Without Pierre, our life in Cor-rupt would have been much more difficult and, above all, much less humorous. He had cast himself as the ‘helper number one’ and inspired everything. His boat was our ‘supply ship’ when we went for a picnic; he accompanied musicians with comb and a rolling paper, and helped to clean the bar on Sunday’s before we opened for brunch.
He was an advertising man/stand builder and could make anything. A life-size champagne bottle with 20 bottles of champagne in it, designs for Tshirts, crazy Christmas cards etc.
He was the chief steward at the bingo/cocktail night where so many people won that we had to close at 10am because everybody was drunk (the only time in nine years Cor-rupt that we had to close earlier than strictly necessary). But best were his jokes which hardly anyone could hear as he spoke rather softly (but left Cor and I doubled over laughing, leading other customers to think they were being laughed at) and his stories in which he himself was often the ‘sad clown’.
One day he told us that he had received a medal from the U.S. army because, as a conscript, he had warned a fighter jet during an exercise in Germany that the landing gear had not been unfolded.
According to Pierre’s version, this medal was based on a misunderstanding. He said he was cycling through the woods and, to his surprise, came across a strip of asphalt. He decided to study this in depth when there was a deafening noise behind him. Startled, he turned around and began waving his arms wildly in the hope that the pilot (because he saw an insanely large plane coming at him) would see him. At the last minute, the pilot pulled up. Pierre was so upset, he said, that it took him a long time to get back to base.
When he was called to the commander a few days later, he was not very surprised and rather worried. Of course, he should never have been on that runway. To his great surprise, however, there was a high ranking officer from the U.S. Army who thanked him in the presence of his superior and gave him a badge of honour from the U.S. military. It turned out that the landing gear had not deployed sufficiently and thanks to Pierre’s warning, the pilot noticed it in time.
So this was Pierre’s version. We largely believed him until much later a mate from the army came along to Cor-rupt and began to tell that Pierre had received a medal from the American army for exceptional courage by alerting a pilot at the risk of his own life. So, the heroism and the medal were true and, while we are still not entirely convinced of Pierre’s version of the situation, the story was typical of one of our very best friends ever.