We showed Steve our new quarters and suggested that Kress take over our old room. The one next door would make a good darkroom. I asked Steve how he was going to get all the stuff installed. He’d have to have a plumber. That didn’t bother Steve. He asked me to tell the mess sergeant that Kress was to have his meals with the civilian help in the kitchen. He’d take care of everything else. Steve was as good as his word. He found a plumber and by the end of the day Kress was ready to start work.
Notwithstanding these interruptions, Lamont and I managed to load and dispatch a convoy of three trucks. This third convoy contained two hundred paintings, thirty tapestries, fifteen more pieces of large sculpture and a dozen pieces of Italian Renaissance furniture.
At odd moments during our first days at Berchtesgaden, we had worried about the sculpture. In the first three convoys we had disposed of only thirty of the two hundred and fifty pieces. Most of those remaining were just under life size. We had no materials with which to build crates. And even if we had had the lumber, the labor of building them would have greatly delayed the evacuation. That evening we found the solution of the problem. The three of us were standing on the open porch outside our room after supper. Two of the trucks were parked by the loading platform directly below. Why not make a checkerboard pattern of ropes, strung waist high across the truck bed? The floor of the truck could be padded with excelsior. We could set a statue in each of the squares. The ropes would hold each piece in place. If we stuffed quantities of excelsior between the statues, they wouldn’t rub. Perhaps it was a crazy idea. On the other hand, it might work.
The following morning Steve and two of the men prepared the truck while Lamont and I selected the statues for the trial load. We chose thirty of the largest pieces. We figured on seven or eight rows, with four statues in each row. Kress set up his camera on the porch and photographed the progress of the operation. One by one the long row of madonnas, saints and angels was set in place. We hadn’t been far off in our calculations. There were twenty-nine in all. The truck looked like a tumbrel of the French Revolution filled with victims for the guillotine. It was a new technique in the packing of sculpture. Steve said we’d have to send George Stout a photograph. “And we’ll have to send for more excelsior, too,” Lamont said. He was quite right. We had used up the last shred.
That afternoon Steve combed the countryside for a fresh supply of excelsior, returning just before supper with three new bales. In the meantime, Lamont went over, with Kress, the paintings to be photographed. Sergeant Peck and I completed numbering the last of the pictures.
The next day we loaded three more trucks. With Steve on hand to crack the whip over the men, the loading went fast, so fast in fact that Sergeant Peck had a hard time checking off the paintings as they were hoisted onto the trucks. We packed four hundred pictures, the cases containing the gold and silver objects which Lamont and I had finished the day before, and another dozen pieces of furniture. The convoy—our fourth—got off in the early afternoon. We placed a special guard on the truck with the sculpture to make sure that the driver didn’t smoke on the way.
We finished one more truck and stopped for a cigarette. It was a hot day and we didn’t feel like doing any more work. Steve had gone up to the darkroom to see Kress. Lamont said, “Let’s go up to Munich.”
“That suits me, but what excuse have we got?” I asked.
“If we must have an excuse, I can think of at least four,” he said thoughtfully. “We’re out of cigarettes and candy. We ought to be on hand when they unpack the sculpture at the Collecting Point. We’ve worked for a week without taking a day off. And perhaps there’ll be some mail for us at Posey’s office.”
“What about the little brown bear? Do you think he’ll mind our taking off?” I asked. This was Lamont’s name for Steve, but it was never used when he was within earshot.