As soon as he had found a billet, we settled down to talk over the loading of his trucks. “The colonel says that we’ll have to finish the job in a hurry. The Czechs are taking over at the end of the week,” I said. “And if the Russians move up to the Danube, we won’t be able to go back by way of Linz. We’ll have to return by way of Passau.”
“I understand that there isn’t any bridge over the Danube at Passau,” Lamont said quietly. At that I got excited, but in the same quiet voice Lamont said, “Don’t worry. We’ve got more important things to think about—something to drink, for example.”
We went over to the officers’ club, arriving just in time to be offered a sample of the Fourth of July punch which two of the officers had been mixing that afternoon. From the look of things, they had perfect confidence in their recipe, which called for red wine, armagnac and champagne. After the first sip I didn’t have to be told there would be fireworks in Hohenfurth that evening.
Lamont and I began to discuss mutual friends and acquaintances in the museum world, a habit deeply ingrained in members of our profession. We agreed that a mutual “hate” often brought people together more quickly than a mutual admiration. Then inconsistently—it was probably the punch—we started talking about Lincoln, whom we both liked very much.
“It was Lincoln who told me what a fine fellow you are, Lamont,” I said.
“That’s interesting,” he said with a noiseless laugh. “He said the same thing about you.”
Comparing notes, we found that Lincoln had given us identical vignettes of each other.
“Tell me something about the work you’ve been doing in MFA&A. This is my 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.