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Wine in Markebeke

Event ID: 434

Categories: 

Jagd in Flanderns Himmel, Karl Bodenschatz, Verlag Knorr & Hirth München, 1935

17 August 1917

50.816141687498735, 3.2403333562695864
Markebeke
Marke

Source ID: 58

Jagd in Flanderns Himmel, Karl Bodenschatz, Verlag Knorr & Hirth München, 1935 p.   

“As far as the accompanying drinks are concerned, nothing can happen to him in the long term. Ever since that story at the airfield and Marckebeeke Castle. A lovely event had taken place there. One fine evening, the lad Andres had appeared in a highly excited, animated and exhilarated state and had simply reported: ‘Herr Overleutnant, he’s drunk down there!’ Disbelievingly, the adjutant followed his boy into the garden. What on earth was anyone in Marckebeeke supposed to get drunk on? In the garden, however, he saw that a number of men in various positions were indeed indulging in a considerable amount of drinking. And when the adjutant looked curiously at the mouth of one of the men and took a closer look at the labels on the bottles, he was almost struck dumb: the man was pouring a prima primissima white Bordeaux that was so substantial and so old that you could no longer see through the bottle. Where did this miracle in Flanders come from? Well, one of the brave men had pulled a shrub for fun in the garden and kept the whole shrub in his hand, and although the shrub puller had no knowledge of agriculture or forestry, the thing seemed funny to him, he got some more mates, there was a general shrub pulling and lo and behold: In a clearly defined square of the garden, the bushes were rootless. No front-line soldier in any army in the world would have hesitated for a moment in the face of this state of affairs; they dug and dug. And they dug out two thousand bottles of the finest wine: ancient Burgundy and ancient Bordeaux. The commander, to whom this was immediately reported, fought a brief battle with himself. The wine in the stage? He looked round thoughtfully at his loved ones and thought: how they sit there, one like the other, this one and that one and the other one and I myself and all of them together, after all, we’ll all be gone one day, sooner or later, as sure as the Amen in the church…the wine stays here. As a result, 600 bottles were immediately issued to the brave mechanics and with the remaining stock the squadron’s canteen was reorganised for the rest of the war, the adjutant had no more financial headaches about how to maintain the canteen: he sold each bottle for the price of one mark.”

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