After lunch Lamont joined the crew at work on the books, while I went in search of Sergeant Peck. We had explained to him that all of the paintings would have to be numbered before we could prepare them for loading. The sergeant had agreed, but I was not certain that he altogether understood why we were so insistent on this point. I found Peck in his room at the end of the south wing of the rest house. As usual, he was working on the inventory. He was a serious, scholarly fellow. Before entering the Army, he had been an art teacher at an Ohio college, so his present assignment was very much to his liking. He had done a remarkably fine job on the inventory. It was a detailed seventy-page document giving the title of each picture, the name of the artist, the dimensions of the canvas and, where known, the name of the collection from which it had been acquired.
I told him that we hoped to get started on the pictures the next morning. We would arrange them in rooms on the second floor of the center section of the building. Those rooms were the ones most accessible to the door leading to our loading platform. We would want him to be responsible for checking off each picture as it was carried onto the truck. Since there were more than a thousand paintings in the inventory, there was only one practical way this checking could be done: by going through all the rooms and numbering each picture, setting down the corresponding number on the correct entry in the inventory.
I asked if he could spare the time to help me with the numbering that afternoon. He agreed; so, armed with the inventory and some chalk, we began with the rooms on the second floor. By midafternoon we had finished marking two hundred pictures. Lamont could start with these the next forenoon. They would keep him busy until we had numbered an additional batch.
At three Steve and I drove over to Brigade Headquarters to make arrangements for escort vehicles. We expected to have our first convoy ready to leave for Munich the following afternoon. It was only a ninety-mile run, Autobahn all the way, so two jeeps would suffice.
The 44th AAA Brigade was established in General Keitel’s old headquarters, about two miles northwest of Berchtesgaden. With its smooth gravel driveways and well-tended lawns, the place had the air of a luxurious country club. The administrative offices were located in an L-shaped building, a modern adaptation of the familiar Bavarian provincial style. The surrounding buildings—barracks and small houses—had been designed in the same style.
We were received by Captain Putman, the Chief of Staff’s adjutant, a brisk young man, who promised to provide us with the necessary escort vehicles.
“Cocky fellow, wasn’t he?” said Steve as we left the office.
“Yes, but I have a feeling we’ll get our jeeps on schedule,” I said.
My hunch was right. Only once during the entire Berchtesgaden operation did the escort vehicles fail to report for duty at the appointed hour. That one time was when Captain Putman had a day off.