“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.