“Steve’s had his trip for this week,” said Lamont, meaning Steve’s trip to Alt Aussee.
Sergeant Peck, who had overheard part of our conversation, asked if he might join us. We told him to be ready in ten minutes and went off to notify Steve of our plans and to pack up our musette bags. Steve was so busy helping Kress with his developing that he scarcely paid any attention to us. After leaving him a final injunction to have at least three trucks loaded before we got back the next evening, we called for the command car. The driver, a restless redhead named Freedberg, who hated the monotonous routine at Berchtesgaden, was delighted with the idea of going to Munich. Sergeant Peck appeared and we set off.
We chose the shorter road through the mountains and overtook the convoy on the Autobahn, halfway to Munich. The front escort jeep was holding the speed down to thirty-five miles an hour, in accordance with my instructions. The driver waved envyingly as we passed them doing fifty. Twenty miles from Munich, Freedberg turned west off the Autobahn and took the back road from Bad Tölz, a short cut which brought us directly to Third Army Headquarters.
We arrived at Captain Posey’s office just as Lincoln Kirstein was leaving for chow. He told us that the captain had gone to Pilsen the middle of the week but was due back that evening. “There’s quite a lot of mail for both of you,” Lincoln said. He handed us each a thick batch of letters. It was the first mail I had received from home in six weeks. There were forty-two letters!
“I told you there’d be mail for us,” said Lamont with a satisfied smile.
We had supper with Craig Smyth and Ham Coulter at the Detachment that evening. Craig said that the convoy had not arrived before he left the Collecting Point, but two of his German workmen were to be on duty the next morning, even though it was Sunday. We arranged to meet him at his office and supervise the unloading. Lincoln had said that Posey would not be back before ten, so we spent the evening with Craig and Ham at their apartment.
Just before we returned to Third Army Headquarters, Ham gave us a small paper-bound volume. It was entitled The Ludwigs of Bavaria. The author was Henry Channon.
“This is one of the most fascinating books I’ve ever read,” Ham said. “You might take it along with you.”
I thanked him, and stuck it in my musette bag. Before our operations in Bavaria ended two months later, that little book had come to mean a great deal to the members of the evacuation team. We called it our “Bavarian bible.” So alluring were Channon’s descriptions of the “Seven Wonders of Bavaria” that whenever we had a free day—or even a few hours to ourselves—we made excursions to these architectural fantasies: the swirling, baroque churches of Wies, Weltenburg, Ottobeuren and Vierzehnheiligen; the Amalienburg and the palace of Herrenchiemsee. The Residenz at Würzburg, which we had seen, was one of the seven. Unofficially we added an eighth to the list: Schloss Linderhof, Ludwig II’s opulent little palace near Oberammergau—ornate and vulgar, yet fascinating in its lonely mountain setting. But these were extracurricular activities, falling outside the orbit of our official work.
We found Captain Posey at his office when we got there a few minutes before ten that evening. He asked us for a complete account of our operations at Berchtesgaden. We reported that we had sent a total of fourteen truckloads up to Munich the first week; that we had cleaned out half the pictures, but that we had just begun on the sculpture. We estimated that it would take us another ten days to finish; we would probably fill seventeen or eighteen more trucks.