“Well, we’ll fix that,” I said. I went back to see the lieutenant. “How many drivers have you got and how many trucks?” I asked.
“Sixteen drivers and thirteen trucks,” he said.
“Send eight of the drivers and five of the trucks up to Munich first thing in the morning and have them report to the trucking company. We can finish the job here without them.”
Steve always sang when he was in a particularly happy frame of mind. That evening, on the way back to the rest house, he was in exceptionally good voice.
Five days later we completed the evacuation of the Göring collection. The last two convoys, of four and seven trucks respectively, contained the larger pictures, one hundred and seventy-seven of them; sixty pieces of sculpture, twenty miscellaneous cases, sixty-seven pieces of furniture and two hundred empty picture frames. We had heavy rain that last week and the mud was ankle-deep around the loading platform. Although it was early August, the nights were cold and the rest house, emptied of its treasures, was a cheerless place. We were glad to see the last of the trucks pull out of the drive. It had been a strenuous operation—thirty-one truckloads in thirteen days. In the early afternoon we would collect our personal belongings and return to Munich.
(8)
LOOTERS’ CASTLE: SCHLOSS NEUSCHWANSTEIN
A telephone call from Brigade Headquarters changed our plans. It was Major Luther Miller of G-2. He had just made an inspection of a house belonging to one of Göring’s henchmen and there was a lot of “art stuff” in it. He had reported the find to Third Army Headquarters and Captain Posey had told him to get in touch with me. Could I go up to the house with him that afternoon?
Major Miller picked me up after lunch. He was a handsome fellow, tall and sparely built. He had an easy, pleasant manner. As we drove along he gave me further details about the house to which we were going. It had been occupied until the day before by Fritz Görnnert and his wife. Görnnert had been the social secretary and close confidant of Göring. The Görnnerts had been living on the second and third floors. They shared the house with a man named Angerer, who had the first floor. Both Görnnert and Angerer had been apprehended and were now in jail. Major Miller had found a suspiciously large number of tapestries and other art objects on the premises. He thought they might be loot.
The house was an unpretentious villa hidden among pine trees high up in the hills above the town. The place was under guard. On the ground floor we examined the contents of a small store-room. There were several cases bearing Angerer’s name and three or four large crates containing Italian furniture. A similar store-room on the second floor contained a dozen tapestries, a pile of Oriental rugs, a large collection of church vestments and nearly a hundred rare textiles mounted on cardboard. I noticed that the tapestries, vestments and textiles were individually tagged and that the markings were in French.