first real job, so I’m still a neophyte,” I said.
Lamont rolled his eyes wearily and said, “Oh, I’ve been evacuating works
of art for the past four months, and I wonder sometimes if it’s ever
going to end. Siegen was my big show. It was the foul and dripping copper
mine in Westphalia where the priceless treasures from the Rhineland
museums were stored. The shaft was two thousand feet deep and some of the
mine chambers were more than half a mile from the shaft. Walker Hancock
of First Army and George Stout had inspected it originally and advised
immediate evacuation. But no place was available. First Army was pushing
eastward, so all Walker could do was to reassure himself from time to
time that the contents were adequately guarded.
“Shortly before VE-Day, I received a cryptic telegram at Ninth Army
Headquarters stating that, as of midnight that particular night, Siegen
was my headache. Then followed weeks of activity in which Walker, Steve
and I were involved.”
“Who is Steve?” I asked.
“Steve Kovalyak of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania,” said Lamont. “I think
he’s with George at Alt Aussee now. I hope you’ll meet him. He’s a great
character.
“A bunker at Bonn was approved as a new repository for the Siegen
treasures. I surveyed the roads to Bonn and found them impossible for
truck transport. George was called to Alt Aussee. Walker went off to see
about setting up a collecting point at Marburg.
“Then I was called back to Ninth Army Headquarters. The evacuation of
Siegen was momentarily at a standstill.
“Later I returned and, with Walker’s and Steve’s assistance, completed
the evacuation. We moved everything to Marburg, except the famous
Romanesque doors from the church of Santa Maria im Kapitol. Walker took
them to the cathedral at Cologne, along with the Aachen crown jewels.
“Siegen was the second major evacuation—perhaps you could say it was the
first carried out by a _team_ of MFA&A officers.”
“What was the first?” I asked.
“The Merkers mine, where the Nazi gold and the Berlin Museum things were
stored. That was the most spectacular of the early evacuations—that and
Bernterode.”
“What about Bernterode?” I asked. I had read Hancock’s official report
of the operation and had seen some snapshots taken in the mine, so I was
curious to have a firsthand account.
“Walter Hancock was the officer in charge of the evacuation,” said
Lamont. “Like Siegen, it was a deep-shaft mine, so the contents had to
be brought up by an elevator. It was a hell of a job to get the elevator
back in working order. The dramatic thing about Bernterode was the
discovery of a small chapel, or shrine, constructed in one of the mine
chambers and then completely walled up.
“In this concealed shrine, the Nazis had placed the bronze sarcophagi of
Frederick the Great, Frederick William—the Soldier King—and those of Von
Hindenburg and his wife. On the coffins had been laid wreaths, ribbons
and various insignia of the Party. Around and about them were some two
hundred regimental banners, many of them dating from the early Prussian
wars.
“When Walker was ready to take the coffins out of the mine, he found
they were so large and heavy that they’d have to come up one at a time.
He was standing at the top of the shaft as the coffin of Frederick the
Great rose slowly from the depths. As it neared the level, a radio in the
distance blared forth the ‘Star-Spangled Banner.’ And just as the coffin
came into view, the radio band struck up ‘God Save the King.’ The date,”
Lamont added significantly, “was May the eighth.”
If I thought I was going to get much sleep that night, I reckoned without
the patriotic officers of the Yankee Division, who were hell-bent on
making it a really Glorious Fourth. It had been my mistake in the first
place to move into quarters directly over the recreation room. It wasn’t
much of a bedroom anyway—just an alcove with an eighteenth century settee
for a bed. I was resting precariously on this spindly collector’s item
when the door was flung open and Major Thacher shouted that I was wanted
below. I told him to go away. To my surprise he did—but only to return a
few minutes later with reinforcements. I must come down at once—colonel’s
orders, and if I wouldn’t come quietly, they’d carry me down. Before I
could get off my settee, it was pitched forward and I sprawled on the
floor. What fun it was for everybody—except me! I put on a dressing
gown and was marched down the stairs. I had been called in, as a naval
officer, to settle an argument: Who had won the Battle of Jutland? The
Battle of Jutland, of all things! At that moment I wasn’t at all sure in
what war it had been fought, let alone who had won it. But assuming an
assurance I was far from feeling I declared that it had been a draw. My
luck was with me that night after all, for that had been the colonel’s
contention. So I was allowed to return to my makeshift bed.
Lamont took some of the wind out of my sails by assuring me the next
morning that the British had defeated the German fleet at Jutland in 1916.
But we were having our own battle of Hohenfurth that morning, so I was
too preoccupied to give Jutland more than a passing thought. Just before
noon, as we finished our fourth truck, John Nicholas Brown and Mason
Hammond arrived. Mason, as was his custom when traveling about Germany,
was bundled up in a great sheepskin coat—the kind used by the Wehrmacht
on the Russian front—and looked like something out of _Nanook of the
North_. John, less arctically attired, hailed us gaily from the back seat
of the command car.
Lamont and I suspended operations to show them around. We were pleased
by their comments on our work—how admirably it was being handled and so
on—but we struck a snag when we showed them Canova’s marble Muse. Lamont
and I had just about decided to leave her where she was. Our two visitors
thought that would be a pity, a downright shame. We pointed out that to
transport the statue would be a hazardous business, even if we succeeded
in getting it onto a truck in the first place. We had no equipment with
which to hoist anything so heavy. On our inspection tour they kept coming
back to the subject of the Canova, and Lamont gave me an irritated look
for having called their attention to it at all.
At lunch, which we had with the colonel, they fixed us. When the subject
of the statue was brought up, the colonel instantly agreed to provide us
with a winch and also two extra trucks. We needed the trucks all right,
but we weren’t particularly happy about the winch.
As soon as we got back to the monastery, we broke the news to Dr. Mutter.
The Muse was about to take a trip. He held up his hands in dismay and
said it would take us half a day to get the statue loaded. When we told
the German packers what we had in mind, they made a few clucking noises,
and then began the necessary preparations. The first thing they did was
to get hold of two logs, each about six feet in length and five inches in
diameter. With the help of a dozen PWs, they got them placed beneath the
base of the statue. From that point on, it was a matter of slowly rolling
the statue as the logs rolled. It was arduous work. A distance of well
over four hundred yards was involved, and the last half of it was along a
sloping ramp where it was particularly difficult to keep the heavy marble
under control.
Once the truck was reached, it was necessary to set up a stout runway
from the ground to the bed of the truck. This done, the next move was to
place heavy pads around the base of the statue, so that the cable of the
winch would not scratch the surface of the marble. It was a tense moment.
Would the winch be strong enough to drag its heavy burden up the runway?
It began to grind, and slowly the Muse slid up the boards, paused for
a quivering instant and then glided majestically along the bed of the
truck. There were cheers from the PWs who had gathered around the truck
to watch. We all sighed with relief, and then congratulated the little
packers who had engineered the whole operation. Dr. Mutter kept shaking
his head in disbelief. He told us that when the statue had been brought
to the monastery in the first place, it had taken three hours to unload
it. The present operation had taken forty-five minutes.
After this triumph, the loading of the remaining trucks seemed an
anticlimax, but we kept hard at it for the next six hours. By seven
o’clock, all ten of them were finished. All told, we would be a convoy of
eighteen trucks.
We were on the point of starting down to the village for supper, when
Dr. Mutter, even more agitated than he had been before, rushed up and
implored us to grant him a great favor. Would we, out of the kindness
of our hearts—oh, he knew he had no right to ask such a favor—would we
take him and his wife and little girl along with us to Linz the next
day? Linz was his home, he had a house there. He had brought his family
to Hohenfurth only because the Nazis wouldn’t allow him to give up his
duties as custodian of the collections at the monastery. Now the Czechs
were going to be in complete control. He and his family were Austrians
and there was no telling what would happen to them.
How news does get around, I thought to myself. We hadn’t said a word
about the Czechs taking over, but when I expressed the proper surprise
and asked him where he had heard _that_ rumor, he wagged his head as much
as to say, “Oh, I know what I am talking about, all right!”
My heart wasn’t exactly bleeding for Dr. Mutter, but at the thought of
his little girl, who was about the age of my own, I couldn’t say no. I
told him to be ready to leave at seven the next morning. I didn’t tell
him how uncertain it was that we would ever get to Linz at all.
It was pouring when I crawled out of my bed at six A.M. I seemed to
specialize in bad weather, particularly when starting out with a convoy!
At the monastery everything was in order. At the last minute I decided to
tell Dr. Mutter there was a possibility—even a probability—that we would
not be able to cross over at Linz, and I told him why. He was terrified
when I mentioned the prospect of being stopped by the Russians. I assured
him that we would drop him and his family off at one of the villages on
the other side of the Austrian border, if we found there was going to be
trouble. It was cold comfort but the best I had to offer.
I climbed into the lead truck, Lamont into the tenth, and Leclancher, as
usual, took over the last truck. Leclancher, with his customary ability
to pull a rabbit out of a hat at a critical juncture, had found among his
drivers one who spoke some Russian, so we had put him at the controls of
the first truck. It might make a good impression.
Once again we had a jeep escort to the border, and there we picked up
three others to conduct us as far as Linz. The cocky little sergeant in
the jeep that was to lead came over to my truck, squinted up at me and
said, “You look nervous this morning, Lieutenant.”
Well, I thought, if it’s that apparent, what’s the use of denying it?
“I am,” I said. “This is a big convoy and it’s filled with millions of
dollars’ worth of stuff. I’d hate to have anything happen to it.”
He whistled at that. Then, rubbing his hands briskly, he retorted, “And
nothing is going to happen to it.”
He took off and we swung in behind him. The first hour was a long one.
There was more traffic than ever before—a steady stream of carts all
moving toward Linz. At last we shifted into low gear, and I knew that we
were on the steep grade leading down to Urfahr. If there were going to be
trouble, we’d know it in a minute. At that moment, the sergeant in the
lead jeep turned around and waved. I thought, There’s trouble ahead. But
he was only signaling that the road was clear.
We rolled over the rough cobblestones onto the bridge. I saw the gleaming
helmet liners of the new escort awaiting us as we drew up to the center
of the span. I motioned to one of our new guardians that we would stop at
the first convenient place on the other side.
We were such a long convoy that I thought we’d be halfway through Linz
before our escort directed us to pull over to the curb. There we unloaded
the Mutter family and their luggage. The doctor and his wife were
tearfully grateful and the little girl smiled her thanks.
I was feeling relaxed and happy and wanted to share my relief with
someone, so I suggested to Lamont that we pay our respects to the colonel
who had warned us not to come through Linz. It was a letdown to find only
a warrant officer in the colonel’s anteroom. But he remembered us and was
surprised to see us again. He said we had been lucky; the latest news
was that the Russians would move up to the opposite side of the Danube
by noon. We left appropriate messages for the colonel and his adjutant,
returned to our trucks and headed west toward Lambach.
As on the previous trip, the escort turned back at that point. A new
one—this time an impressive array of six armed jeeps—shepherded us from
there. We stopped for lunch with a Corps of Engineers outfit of the 11th
Armored Division on the outskirts of Schwannenstadt. The C.O., Major
Allen, and his executive officer, Captain Myers, welcomed us as warmly as
if we had been commanding generals instead of a motley crew of eighteen
French drivers, plus twelve “noncoms” from the escorting jeeps—a total of
thirty-two, including Lamont and me. We doled out K rations to our four
packers, for we couldn’t take civilians into an Army mess.
After lunch I telephoned ahead to Salzburg to ask for an escort from
there to Munich, requesting that it meet us on the edge of town, east
of the river. The weather had cleared, and drying patches of water on
the road reflected a blue sky. By the time we had sighted Salzburg it
was actually hot. As we rolled into the outskirts we were enveloped in
clouds of dust from the steady procession of military vehicles. We waited
in vain for our new escort. After an hour we decided to proceed without
one. I didn’t like the idea very much, but it was getting on toward five
o’clock, and we wanted to reach Munich in time for supper. We fell far
short of our goal, being forced to stop once because of a flat tire, and
a second time because of carburetor trouble. These two delays cost us
close to two hours. At seven o’clock we halted by the placid waters of
Chiemsee and ate cold C rations in an idyllic setting. It was after nine
when we lumbered into the parking area behind the Gargantuan depot at
the Königsplatz. Lamont and I had twin objectives—hot baths and bed. It
didn’t take us long to achieve both!
We had had every intention of making an early start the next morning,
not so much because of any blind faith in Benjamin Franklin’s precepts,
but simply because they stopped serving breakfast in the Third Army
mess shortly before eight o’clock. In fact, the first thing one saw on
entering the mess hall was a large placard which stated peremptorily,
“The mess will be cleared by 0800. By order of the Commanding General.”
And such was Third Army discipline—we had a different name for it—that
the mess hall was completely devoid of life on the stroke of eight.
It was a little after seven when I woke up. Lamont was still dead to the
world, so I shaved and dressed before waking him. There was a malevolent
gleam in his eyes when he finally opened them. He asked frigidly, “Are
you always so infernally cheerful at this hour of the morning?” I told
him not to confuse cheerfulness with common courtesy, and mentioned the
peculiar breakfast habits of the Third Army.
We arrived at the mess hall with a few minutes to spare. The sergeant at
the entrance asked to see our mess cards. We had none but I explained
that we were attached to the headquarters.
“Temporary duty?” he asked.
“Yes, just temporary duty,” I said with a hint of thankfulness.
“Then you can’t eat here. Take the bus to the Transient Officers’ Mess
downtown.”
I asked about the bus schedule. “Last bus left at 0745,” he said. It was
then 0750.
“Well, how do you like ‘chicken’ for breakfast?” I asked Lamont as we
walked out to the empty street.
There was nothing to do but walk along until we could hail a passing
vehicle. We had gone a good half mile before we got a lift. Knowing that
the downtown mess closed at eight, I thought we’d better try the mess
hall at the Military Government Detachment where the officers usually
lingered till about eight-thirty. Among the laggards we found Ham
Coulter and Craig. After airing our views on the subject of Third Army
hospitality, we settled down to a good breakfast and a full account of
our trip back from Hohenfurth. We told Craig that a couple of our French
drivers were to meet us at the Collecting Point at nine. They were to
bring some of the trucks around for unloading before noon. It was a
Saturday and in Bavaria everything stopped at noon. Once in a great while
Craig could persuade members of his civilian crew to work on Saturday
afternoons, but it was a custom they didn’t hold with, so he avoided
it whenever possible. There were those who frowned on this kind of
“coddling,” as they called it, but they just didn’t know their Bavarians.
Craig did, and I think he got more work out of his people than if he had
tried to change their habits.
We spent part of the morning with Herr Döbler, the chief packer, at
the Collecting Point, helping him decipher our trucking lists, hastily
prepared at Hohenfurth in longhand. Meanwhile the trucks, one after
another, drew up to the unloading platform and disgorged their precious
contents. The descent of the marble Muse caused a flurry of excitement.
Our description of loading the statue had lost nothing in the telling
and we were anxious to see how she had stood the trip. The roads had
been excruciatingly rough in places, especially at Linz and on the dread
detour near Rosenheim. At each chuckhole I had offered up a little
prayer. But my worries had been groundless—she emerged from the truck in
all her gleaming, snow-white perfection.
Just before noon, Captain Posey summoned Lamont and me to his office. He
cut short our account of the Hohenfurth operation with the news that we
were to leave that afternoon for the great mine at Alt Aussee. At last we
were to join George—both of us. George was going to have his team after
all.
A command car had already been ordered. The driver was to pick us up at
one-thirty. Posey got out a map and showed us the road we were to take
beyond Salzburg. As his finger ran along the red line of the route marked
with the names St. Gilgen, St. Wolfgang, Bad Ischl and Bad Aussee, our
excitement grew. Untold treasures were waiting to be unearthed at the end
of it.
He said that the trip would take about six hours. We could perhaps stop
off at Bad Aussee for supper. Two naval officers—Lieutenants Plaut and
Rousseau, both of them OSS—had set up a special interrogation center
there, an establishment known simply as “House 71,” and were making an
intensive investigation of German art-looting activities. They lived very
well, Posey said with a grin. We could do a lot worse than to sample
their hospitality. I knew Jim Plaut and Ted Rousseau—in fact had seen
them at Versailles not so many weeks ago—so I thought we could prevail on
them to take us in.
The mention of food reminded Lamont that we ought to pick up a generous
supply of rations—the kind called “ten-in-ones”—somewhere along the
road. The captain gave us a written order for that, and also provided
each of us with a letter stating that we were authorized to “enter
art repositories in the area occupied by the Third U. S. Army.” Our
earlier permits had referred to specific localities. These were blanket
permits—marks of signal favor, we gathered from the ceremonious manner in
which they were presented to us.
There were various odds and ends to be attended to before we could get
off, among them the business of our PX rations. That was Lamont’s idea.
He said that we might not be able to get them later. He was right; they
were the last ones we were able to lay our hands on for three weeks.
[Illustration: German altarpiece from the Louvre Museum, by the Master of
the Holy Kinship, was acquired by Göring in exchange for paintings from
his own collection.]
[Illustration: This panel, _Mary Magdalene_, by van Scorel, was given to
Hitler by Göring. Shortly before the war’s end the Führer returned it to
Göring for safekeeping.]
[Illustration: Wing of an Italian Renaissance altarpiece by del Garbo,
representing Saint John the Evangelist and Saint Justin.]
[Illustration: Life-size statue of polychromed wood, _The Magdalene_, by
Erhardt, was formerly owned by the Louvre.]
(6)
_LOOT UNDERGROUND: THE SALT MINE AT ALT AUSSEE_
It was nearly two o’clock by the time we were ready to start. I was now
so familiar with the road between Munich and Salzburg that I felt like
a commuter. Just outside Salzburg, Lamont began looking for signs that
would lead us to a Quartermaster depot. He finally caught sight of one
and, after following a devious route which took us several miles off the
main road, we found the depot. We were issued two compact and very heavy
wooden boxes bound with metal strips. We dumped them on the floor of the
command car and drove on into town.
Across the river, we picked up a secondary road which led out of the
city in a southeasterly direction. For some miles it wound through hills
so densely wooded that we could see but little of the country. Then,
emerging from the tunnel of evergreens, we skirted Fuschl See, the first
of the lovely Alpine lakes in that region. Somewhere along its shores, we
had been told, Ribbentrop had had a castle. It was being used now as a
recreation center for American soldiers.
Our road led into more rugged country. We continued to climb and with
each curve of the road the scenery became more spectacular. After an
hour’s drive we reached St. Gilgen, its neat white houses and picturesque
church spire silhouetted against the blue waters of St. Wolfgang See.
Then on past the village of Strobl and finally into the crooked streets
of Bad Ischl, where the old Emperor Franz Josef had spent so many
summers. From Bad Ischl our road ribboned through Laufen and Goisern to
St. Agatha.
Beyond St. Agatha lay the Pötschen Pass. The road leading up to it was a
series of hairpin turns and dangerous grades. As we ground slowly up the
last steep stretch to the summit, I wondered what route George was using
for his convoys from the mine. Surely not this one. Large trucks couldn’t
climb that interminable grade. I found out later that this was the only
road to Alt Aussee.
On the other side of the pass, the road descended gradually into a
rolling valley and, in another half hour, we clattered into the narrow
main street of Bad Aussee. From there it was only a few miles to Alt
Aussee. Midway between the two villages we hoped to find the house of our
OSS friends.
We came upon it unexpectedly, around a sharp bend in the road. It was a
tall, gabled villa, built in the gingerbread style of fifty years ago.
Having pictured a romantic chalet tucked away in the mountains, I was
disappointed by this rather commonplace suburban structure, standing
behind a stout iron fence with padlocked gates, within a stone’s throw of
the main highway.
Jim and Ted received us hospitably and took us to an upper veranda with
wicker chairs and a table immaculately set for dinner. We were joined
by a wiry young lieutenant colonel, named Harold S. Davitt, who bore a
pronounced resemblance to the Duke of Windsor. He was the commanding
officer of a battalion of the 11th Armored Division stationed at Alt
Aussee, the little village just below the mine. Colonel Davitt’s men
constituted the security guard at the mine. He knew and admired our
friend George Stout. It was strange and pleasant to be again in an
atmosphere of well-ordered domesticity. To us it seemed rather a fine
point when one of our hosts rebuked the waitress for serving the wine in
the wrong kind of glasses.
During dinner we noticed a man pacing about the garden below. He was
Walter Andreas Hofer, who had been Göring’s agent and adviser in art
matters. A shrewd and enterprising Berlin dealer before the war, Hofer
had succeeded in ingratiating himself with the Reichsmarschall. He,
more than any other single individual, had been responsible for shaping
Göring’s taste and had played the stellar role in building up his
priceless collection of Old Masters.