Proper Bloody Ruckus

No matter how it is steeped, garrison life for occupation troops near the provincial Lower Saxony town of Wolfenbuttel is a weak dish of tea. But something new and refreshingly British was added when the young Marquess of Blandford, son of the Duke of Marlborough, took up station there as captain in the Life Guards, one of Her Majesty's oldest and finest regiments. The Marquess, a real sporting chap, brought not only his young bride but also the ducal hounds. The 25-year-old Marquess and his fellow officers had no trouble rounding up pink coats, and the hunt was on.

Foxes & Flares. Over tilled hill and manicured dale they bounded with tally-hos, yoicks and view halloos, making life miserable not only for the fox, but for stolid farmers and their livestock. It was not long before, in the words of one who was there, "the locals were raising a proper bloody ruckus." For one thing, such goings-on were not cricket in the eyes of Lower Saxony farmers, whose own system of hunting is to grub about on foot with small whistles that imitate the cries of a rabbit, and then to pounce on the fox. They appealed to Herr Hans Lieberkuehn, Wolfenbuettel's local hunt master. Herr Lieberkuehn dug up a law drafted by Hermann Goering (who liked to hunt with falcons) which prohibited riding to hounds.

In an icily courteous meeting with the young Marquess and his mates, Herr Lieberkuehn stuck by the law: the pink coats, hounds & horses must go. That night the Life Guards bundled up a supply of fireworks, threw in a few Very pistol flares to boot, and descended in the dark on Herr Lieberkuehn's house. It was a spectacular show, though it scared the maid half to death: she thought the Russians had finally crossed over from the East-West border only 20 miles away. Unfortunately, Herr and Frau Lieberkuehn were away at the movies, so the lads had to come back later and repeat the whole noisy performance.

Resignation Accepted. Local newspapers were outraged. The Soviet zone Communist radio made a big thing of it, incidentally identifying the Marquess as a former suitor of Princess Margaret Rose. After advising Whitehall in London, the British resident officer at Goslar made an apology to Herr Lieberkuehn; Blandford and his cronies paid 40 DM. ($9.90) for damage to Herr Lieberkuehn's property (two broken windows, a trampled garden). The pink coats were ordered into mothballs and the ducal hounds were sent back, tails down, to their home kennels.

Last week headquarters of the British Army of the Rhine completed the story. The Marquess of Blandford, it announced, has resigned his commission in the Life Guards. "Wolfenbuettel is no place for a young couple to live," he explained. "Too provincial."

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