slowly moving motorcycle came to level with us, and even passed us a little, the three gentlemen, most likely not pleased with this, that I had the audacity to get with their girls, took an increasingly aggressive stance and one after the other, with a typical tolerance for the residents of this country in those times, began to strike us up on the topic of my Dien Bien Phu cargo pants, which this day I happened to be wearing. 

Despite my deft intuition, which said that a fight was nevertheless inevitable, we continued to walk as if nothing, and before the girls, in the meantime I tried to make an impression of a self-confident hard ass who had in each pocket of his cargo pants a loaded pistol—and of a high caliber. 

Like before any fight I became more excitable and thought more intensely of Plebanczyk. 

I thought only in what moment these three would decide to stop the motorcycle, jump off it and attack me. Meanwhile all three of them, especially the driver, riding just ahead of us, and the whole time jeering at me, and even in a certain sense vituperating me, had their heads turned back and towards us. 

The situation was becoming tense. Just as antique as their motorcycle was, just as antique also was their side car attachment, which at the front of its encompassing mudflaps had a strongly deep-set, placed very low, decorative triangular stair. 

God turned out fair, because at a certain moment the stair hitched with a thud, hooked to an invisible, because it was covered by relatively high grass, a strong, very low placed concrete bar and the whole machinery in a split second went upside down and pended onto the deep trench of the channel. 

In the same split second all three of the passengers of the motorcycle fell to their neck into the water and when in this water they tried quickly to analyze the situation, in which they suddenly and completely unexpectedly found themselves, as an additional divine punishment, and maybe for it to be even funnier, trapdoor from the relatively spacious compartment on the device, situated on the back of the seat of the side car attachment flew open, and from a decent height on their bare heads—in these times there was not yet any required helmets for motorcycles—like from Pandora’s box fell hammers, pliers, keys—the entire auto mechanic workshop. 

Despite the tragedy of this whole situation, the girls with me were unable to stop or control their attack of laughter, which even more brought down the local playboys, who knew good and well what fools they had made of themselves. 

Each of them I helped, giving them my hand to get out of this channel, afterwards with quite a bit of trouble the four of us brought the heavy, and to this moaning and smoking still motorcycle to its wheels. 

At the end all three of them, a bit contused, wet and lightly bloodied, this time waving to us amicably, with sour faces, at maximum for this model speed and normal for this model noise, went away, after a while completely disappearing from the frame.