Trophies of War Page 6

  Clark ran his finger along the dashboard as DeLuca started the engine and popped the jeep into gear. Every surface of the vehicle was covered in a fine layer of salt—DeLuca noticed it too and wiped the edge of the steering wheel clean with his sleeve. They drove down the center of the tunnel, following the string of lights.

  When they came to the end, the tunnel was blocked by a massive brick wall that stretched the entire height and width of the tunnel. In the center of the wall was a steel door like something from a bank vault. It had enormous bolts around the edge and a heavy spindle wheel in the center. Clark guessed that it would take hours of work with heavy equipment to get through it. So, the engineers had simply blasted through the brick next to the impenetrable door, and now there was a hole big enough to crawl through. Clark climbed easily through the three foot thick masonry wall, but DeLuca had to squeeze, wriggling through the hole.

  They were standing in a large, rectangular room carved out of the earth. Clark guessed it was the size of a football field with a ten- or twelve-foot ceiling, all hewn from salt. Tram railway tracks ran down the middle to the back of the room and more lightbulbs were strung from the ceiling. This was the mine’s Room Number 8.

  They were not alone. In a smaller version of what was going on up above, there were Civil Affairs officers with clipboards, Signal Corps photographers and reporters milling about, all of them looking down.

  At their feet, on either side of the tram railway, were knee-high stacks of cloth bags. Neatly arranged in rows, thousands of bags stretched to the back of the room.

  They were full of gold.

  Several days before, MPs guarding the road in the village of Merkers stopped two women walking toward a restricted area. The women were French, and in the Army's vernacular they were ‘Displaced Persons.’ In the case of the two women, they were forced laborers in the Kaiseroda mine. When the MPs asked about about the mine, one of the women had said, “That’s where the Germans keep their gold.”

  Several weeks earlier, Allied bombing raids on Berlin made Third Reich central bank officials afraid for their gold and monetary reserves. Walter Funk, Reichsbank President, packed what was left of the Nazi state’s financial assets and sent it on a special train to Merkers and the Kaiseroda mine two hundred miles southwest of Berlin. Now that gold, along with countless banknotes stacked against the walls in bales, was in American hands.

  There had been rumors that there were caches of Nazi gold to be found all over Germany, but Clark had dismissed them as a wartime version of a pirate story. Now, as he watched gold bars being counted and inventoried, he wondered what other rumors might be true.

  “How many of those bars do you think we could stuff in our pockets?” DeLuca said in a stage whisper. His eyes gleamed at the sight of the gold.

  Apart from a few dour officers from the Financial Affairs section, the men in this underground vault were acting like children who had indeed found Captain Kidd’s buried treasure. A nearby Civil Affairs major was having his picture taken with a helmet full of gold coins. A reporter rearranged a bag for his photographer so the bullion spilled out onto the floor.

  But as Clark and DeLuca walked further into the room, they saw that the Reichsbank was not alone in using the mine for safekeeping.

  Where the bags of gold and currency ended, rows of boxes, trunks and suitcases began. Clark saw that many of them had the cryptic name “Melmer” written on them. He knelt down in front of a cream-colored suitcase and popped the two latches. Raising the lid, he felt a sickening knot in his stomach when he saw what was inside.

  Like the bags from the Reichsbank’s, the suitcase was full of gold and silver, but it wasn’t bullion.

  Eyeglasses, wristwatches, cigarette cases, plates, silverware, rings, necklaces, wedding bands, earrings—all hammered flat—filled the suitcase to overflowing. Some of the flattened pieces began to slide out of the suitcase and onto the floor. One of them was once a silver baby rattle. Clark quickly put everything back in and shut the lid, his heart pounding and his pulse thrumming in his ears. This had to be the property of concentration camp victims. It was SS loot down here with the gold and currency.

  “Oh God,” DeLuca said. Clark saw that he had gone pale and was pointing to a half-opened cloth bag like the ones holding Reichsbank gold. Clark craned his neck to peer into it.

  The bag was full of teeth—gold- and silver-filled teeth.

  There were ten more just like it stacked neatly nearby. Clark looked at them and the crates and suitcases around him, at least two hundred of them in all. Stolen art was one thing, but this was quite another. Clark’s view on owning great works of art was they were timeless and therefore we were merely caretakers, keeping them safe. They would then be passed to another generation who would watch over them until they too handed them off. When he found hidden works of art, he worked to care for them and protect them. Finding their rightful owners or museums was important, but his job was to secure them and move on. He saw them as impersonal objects. Important and immortal objects, but objects nonetheless.

  Seeing these personal effects was jarring to him. Each one had a story. There was a person behind them, a life. He thought of the flattened baby rattle and he thought of his own daughters three thousand miles away.

  “Let’s get the hell out of there,” he said to DeLuca, jumping to his feet. He turned and walked toward the far end of the room.

  DuLuca, still looking ashen, followed.

  “Are all these boxes and suitcases full of this stuff?” he asked. “Jesus, how many people … ?”

  Clark didn’t answer. “Come on, we have a job to do. It’s this way,” he said.

  Another tunnel led away from Room Number 8 and deeper into the mine. The sounds of men’s voices and snapping flashbulbs receded into the distance and Clark and DeLuca were on their own.

  They soon found themselves in another massive room. Just like Room Number 8, it had a string of lightbulbs across the low ceiling, but there was not a single other person inside. No one taking an inventory, no one taking photographs, no reporters.

  What Room Number 9 did have was what looked like the contents of several museums. Clark scanned the room and saw wooden crate piled upon wooden crate, teetering stacks of print boxes, piles of rolled textiles and sculptures in every state of packaging. On a nearby crate, he read “Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte”—the Berlin Prehistory Museum. Another was from the Kaiser-Friedrich art museum.

  All mixed together, Clark noted. It will take months to make sense of all this.

  “Jim, look over here,” DeLuca said in a quiet voice. He had found rows of open wooden racks just inside the entrance. “There’s hundreds of them.”

  Inside the racks, standing upright like cheap pictures at a flea-market, were loose paintings with no packaging, not even so much as a paper wrapper. As DeLuca flipped through them, Clark noticed a Goya leaning up against a Rubens. Behind DeLuca was a Rembrandt and a Boticelli of the Virgin and Angels. The Florentine master’s minimal contrasts of color and light and dark were accentuated by the dim light of the chamber.

  “Good God,” Clark exclaimed. “Who knows how long these have been down here unprotected.”

  He wandered among the piles, reading the lettering on the crates, lifting blankets off marble sculptures and opening sagging cardboard boxes. He found several crates from the Berlin State Theater and Opera, full of costumes and props. Books by the thousands were stacked along the walls.

  In the back of his mind was Rose Valland’s list. He looked for crates marked with an H- or G- prefixed number. Especially one stamped G46 in red. While there were thousands of crates and boxes to sort through, it looked like all of them were from Berlin museums. Even though this was a major find, Clark was disappointed. The Merkers mine wasn’t on Valland’s list of ERR repositories, a copy of which he kept in his pocket and studied often. Plus, he wasn’t sure how accurate her list would be now, months after the French artworks had been removed from the Jeu de Paume
.

  Yet, he had hoped he would find an ERR cache. Maybe even Goering’s crate.

  While he had shared the story of Valland and the Jeu de Paume with DeLuca, he kept his thoughts on the G46 crate to himself. It was partly because he felt like it was his own personal mystery to solve but also because he didn’t want to get his hopes up that an unknown Manet might be inside.Or worse, what if the Nazis had been taken in by a fake? Would he look like a fool if he told DeLuca how badly he wanted to find G46 and it turned out to be nothing? Clark took a small notebook and a nub of a pencil out of his field jacket pocket and began to make some notes, turning his mind back to the task at hand.

  “Most of these crates look ready to go,” he said. “But we’re going to need packing materials for the loose paintings and some of these sculptures that aren’t well wrapped. Someone is going to have to scout a collecting point for us in Frankfurt that’s big enough to hold all of this and process it.”

  He looked up. DeLuca was nowhere to be seen. “Paul? Where’d you go?”

  “Over here!” DeLuca shouted from behind a pile of rolled tapestries.

  Clark found him staring up at a marble sculpture of Apollo with his lyre.

  “Look at this!” he said, beaming. He ran his hand over the stone folds of cloth falling from Apollo’s arm. “Not one tool mark anywhere … it’s perfect.”

  Clark took a moment to enjoy the sight of a student admiring the work of a master.

  “I’ve seen the pictures of your work in granite,” he said. “I’d say they look pretty flawless.”

  DeLuca gave a dismissive wave.

  “You can’t tell unless you’re looking up close. You’ve just seen photographs. Besides, I have power tools—grinders and polishing wheels, and I have chemicals for sealing the stone. This was made two thousand years ago! With chisels, files and a wooden mallet … incredible.”

  Clark looked the sculpture over. It had a blanket wrapped around the base, but was otherwise uncovered. He could see salt crystals sparkling on the surface.

  “Well, let’s keep it looking incredible for the next two thousand years,” he said, holding up his notebook. “I’ve made a rough estimate of the packaging materials we’re going to need for all the loose objects in here. I don’t know where we’re going to get it all, but we’ll need you to work your magic with the bureaucrats. I know they don’t want to listen to me, especially that martinet Berwin. He’ll probably tell me the stuff I want is being reserved to wrap trees in the Black Forest.”

  The sounds of footsteps echoed behind them, startling both men. It was Colonel Berwin.

  Oops, Clark cringed. From the look on Berwin’s face, he couldn’t tell if he had heard or if it was just his usual irritation with MFAA ‘interference.’

  Berwin’s mustache twitched as he looked around the chamber, glowering.

  “You need to get out of the way,” he commanded. “The generals are coming. Stand over there.” He pointed to a spot near crumbling papyri scrolls that were piled on the floor.

  “Generals?” Clark asked, confused. “We have work to do here. What do they….”

  He stopped himself as he heard more footsteps coming down the tunnel. Many more footsteps. He and DeLuca shared a questioning look as they moved over to the mound of scrolls.

  The footsteps grew closer until in walked Generals George Patton and Omar Bradley with Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower, followed by a gaggle of officers, photographers and newspapermen.

  Clark was stunned at the sight of the three men. He must have looked like he was frozen in place, his mouth agape and open notebook in his hands. Eisenhower, in his great coat and peaked cap, nodded as he went by, holding a lit cigarette in his hand. Bradley, four stars on his gleaming helmet, followed close behind.

  DeLuca elbowed Clark and gave him a can-you-believe-this smile.

  Patton looked like he had just come from personally fighting Germans in hand-to-hand combat. His riding breeches and boots were covered in dust and now, salt. As he passed, he looked Clark and DeLuca up and down, as if performing an inspection. The scowl on his face suggested they had failed.

  Berwin, his surly demeanor gone, was smiling as he led the generals over to the wooden racks where the loose paintings were stacked. Clark thought he saw the man bow a little as he invited Eisenhower to flip through the pictures.

  As much as Clark disliked much of the Army and especially detested taking orders from ignorant men or being thwarted by stupid ones, he had a soft spot for Eisenhower. When Ike wrote a letter to all commanders in 1943, imploring them to protect historical monuments and cultural objects, Clark felt like Eisenhower had sent the message on his behalf. His words about ‘our cultural inheritance’ and ‘the growth of the civilization which is ours’ were inspiring to Clark and he thought of them often. Other men watched the Why We Fight movies to remind themselves why they were so far from home. Clark looked at the art and monuments under his care and re-read Eisenhower’s letter. He also used the letter to remind several field commanders of Ike’s distinction between military necessity and military convenience where monuments were concerned. Sometimes it even worked.

  Patton was looking over Eisenhower’s shoulder as he flipped through the paintings. Clark could see Eisenhower shaking his head as he saw canvas after priceless canvas piled up like so many dime-store posters. A photographer snuck along the wall to get a picture of Ike looking through the rack.

  “Bah!” Patton exclaimed, turning away. “I’d say they look like they’re worth about two bucks apiece. They should be hanging up in a saloon. Let’s go back and run our fingers through that gold! I say we melt it down and make medals for every son-of-a-bitch in the Third Army!”

  Bradley chuckled. “George, if these were the old days when soldiers could keep their loot —you’d be the richest man in the world!”

  “You’re goddamn right, Brad!” Patton guffawed. He held a hand up to shield his eyes from the flashbulbs going off again and again. “Jesus Christ, will you fellas knock that off! Enough!”

  Eisenhower turned slowly where he was standing, taking in the innumerable objects in the underground room. Clark wanted to say something to him. To thank him or to tell him how important it was to preserve the civilization they were fighting for. Before he could figure out what to say, Eisenhower strode back into the tunnel, Patton and Bradley following close behind, with the rest of the group struggling to keep up. Berwin stayed behind.

  “We’re not wrapping trees,” he said with a sneer. “But we are evacuating that gold tonight. In case you haven’t heard, according to the Yalta agreements, we’re one hundred miles inside the Soviet occupation zone. If we don’t get this gold out of here, the Russians will get it. We’ll be needing all the trucks, men and material in the area. When we’re done, you can have what’s left.”

  He walked off into the tunnel.

  Clark slapped his notebook on his thigh and shook his head.

  “Shit,” DeLuca muttered.

  Four hours later, Colonel Berwin reappeared out of the darkness.

  Clark and DeLuca were documenting everything they could while they waited for an opening to perform their own evacuation. Every loose painting, every unpackaged archeological artifact and each marked crate would be recorded in the hopes that they could soon remove them. The more time they spent in the underground treasure chest, the more they found—stained glass from the Strasbourg Cathedral, the crown jewels of the Grand Duchy of Baden and a bust of Nefertiti. But still no crates from France.

  Neither Clark nor DeLuca noticed Berwin standing there. He cleared his throat and rustled the papers in his hands.

  “We’re … uh … going to need some of these paintings,” he said.

  Clark jumped.

  “Excuse me?” he replied. He couldn’t resist making Berwin sweat. “What could you possibly want with them?”

  DeLuca had a crate of Egyptian funerary pottery in his hands. He carefully placed it on the floor.

  “
A full load of gold is too heavy for the M54 trucks—they can’t be filled more than halfway,” Berwin answered. “If we mix in some of the stuff from this room, we can take full loads over to the collecting point in Frankfurt.”

  Clark resisted the urge to rub it in any further. There was work to be done.

  “OK,” he replied. “We’ll need something to wrap these unpacked paintings in. I saw a pile of coats in the mine offices up there. Start sending some men down with them and we’ll get these paintings ready to transport.”

  Berwin looked nonplussed at being given orders by a Lieutenant.

  “Private DeLuca,” Clark continued. “Let’s start with the ones in this first rack.”

  They worked all night, wrapping priceless works in German sheepskin coats and sending them through the tunnels of the salt mine, up to the surface. Trip after trip up the elevator, Clark and DeLuca supervised the loading of paintings in between bags of bullion bars and coins. The crates and suitcases marked ‘Melmer’ were in there too, but they avoided looking at them.

  Even with all the men at the mine, there weren’t enough to guard the facility and help load the gold. Shortly after nightfall, a column of one hundred German POWs came marching in, led by a single platoon. Clark was on the surface when they arrived. He watched the line snake by, two by two, and caught his first glimpse of a German soldier up close. To a man, they were unkempt, and weary looking, but they marched in step, arms swinging. They exuded both exhaustion and relief, letting themselves be led by such a small force as if they were happy to follow their captors, sure that whatever awaited them was preferable to what they came from.

  Clark thought of the flattened baby rattle in the suitcase and tried to summon hate for these men, but could only manage pity and disgust. He signaled to the platoon sergeant and peeled off a dozen POWs to help with the paintings.