The first order of business the next morning was a conference with Captain Posey. I gave him a complete account of the Hohenfurth trip and presented my recommendations for a second and final visit to complete the evacuation. It was my suggestion that I return to the monastery with the same trucks—as soon as they could be unloaded and serviced—and that he send up another officer with at least eight additional trucks, the second convoy to arrive by the time I had completed the loading of my own. I proposed taking four packers this time instead of two, the idea being that two of the packers could help me with the loading while the others were building cases for the fragile objects which would have to be crated. I mentioned also the impending withdrawal of our troops from Hohenfurth, which would make later operations of such nature impossible.
This was of course no news to Captain Posey as, presumably, it had been the determining factor in the removal of the Hohenfurth things in the first place. He approved my plan and advised me to get my trucks lined up, and said he would see what he could do about sending an additional officer. I didn’t like the sound of that. Too often I had used those same words myself when confronted with a difficult request. Furthermore, it had been my experience with the Army in general thus far—and with Third Army in particular—that “out of sight, out of mind” was a favorite motto. I had no intention of going back to Hohenfurth until I had a definite promise that reinforcements would be forthcoming. I think that my insistence piqued the captain a bit. But at that point I was feeling exceedingly brisk and businesslike—a mood which I found new and stimulating. It would be better to have a clear understanding now as to who would join me in Hohenfurth; as I explained to Captain Posey, I would like to give the officer some detailed instructions, preferably oral ones, before I started off.
I spent the rest of that day and most of the following one at the Verwaltungsbau supervising the unloading of the ten trucks from Hohenfurth and making trips out to the trucking company headquarters to conclude arrangements for continued use of the vehicles. Also, I had to put in a request for eight others. It was gratifying to find that every piece we had packed at Hohenfurth came through without a scratch. My two packers, to whom all credit for this belonged, were equally elated. My request for the services of four packers was met with black looks, but when I promised that we’d not be gone more than four or five days, Craig acquiesced.
Late in the afternoon of the second day, I went again to Posey’s office. He was not there but I found Lincoln, as usual hunched morosely over his typewriter. He said he had good news for me. Captain Posey had pulled a fast one and snatched a wonderful guy away from Jim Rorimer, Monuments Officer at Seventh Army—a fellow named Lamont Moore. Moore was already, he thought, on his way down to Munich to make the trip to Hohenfurth. When I said I didn’t know Moore, Lincoln proceeded to tell me about him.
“Lamont was director of the educational program at the National Gallery in Washington before he went into the Army. Before that he had a brilliant record at the Newark Museum. The two of you ought to get along famously. Lamont’s got a wonderful sense of humor. He’s exceedingly intelligent and he’s had a lot of experience in evacuation work.”
“Where did you know him?” I asked.
“We were in France last winter. That was before he was commissioned. He’s a lieutenant now,” Lincoln said.
“That sounds perfect. But I want to ask you a question about something else and I want a truthful answer. I have a sneaking notion that you knew all the time what was in that monastery at Hohenfurth. How about it?”
“Furniture and sculpture, you mean, instead of paintings?” he asked. “Of course I didn’t.”
“Well, maybe you didn’t, but perhaps you can imagine how I felt when I found that the Mannheimer collection alone contained more than two thousand items, and that the Rothschild pieces totaled up to a similar figure.”