Czechoslovakia, 1958

   As new student pilots we began with our basic flying training program on an airfield called Stíchovice, located near Proštějov, a small town south of the city of Olomouc in the Moravian region. Our knowledge of English was then still poor, because it was yet limited to the English language as taught during our high school days back home which was kind of "grammatically heavy" in its scope.

   One day while doing solo landing exercises in the so-called "sto pyet" (C-105) training airplane, one of my fellow students seemed to have trouble with his airplane control. After touching down on the landing strip, which was in fact, a grass strip, his plane didn't seem to respond at all when he applied his brakes. Instead, the plane continued rolling down until almost approaching the other end of the landing strip.

    Being in such a state of panic, he reported the situation by radio to the Director of Flying (call sign: "02") at the mobile Visual Control Post (VCP), by uttering such an alarming yell:

    "02, 02, my brakes [do] not eat, my brakes [do] not eat!" trying to tell that his brakes did not produce any effect (eat?). He was certainly afraid he could end up with his plane "ploughing the field" beyond the airstrip boundary.

   Fortunately the Director of Flying, who was also the commander of our Special Training Squadron, understood about the situation and instructed the student to calm down and just keep his plane rolling down straight ahead. Eventually the incident had brought no harm at all to the student.

   What a coincidence!
   Both of them didn't speak English well but they did understand each other!

Note:
   "02" is by rule to be spoken in Czech as "nůlla dva", both by the Czech instructor and the Indonesian student.

*****

   In another occasion, a student who was doing some exercise maneuvers above the airfield, had to face a similar problem in reporting. After accomplishing some maneuvers and while flying overhead the airfield, the sound of the plane's engine was heard to become very rough and irregular.

   We knew that something had gone wrong with his engine because his report to the Director of Flying was kind of surprising:

   "02, my engine krk-krk-krrkk, my engine krk-krk-krrkk!"

And again the Director of Flying seemed to understand what happened. He ordered the student to remain calm and be prepared to land right away. Fortunately, the landing itself was uneventful.

   Was that another coincidence?

   No, because it should have been due to some kind of "universal language" understandable by any human being — perhaps like what was normally demonstrated by Tarzan "the Apeman" or Mowgli of "the Jungle Book".

*****

   The following is a different story that occured during the early days of our stay in Czechoslovakia. It seemed quite a lot of effort for us to begin to learn the Czech language, but we were satisfied enough to have learned soon those words or phrases necessary for daily conversation, such as:

   "Jak se máte?" (How are you?)
   "Kde je váš dům?" (Where is your home?)
   "Kde bydlíte?" (Where do you live?)
   "Milují vám" (I love you)
   "Mám vás rád" (I like you)
   "Na shledánou" (Till we meet again)
   "Ano" (Yes), "Ne" (No), etc. etc.

   So one of my friends was really anxious to practice them after getting acquainted to some Czech girls the other day. He then tried to ask a girl where she lived.

   However, instead of using the question "Kde je váš dům?" (Where is your home?) that he actually meant, he asked to the girl, "Milují váš dům?" (Do I love your home?).
  

   The girl being asked became somewhat confused and perhaps only after realizing what my friend actually intended to ask, she then looked at her friends, started to giggle and they finally burst into laughter.