Trophies of War Read online

  Berwin stayed out of their way for the most part, showing up only to mark on his clipboard the contents and identification number of each truck as the convoy got ready to head out of the Kaiseroda complex. Clark managed to get every one of the loose paintings out of the mine and onto the trucks. Now all he had to do was remove a thousand crates and piles of loose books and museum artifacts from the underground vault. Into trucks that didn’t exist.

  Clark watched DeLuca make the final check on the last truck. The bags of gold were secured and shouldn’t shift in transit, putting a hole one of the canvases. They hoped.

  Jumping down from the ten-ton M54’s tailgate, DeLuca pointed to a jeep parked on the far end of the gravel lot. Clark saw several men huddled around a radio on the hood, with a dozen more gathering. He looked at DeLuca and raised his eyebrows. They walked over to see what was going on.

  They caught the end of a BBC broadcast signing off. The men standing around the radio had looks of shock on their faces.

  “What is it?” Clark asked. “What’s happened?”

  Colonel Berwin was one of the crowd. The other enlisted men and officers looked to him to answer. He swallowed hard and spoke, his eyes never leaving the radio.

  “He’s dead. President Roosevelt is dead.”

  By two in the morning, the happy mood brought on by the Merkers discovery was gone. As word of FDR’s death spread, the American soldiers soon had the same somber appearance of their German captives. They were silent as they loaded the POWs into two trucks and started to form up ranks behind the convoy. Machine gun platoons and anti-aircraft units jumped into their own M35 Deuce-and-a-halfs and readied themselves for the trip to Frankfurt. The sound of aircraft engines droned up above in the darkness as the combat air patrol prepared to escort the Nazi’s gold.

  Clark watched the convoy begin to move, feeling like the real treasure was still underground.

  At least we got those loose paintings out of there, he reminded himself. He cringed as a wheel of one of the M54s dipped into a pothole. I hope they make it in one piece.

  When the last of the convoy left the Kaiseroda complex, Clark rubbed his eyes and turned to find a place to sleep. DeLuca was sitting on the steps of the mine office building, slumped against the brick wall. He yawned and Clark could see that his normal upbeat demeanor was gone, whether from exhaustion or from the news of the President’s death, he didn’t know.

  Clark heard the rumbling of trucks behind him. He spun around to see a line of M54s pulling into the yard.

  What the hell … ? Clark checked his watch. They haven’t been gone five minutes. That’s not even enough time to turn the convoy around.

  As they drove past him, he could see that their canvas cargo covers were rolled back. The trucks were empty, except for the last two which carried more POWs.

  Once again, Colonel Berwin came out of nowhere and startled Clark.

  “Orders came in three hours ago. General Eisenhower wants the rest evacuated right away,” he said. “There should be enough room in Frankfurt for the first shipment and what’s left down there. The General wants this mine emptied.”

  He pointed to the line of trucks and the POWs who were jumping down to the ground.

  “Those trucks are yours, Lieutenant, and so are the POWs. I have the forms here to requisition the necessary materials to pack and ship the items.” Clark reached for the papers, but Berwin snatched them back. He handed them to DeLuca instead. “You have a job to do. I suggest you get to it.”

  Twelve hours later, twenty-six trucks were loaded with four hundred tons of art and artifacts. Neither Clark nor DeLuca had slept in over a day. Through force of will and two urns of army coffee, they had emptied Room Number 9.

  Two empty trucks were at the back of the convoy, both spares in case one of the fully loaded M54s broke down. Clark and DeLuca each picked one and dropped their packs inside the cargo area and Clark gave the signal to move out. As he climbed over the gate and spread out his bedroll, he heard engines approaching.

  From the men that had been guarding the mine, two machine gun platoons and ten anti-aircraft units joined the convoy. Colonel Berwin and his clipboard checked that they were ready and returned the salute of a major leading the soldiers.

  Clark caught Berwin’s eye. “Thank you!” he shouted over the rumbling engines.

  Berwin nodded. “You can thank General Eisenhower, Lieutenant.” he replied, and left.

  Clark settled into his bedroll and hoped he could sleep amid the noise and jostling of the convoy. As his exhaustion overwhelmed him, he heard the drone of aircraft overhead. Just like the gold convoy, they had an air patrol to escort them. Clark took it as a sign from Eisenhower. It was a message that the contents of this convoy were just as valuable as all the Reichsbank’s gold, because they weren’t just transporting money—they were carrying civilization itself.

  9

  Frankfurt, Germany

  April, 1945

  One week later, Clark relaxed on a bench outside the Frankfurt Collecting Point, as they were now calling it. It was shaping up to be the first warm day of spring and he leaned back to feel the sun on his face.

  In a bit of irony that Clark enjoyed, the Army chose the Reichsbank’s former location in Frankfurt as the processing site for the gold, art and artifacts removed from the Merkers mine. The past few days were a blur of reports, photographs and triage—many of the uncovered paintings found in Room Number 9 were covered in salt and a few were damaged in transit from Merkers. They needed real restoration professionals working on them to fix the damage, but that would have to wait.

  For now, Clark had found conservators from the Städel Museum to work for him, but the Army had made him wait for them to do background checks to be sure they weren’t Nazis. In the meantime, he and DeLuca were using whisk brooms to try to clean off the salt.

  While we check to make sure that the four elderly men we found hiding in the museum basement aren’t some secret SS force, salt is eating away at the shellac and oil on those canvases, Clark grumbled to himself.

  He unfolded the copy of Stars and Stripes he had been carrying in his back pocket and flipped through the pages. The Soviets were advancing on Berlin and B-29s were bombing Tokyo. The US Seventh Army had crossed the Iller River into Kempten and were on the road to Munich.

  Kempten … Clark thought. I know that … where do I know it from?

  He took his ever-present notebook out of a pocket in his field jacket. Several pieces of paper were folded up in the back and he took them out—his notes on Rose Valland’s reports. He looked at the list of ERR repositories in Germany, but Kempten wasn’t on the list.

  I know that Kempten has something to do with Valland, he thought, searching his memory. But what?

  From another pocket, he produced a tattered map of Germany and spread it out on his lap. He found Bavaria in the south and the Iller River. He followed the river north with his finger until it reached Kempten.

  OK, there’s Kempten. What is it that I’m not remembering?

  He looked around Kempten in larger and larger circles, waiting for something to jog his memory. Durach, Immenstadt, Marktoberdof. To the southeast was the Lech River. Near the river was Schwangau.

  Schwangau … Schwangau, Clark repeated to himself. Then it came to him. That’s it … that’s what it was … Hohenschwangau!

  On his map, he had marked with a dot each of the ERR repositories from Valland’s notes. Right there, near the village of Hohenschwangau, was a dot. He looked again at Valland’s list. There it was: “Hohenschwangau, Schloss Neuschwanstein.”

  That area has to be in our control now, if the Seventh Army has driven through to Munich. Clark felt his excitement growing. Finally, a cache of looted art from France could be within my reach.

  Thanks to a telegram he had received the day before, his hunt for ERR repositories had taken on new importance. Robert Atkins, another MFAA man still at Shrivenham, had come across an intelligence report from an Army Cor
ps of Engineers unit in Remagen. After their capture of the Ludendorff Bridge on the Rhine, they had discovered that there was more to the failed German attempt to blow up the bridge than just military tactics. In a German command post, they found a copy of an order from Hitler himself—a Führerbefehl issued on March 19th. The order stated that all military equipment, supplies and communications facilities were to be destroyed lest they fall into Allied hands. Civilian leaders were to destroy all industrial and supply installations as well as any other objects of value.

  They were calling it the Nero Decree. Hitler knew he was losing and wanted all of Germany to go down in flames with him. Thanks to that order, Clark wasn’t just on a mission to recover looted artworks before the Nazis could use them to finance their resurgence, he was now in a race to prevent them from being lost forever.

  He did a quick estimate with the map’s bar scale and his finger—Hohenschwangau was about 400 kilometers from Frankfurt. Clark checked his wristwatch. 0800. If they left right now and the roads were clear, there was a chance they could make it by nightfall.

  Clark shoved all the papers into his pocket and ran inside the Reichsbank building.

  “Paul!”

  “The problem is, we need gas,” DeLuca said. “The Mercedes is fast as hell—getting there by tonight is not the problem if we have gas. Then of course we have to get back.”

  “We’re still technically attached to the Third Army,” Clark reminded him. “Why don’t we drive up to Patton’s HQ in Hersfeld and get some gas there?”

  DeLuca gave him a skeptical look.

  “Patton?” he asked. “Mister ‘My men can eat their belts, but my tanks gotta have gas’? That’s who you want to ask?”

  “Well, not him personally … ” Clark replied. “Fine. What’s your idea?”

  DeLuca thought for a moment.

  “We haven’t driven the car since before we went to Merkers, so it should still have a full tank thanks to the Civil Affairs guys. It does have a monster gas tank, about 200 liters… how far away is this place?”

  “About 400 kilometers,” Clark answered.

  “OK.” DeLuca pulled out paper and pencil and did some quick calculations. “Alright, we should be able to get there with what we’ve got. It goes 100 kilometers for about every 30 liters. Assuming we don’t hit any major detours, we can get there and at least part of the way back. But then we’re hoping to run into someone who will top us off. No Esso stations where we’re going.”

  “Paul,” Clark replied. “If we find what I think we’re going to find, we’re not coming back. Everyone will be coming to us.”

  Especially if crate G46 is there, he didn’t add. And assuming it’s not all in ashes.

  The Mercedez-Benz 770k Cabriolet was a ridiculous car for Clark and DeLuca to be driving around a war zone. It was twenty feet long, had enormous swooping fenders and gleaming chrome everywhere. The interior was upholstered in leather and had enough seats for nine people. Wherever they went, people assumed there was someone important inside. This was specially ironic considering the Monuments Men were so low on the totem pole that they had to beg for gas just to drive the car.

  One day, when they were hitching a ride with the Third Army on a Deuce-and-a-half truck, DeLuca had spotted something in a bombed-out building on the road to Frankfurt. After getting the driver to stop, he had hopped out of the truck and disappeared into the rubble, Clark and a few confused infantrymen watching him go. Several minutes later, the soldiers were cheering as DeLuca sped out in the black car from behind a collapsed house, inline eight-cylinder engine roaring and fender-mounted swastika flags flying. Everyone had jumped down to the ground to get their pictures taken with the car, but DeLuca never let them get into the driver’s seat. It was his trophy and no one was going to take it from him.

  The car was waiting for them in the Civil Affairs motor pool, thanks to a deal DeLuca made with a mechanic there. If the mechanic kept it filled with gas, he could drive it when DeLuca wasn’t around. Clark put the canvas top down and tossed his pack and typewriter case into the spacious back seat while DeLuca walked around, checking the car for any scratches or dents. Clark couldn’t help but smile.

  We’re about to drive through a war zone, Clark observed, and he’s acting like we’re going out cruising the strip on a Saturday night.

  They got in and DeLuca started the engine and pulled out of the lot. With the top down, the warm sun on their faces and the wind in their hair, they couldn’t help but laugh as the car picked up speed. As the acceleration pushed Clark into his seat, he forgot for a moment where he was and why he was there and just enjoyed the drive out of Frankfurt. They cruised in silence for the first hour out of the city, slowing down every now and then to go around bomb craters in the deserted road.

  Clark took out the photographs Lilly had sent him and DeLuca noticed him looking at them.

  “New pictures of your girls?” he asked.

  Clark didn’t answer.

  “You never talk about them,” DeLuca continued. “Must be hard to be so far away for so long.”

  Clark still didn’t answer and DeLuca didn’t press the issue. The stretch of road they were now on was untouched by bombs or artillery. DeLuca picked up speed.

  “Yes,” Clark said at last over the wind. “It is hard.”

  DeLuca glanced at him, as if waiting to see whether he was answering or closing the subject.

  “It’s been almost four years now,” Clark went on. “The only way I can make it work is if I try to forget that I have a wife and children. I almost wish Lilly wouldn’t write. I mean, I’m happy to hear what they’re all doing and to get pictures like these when she does write, but it’s like an intrusion into this carefully constructed world I’ve created for myself here. If all I think about is my work, I don’t have time to think about them. I don’t have time to miss them or worry.”

  DeLuca nodded, eyes on the road.

  “I’m sure it sounds nuts,” Clark continued. “Considering how much everyone else here is desperate for word from home, but that’s how I make it work for me. When this is all over and I get home, I’ll do what I can to make up for lost time, but until then I just need to get the job done.”

  He held up the photograph of his youngest daughter.

  “Meg is four now. She was a baby when I left. I don’t think she’ll know who I am when I get home.”

  DeLuca shrugged. “Maybe. But then you’ll be home and she will know that you are her Dad. Soon she won’t ever remember you being gone.”

  Clark took a long look at the picture and then put them all away.

  “Until then, I try not to think about it.”

  “I understand,” DeLuca replied. “Well, I think I do, anyway. I don’t even have a girl at home to write to, never mind a wife and four kids, but I can imagine what it’s like.”

  “You seem to get a lot of letters from home, for not having a girl to write to.”

  DeLuca chuckled.

  “It’s my mom,” he said. “She writes about what’s happening in the neighborhood and with the other guys I know who are in the service. Does she think I care who’s working in the butcher’s shop now or what happened to the mailman’s son? I don’t think she knows what else to say.”

  “She probably doesn’t,” Clark agreed.

  “Considering what a shitty soldier I made at Fort Benning, I think my parents are just happy I found something to do other than load boxes into trucks. Or get shot at.”

  “Do they understand what you’re doing?” Clark asked.

  “I think so,” DeLuca answered. “I told them I was in the field protecting art and monuments, they thought it sounded important. My dad’s an off-the-boat Italian stonemason, like four or five generations before him, so he’s just happy I’m not in Italy fighting his cousin’s kids or something.”

  Clark nodded.

  “Stonemason,” he said. “That’s interesting. A stonemason’s son becomes a sculptor in stone.”

  �
��Yeah,” DeLuca replied. “If he was a truck driver or a carpenter, maybe he would think studying art was unmanly, but he sees it as continuing in the family tradition. Which is why … oh, shit … here we go. DPs.”

  DeLuca eased up on the accelerator and steered the car to the center of the road. Clark squinted to see what was up ahead. There was a crossroads with a small village on all four corners. What was left of a village, that is. Not one building was standing, not even the skeleton of a building, a sight so familiar to them now. Nothing remained but piles of bricks and wreckage on either side of the road and in the road itself. The village had been flattened by Allied bombs.

  What could possibly have been in this out-of-the-way village that they had to bomb it? Clark wondered.

  What had gotten DeLuca’s attention was the people swarming over the piles of rubble. They were like ants, some passing buckets of bricks and plaster, some carrying a single stone down from the pile. In the cleared areas on the ground, they were sorting the pieces—bricks here, wood there, metal over there.

  As the sound of the Mercedes’ big engine reached the crossroads, the people stopped what they were doing and watched the car approach. Clark prepared himself for the angry reaction that was so common to German DPs when they came into contact with Allied soldiers. Whether it was confusion at the sight of a German staff car or shell-shock, Clark didn’t know, but they were silent.

  The crowd was mostly women and children too young to be fighting with Hitler Youth units. The children collected wood and put it into small wagons, bundling smaller pieces with what rope or fabric they could find, no doubt for firewood. Three dead dogs were lined up by the edge of the road and a fine gray dust covered everything and everyone.

  One lamppost remained intact, an ornate iron gas-lamp on a street corner. Somehow, the glass globe was unbroken. From it hung an old man with a white beard and a noose around his neck. A sign was pinned to his dirty jacket that read ‘Ich bin ein Feigling’: I am a coward.