Salt mines and castles: The discovery and restitution of looted European art

by Thomas Carr Howe

These musings were cut short by our arrival at the hotel. The Navy had done all right for itself. The same efficient French staff that had presided over this de luxe establishment in prewar days was still in charge. I left the Baedekers and photographic paper for Charlie Kuhn, and then Craig and I walked to Naval Headquarters in the Rue Presbourg. There we attended to routine matters in connection with our orders. It was almost noon by the time we got squared away, so we retraced our steps to the Monceau. Lunch there was a demonstration of what a French chef could do with GI food.

Midafternoon found us headed back to Orly in a Navy jeep. Our plane was scheduled to leave at four. This was no bucket-seat job, but a luxurious C-47 equipped with chairs of the Pullman-car variety, complete with antimacassars. We landed at Bovingdon less than two hours later and from there took a bus up to London. Naval Headquarters was in Grosvenor Square. With the American Embassy on one side of it, the Navy on another, and the park in the center used by the Navy motor pool, the dignified old square was pretty thoroughly Americanized.

London was still crowded with our armed forces. The hotels were full, so we were assigned to lodgings in Wimpole Street. These were on the third floor of a pleasant, eighteenth century house, within a stone’s throw of No. 50, where Elizabeth Barrett had been wooed and won by Robert Browning. An inspection of our quarters revealed that the plumbing was of the Barrett-Browning period; but the place was clean and, anyway, it wasn’t likely that we’d be spending much time there. It had been a long day and we were too tired to think of anything beyond getting a bite to eat and hitting the sack.

For our two days in London we had “Queen’s weather”—brilliant sunshine and cloudless skies. Our first port of call early the next morning was the Medical Office, where we were given various inoculations. From there Craig and I went across the square to the American Embassy for a long session with Sumner Crosby, at that time acting as the liaison between the Roberts Commission and its British counterpart, the Macmillan Committee. Sumner provided us with a great deal of useful information. The latest reports from Germany indicated that caches of looted art were being uncovered from day to day. The number of these hiding places ran into the hundreds. The value of their contents was, of course, incalculable. Only a fraction of the finds had as yet been released to the press.

Craig and I began licking our chops at the prospect of what lay ahead. Had we made a mistake in planning to stay two days in London? Perhaps we could get a plane back to Paris that evening. Sumner thought not. There were several things for us to do on the spot, things that would be of use to us in our future activities. One was to call on Colonel Sir Leonard Woolley, the British archaeologist who, with his wife, was doing important work for the Macmillan Committee. Another was to see Jim Plaut, a naval lieutenant at the London office of OSS. He would probably have valuable information about German museum personnel. It would be helpful to know the whereabouts of certain German scholars, specifically those whose records were, from our point of view, “clean.”

Sumner made several appointments for us and then hurried off to keep one of his own. Craig and I stayed on at the office to study the reports. Sumner had already given us the glittering highlights. By noon our heads were filled with facts and figures that made E. Phillips Oppenheim seem positively unimaginative. And The Arabian Nights—that was just old stuff.

It was late afternoon when we finished calling on the various people Sumner had advised us to see, but plenty of time remained to do a little sightseeing before dinner. The cabbie took us past Buckingham Palace, along the Embankment, Birdcage Walk, the Abbey, the Houses of Parliament and finally to St. Paul’s. What we saw was enough to give a cruel picture of the damage the Germans had inflicted on the fine old monuments of London.

Craig and I flew back to Orly the following evening, arriving too late to obtain transportation into Paris. We spent an uncomfortable night in the barracks at the airport and drove to the Royal Monceau early the next morning. It was stiflingly hot and I was in a bad humor in spite of the soothing effect of a short haircut—the kind Francesca said needed a couple of saber scars to make it look right. My spirits fell still lower when Craig and I were told that we could stay only two nights at the hotel. Since we were assigned to SHAEF, it was up to the Army to billet us. It seemed rather unfriendly of the Navy, but that’s the way it was and there wasn’t anything we could do about it.

After lunch we set out for Versailles in a Navy jeep. It was a glorious day despite the heat, and the lovely drive through the Bois and on past Longchamps made us forget our irritation at the Navy’s lack of hospitality. The office of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section was in two tiny “between-floor” rooms in the Grandes Écuries—the big stables which, together with their matching twin, the Petites Écuries, face the main palace.