Under the waterfalls. This surprising initiative is only possible after conditioning to immerse oneself in the everyday life of the people above, in particular the Mèo who have always settled on the line of the ridges. Alone in the world and deprived of everything. Water being rare, they only go down to the valley once a year to wash under the icy waterfalls, out of sight, or more often in the summer to wash their clothes there. Hence their reputation for being dirty. Wild smell and undernourishment that some young people who wanted to follow his example could not tolerate for more than a few days.

A lesson in humanity. Thus, meeting him is the opportunity to hear the experiences of his four campaigns (French, American, Khmer Rouge then Chinese) written nowhere, and to discover the multiple facets of his generosity towards those who live in destitution absolute, outside of civilization. A lesson in humanity that is richer than books. Without these values, in a society where social life tends to become less communal, and more individualistic, inspired by the West, as we see on site, no one will ever understand why this man helped a young Mường from Maï Châu to become the first of all ethnicities to graduate from Hanoi University

Football tournaments. But his stroke of genius is to have succeeded in uniting and bringing together the three ethnic groups Thai, Muong and Dzao of his region of Diên Biên Phu. To encourage them to rub shoulders, to use Vietnamese as a vehicular language, he organizes football tournaments by refereeing the matches himself, inventing faults according to his moods to make them livelier. The disoriented actors stop, gesticulate, question themselves, make comments drowned in the hubbub and the hilarity of the spectators. He himself stamps his feet, smiling and whispering to you little words to laugh at.

"Zizou-the-weak-leg". Thus, on July 12, 1998, when France exulted, the Fooball World Cup at arm's length, he also acquired his claim to fame ‶Zizou-the-weak-legs‶ (Zizou is the nickname of the best French players) by dint of kicking senders that fall like autumn leaves. But these tournaments are in reality only a pretext to incite its ethnic groups which live in a vacuum, each on its territory, to go towards the others. Once the winners have been declared, he becomes the attentive grandfather again, offering treats, inflating balloons... in front of the delighted faces not only of children but also sometimes of envious mothers...

"Without that man." At Pom Coong in the Mai Chau district, one afternoon in March, before leaving them, we gave the innkeeper Duc and his children a video in memory of our many stays. They look at the jacket on which "Zizou" is prominently displayed next to the pupils of a nursery school in his region. He tells us this:

‒ Without that man, I don't know where we would have been today. He said, scanning the mountain range that surrounds his green valley.

“Rolf Rodel, you made me snivel”. But in the spring of 2015, the age of a new retirement rang. His heart is ringing the alarm bell somewhere on the heights of Diên Biên Phu, under the worried gaze of a French veteran. Came from France to relive a journey of 2,000 kilometres alongside this former photographer who shows him the nooks and crannies of the clashes of the past. The Vietnamese guide confesses to him that the Vietnamese soldiers greatly admire Bigeard: Three times surrounded, three times escaped, and that if he had been appointed head of command, the French would undoubtedly have won. He had understood everything, this colonel of the 1950s returned to the field in 1994, a retired general, fraternally welcomed by his former adversaries whom he called "the Viêts" and also by the Thais who fought alongside the French... In front of the mausoleum in memory of French soldiers, built by a German legionnaire, he grumbled against his government which had still done nothing for its fighters and concluded: “Rolf Rodel, you made me snivel. Thanks."...

 ...Suddenly, the ground gives way under his feet,Mr Bang loses consciousness. When he comes to, he remembers nothing. The former soldier whispers to him: “You had an alert. But you are safe and sound. I was left to look after you…"

Postscript

Will Mr Bang ever reveal to us if this fighter was the soldier, on the day of the final assault, in Diên Biên Phu, lying at his feet, while his pistol was pointed at his temple, in front of a monstrous chaos? In any case, it will whisper to us that a silence of contemplation falls after the general joy, and that his arm, relaxing, splashes in the mud in front of so many dislocated corpses, entangled in pools of dripping blood from which emanates a fetid odor... “All were buried in mass graves. There are no more winners or losers. There are only brothers in arms,” he sighs.

His voice gets deep and fades away.