I should never have mentioned that I had even so much as been inside a museum, for, from that moment until we finished loading the last truck, the little doctor never left my side. I was his “cher collègue,” and he kept up a steady barrage of questions which the patient Madame Ellenlittay tried to pass along to me without interrupting our work.
As we lined the trucks up, preparatory to starting back to Munich, Dr. Csanky produced several long lists of what the cases contained. He asked me to sign them. This I refused to do but explained to him through the general’s wife that if he cared to have the lists translated from Hungarian and forwarded to Third Army Headquarters, they could be checked against the contents and eventually returned to him with a notation to that effect.
Our little convoy rolled out of Grassau at six o’clock, leaving the group of Hungarians waving forlornly from the corner. Just before we turned onto the Autobahn, Leclancher signaled from the rear truck for us to stop. He came panting up to the lead truck with a bottle in his hand. With a gallant wave of the arm he said that we must drink to the success of the expedition. It was a bottle of Calvados—fiery and wonderful. We each took a generous swig and then—with a rowdy “en voiture!”—we were on our way again. It was a nice gesture.
The trip back to Munich was uneventful except for the extraordinary beauty of the long summer evening. The sunset had all the extravagance of the tropics. The sky blazed with opalescent clouds. As we drove into Munich, the whole city was suffused with a coral light which produced a more authentic atmosphere of Götterdämmerung than the most ingenious stage Merlin could have contrived.
It was nearly nine when we rolled into the parking area behind the Führerbau—too late to think about unloading and also, I was afraid, too late to get any supper. We had pieced out with K rations and candy bars, but were still hungry. A mess sergeant, lolling on the steps of the building, reluctantly produced some lukewarm stew. After we had eaten, I prevailed on one of the building guards to take my five drivers out to their billets south of town. It was Saturday night. I told Leclancher we would probably be making a longer trip on Monday and that I would need ten drivers. He promised to select five more good men, and we arranged to meet in the square as we had that morning. But Monday, he promised, they would be on time.
After checking the tarpaulins on my five trucks, I sauntered over to the Central Collecting Point on the off-chance that Craig might be working late. I found him looking at some of the pictures which George had sent in that day from the mine. The German packers whom Craig had been able to hire from one of the old established firms in Munich—one which had worked exclusively for the museums there—had finished unloading the trucks only a couple of hours earlier. Most of the things in this shipment had been found at the mine, so now the pictures were stacked according to size in neat rows about the room. In one of them we found two brilliant portraits by Mme. Vigée-Lebrun. Labels on the front identified them as the likenesses of Prince Schuvalov and of the Princess Golowine. Marks on the back indicated that they were from the Lanckoroncki Collection in Vienna, one of the most famous art collections in Europe. Hitler was rumored to have acquired it en bloc—through forced sale, it was said—for the great museum he planned to build at Linz. In another stack we came upon a superb Rubens landscape, a fine portrait by Hals and two sparkling allegorical scenes by Tiepolo. These had no identifying labels other than the numbers which referred to lists we didn’t have at the moment. However, Craig said that the documentation on the pictures, as a whole, was surprisingly complete. Then we ran into a lot of nineteenth century German masters—Lenbach, Spitzweg, Thoma and the like. These Hitler had particularly admired, but they didn’t thrill me. I was getting sleepy and suggested that we had had enough art for one day. I still had a report of the day’s doings to write up for Captain Posey before I could turn in, so we padlocked the room and took off.
Even though the next day was Sunday, it was not a day of rest for me. The trek to Hohenfurth, scheduled for Monday, involved infinitely more complicated preliminary arrangements than the easy run of yesterday. Captain Posey got out maps of the area into which the convoy would be traveling; gave me the names of specific outfits from whom I would have to obtain clearance as well as escorts along the way; and, most important of all, supplied information concerning the material to be transported. None of it, I learned, was cased. He thought it consisted mainly of paintings, but there was probably also some furniture. This wasn’t too definite. Nor did we have a very clear idea as to the exact number of trucks we would need. I had spoken for ten on the theory that a larger number would make too cumbersome a convoy. At least I didn’t want to be responsible for more at that stage of the game, inexperienced as I was. In the circumstances, two seasoned packers might, I thought, come in handy, so I was to see if I could borrow a couple of Craig’s men. There was the problem of rations for the trip up and back. Posey procured a big supply of C rations, not so good as the K’s, but they would do. While at Hohenfurth we would be fed by the American outfit stationed there. It was a good thing that there was so much to be arranged, because it kept me from worrying about a lot of things that could and many that did happen on that amazing expedition.
In the afternoon I went out to make sure of my trucks and on the way back put in a bid for the two packers. My request wasn’t very popular, because Craig was shorthanded, but he thought he could spare two since it was to be only a three-day trip—one day to go up, one day at Hohenfurth, and then back the third day. Craig gloomily predicted that I’d never get ten trucks loaded in one day, but I airily tossed that off with the argument that we had loaded five trucks at Grassau in less than four hours. “But that stuff was all in cases,” he said. “You’ll find it slow going with loose pictures.” Of course he was right, but I didn’t believe it at the time.