The hostess in this royal setting was trim, attractive WAC Captain Kathleen Nash of Hudson, Wisconsin, a divorcee who told friends that she had gone into the WACs to “get away from it all.”
One evening there was a knock at Captain Nash’s door and Mess Sgt. Roy Carlton stepped into her room, his eyes wide with excitement.
“Captain,” the sergeant said, “there’s something I think you ought to know about. You know the old German janitor? Well, he told me a few minutes ago that when the war began, the old lady of the castle came to his house late one night and told him to come with her and to tell no one where he had gone. She took him into the basement of the castle, that little room that is used for coal storage, and told him to dig a hole in the floor. He broke through the concrete and dug a big hole in the floor and then she sent him away. But when he came back to the room several days later he found the hole had been covered with new concrete. He figures that something was buried there by the old lady.”
Captain Nash told the sergeant to bring the janitor and they would go to the basement room and investigate. They made their way down the winding stairs into the subterranean rooms of the castle to the coal room. The old janitor pointed out the spot where he had dug the hole. Captain Nash ordered him to dig into the floor and see if anything had been hidden there.
The German broke the concrete with a sledge and then began digging. He uncovered a wooden box. The box was lifted out of the hole and when the top was ripped off they saw a lead box inside. The lead box contained several packages, carefully wrapped in heavy paper, weighing about 10 pounds each.
“You had better take them to my quarters,” Captain Nash told the sergeant.
When Captain Nash opened the packages in the privacy of her quarters her eyes must have glittered with excitement. She was gazing on one of the fabulous treasures of Europe—jewelry worth at least $1,500,000, if in fact a money value could be placed on the historic items at all.
Part of the jewelry belonged to the House of the Kurfursts and to the Kurhessen Foundation. Most of it belonged to the Countess Margarethe and to Prince Wolfgang. Some of it was the personal property of Princess Christoph and Prince Richard of Hesse. The owners, who lived in less pretentious quarters at this time, rarely visited the old castle, and none was aware that the treasure had been discovered.
Captain Nash was enchanted. She took from the boxes diadems and necklaces of diamonds, pearls and amethysts; rings of diamonds and other precious stones; a diamond-studded onyx badge, made in the eighteenth century: the badge of the Order of the Garter, which had been presented by King George II to his son-in-law; necklaces of gold and platinum; bracelets of diamonds and emeralds and pearls and topaz; buckles studded with diamonds; large and small brooches studded with diamonds and other stones; pendants with large and small diamonds; earrings made of diamonds and emeralds and pearls; tiaras delicately fashioned of gold and studded with diamonds and other gems; a large necklace of gray pearls and diamonds; an English decoration of the Victoria and Albert Order, including a cameo with portrait of Queen Victoria and her Prince Consort, surrounded by small diamonds; diamond stick pins; diamond earrings; diamond-studded watches; diamond studded cases; and golden chains studded with large stones.
This, then, was the treasure which the girl from Wisconsin picked up, piece by piece. At some period as she looked at the glittering jewels, the idea was born that she would not give them up.