Now that I'm going on 77, it's been a while. Spent nearly 16 yrs of my working career overseas. Only got into 3 fights in all that time and all them with "Frogs". For some unknown reason, these Frenchies had a big chip on their shoulder over the fact, as I liked to say, that if it wasn't for us, they'd all still be speaking German. Never started any of them but never ran away from one. So let me set the "Wayback Machine" and see what we got. A couple come to mind...
Got into one in Banjarmasin (on the island of Borneo, Indonesia). Had just come back from working on a mapping project, after living nearly 5 month in the jungle. Never will forget that first hot shower in that many months. Our group was getting ready to ship out. We were hanging out in a local bar, the night before leaving. Everything was fine, we were drinking with another group of engineers, on their way in-country, that we, by happenstance, had met there. One of their bunch happened to be a Frenchie, who, after a few drinks, starting getting all irate and cursing us out in French, because we were Americans. Little did he know, while I didn't speak it well, I definitely understood what he was saying. Don't know if it was when I said that my Dad was stationed just outside of Paris at the war's end and we might be stepbrothers or when I followed that up with the 'still speaking German' line, the table went flying. He only got "one swing and a miss". Tapped him once on the chin and another in the solar plexus. All I heard was a gasp of air and this pile of crap was laying on the floor. Got free drinks the rest of the night.
A prior incident was in Dakar, Senegal. Being based out of Dakar, this mapping project encompassed Senegal, Mali, and Mauritania, so a lot of deep desert work. On one R&R, back in Dakar, we were again enjoying ourselves in the hotel bar. My 6'4" friend had just done a header into decorative fountain and loosened a couple of front teeth. In helping him get cleaned up, I accidently bump a table with four mindless Frogs sitting at it. They all seemed quite entertained with what was happening. All I remember is one them, again cursing in French, insisted that I pay for their spilled drinks and as I turned away to help my friend, he made the mistake of his life by grabbing my shoulder. When the dust settled, two of the Frenchies were on their way to the hospital, my friend was on his way to the dentist, and myself and another buddy got kicked out of the bar for the night. You would've thought that looking at our tans, there was a very good chance that we had been living hard in the wild and shouldn't have been messed with.
Thx for getting me to pull up some old memories.