Trophies of War Read online

  Clark held his breath as they passed through the village, waiting for shouts or a thrown rock, but the Germans stayed where they were and watched the car drive by. The debris in the road made it slow going—normally they drove as fast as they could to avoid trouble with the DPs. DeLuca navigated the bomb craters and piles of rubble in the road, driving slowly and carefully. They did not want to break down here.

  On the other side of the village, Clark could feel their stares behind him. He didn’t want to look back, but he couldn’t help himself. The human ants had gone back to picking through the pile, sorting the rubble and stacking the wreckage. A small girl stood on the edge of a crater, shaking her fist at them.

  “Damn,” DeLuca sighed as they reached the open road. “That could have been bad.”

  The Germans had long since taken down all of their road signs, so with his worn Army map and an old Baedeker guidebook from before the war, Clark estimated their position as 20 kilometers outside the town of Buxheim. Buxheim was another dot on his map, an ERR site from Valland’s list. It wasn’t like Neuschwanstein, a cache of hundreds or thousands of French artworks—Buxheim was the ERR’s restoration studio. Works that had been damaged in transit from France or that needed a thorough cleaning were routed there, as if they were the normal workings of the art trade, rather than a criminal enterprise looting a nation.

  It was a slight detour east, between Nuremberg and Munich, but Clark couldn’t resist. Valland’s list had been in the back of his mind since he left Paris and now was his first chance to investigate an ERR site first-hand.

  Buxheim was a small Bavarian town surrounded by farmland with no industrial area or railhead, and so it was untouched by Allied bombing. On the road into the town, they passed several US Army trucks headed in the other direction, packed with tired-looking German soldiers. Most wore the gray uniform of the Wehrmacht. A few wore Luftwaffe blue. One POW leaned out of a truck to spit on the Mercedes, probably mistaking it for a Wehermacht general’s car. A line of DPs walked down the same road headed north, flying the Dutch flag. No doubt they were forced laborers, beginning the grueling trek home on foot.

  Clark steeled himself for the inevitable confrontations with angry German civilians. Instead, there were no crowds on the streets, just white sheets and pillowcases fluttering from the windows of every house and building.

  A German policeman stood on a corner like it was a normal day.

  “Slow down,” Clark said to DeLuca. He waved the policeman over.

  The man clicked his heels and stood at attention.

  “Do you speak English?” Clark asked him.

  “A little,” the policeman replied.

  “We’re looking for the monastery… the abbey?”

  Pointing to the next intersection the man replied, “Kirchenberg … left … around the curve … you will find it.”

  “Danke,” Clark replied with a nod. DeLuca drove on.

  At the end of Kirchenberg Street, a white church with an orange tile roof stood in front of low buildings that were arranged in a fort-like formation. An American MP stood guard at the arched brown door.

  DeLuca pulled over and Clark got out.

  “Afternoon, corporal,” he said.

  “Sir,” the MP replied, not moving a muscle.

  “May I ask why you are guarding a monastery?”

  “French and Dutch DPs were raiding the place, looking for food. It turned into a riot, so we’re here to keep order.”

  “Have you been through these buildings? Seen any artworks anywhere?”

  “Yes, sir,” the MP replied. “The chapel is full of tapestries and rugs piled up everywhere. Rooms and rooms of old furniture … ”

  “Yes,” Clark interrupted. “What about paintings?”

  The MP nodded. “That little building with the steep roof? Bunch of paintings in there.”

  Clark thanked the man. He and DeLuca approached the white building with orange shutters. Clark opened the door and stepped inside.

  It was a large, open room with dark rafters overhead and several tables lined up in rows. For a moment, Clark felt transformed to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. It looked like the conservator’s room in his own museum. On the tables were lights, paints, cameras, brushes, bottles of milk—used to reline canvases—like any other museum. On the tables and stacked up next to them were over a hundred paintings.

  “Jesus,” Clark exclaimed, looking at a painting on one of the tables. “That’s a Rembrandt.”

  DeLuca looked over his shoulder. The painting was one of the Dutch master’s later self-portraits. All was in shadow except for the artist’s face, where rich oranges gave the impression of the glow of firelight.

  “I think I’ve seen that in one of my art history books,” he said.

  “I’ll bet you have,” Clark replied. He paused and looked around at the other paintings. “I’ve been in many museums that would consider themselves lucky to have a collection like this. And here it is scattered around this room, just left behind.”

  He flipped over some papers next to the Rembrandt and saw “Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg” stamped on them. This was the first verification of Valland’s information. The ERR had been here—this was stolen French art. Clark’s mind raced as he thought of what might await him at Neuschwanstein.

  He began to walk around the room at a fast pace, looking under each table.

  “Do you see any crates?” he asked DeLuca. “Anything marked with an H and a number or a G?”

  DeLuca looked around.

  “No,” he answered. “Everything is loose. No crates.”

  Clark began to flip through the framed paintings stacked up all over the room.

  “You looking for anything in particular?” DeLuca asked.

  “No,” Clark lied. “Just seeing what’s here.” What’s not here.

  Clark went out the door and found the MP.

  “Have you searched the rest of the monastery? Are there any other paintings? Any wooden crates?”

  “No, sir,” the MP answered. “Just what’s in that room. All we found besides that was bread and some broken furniture the DPs were using for firewood.”

  Clark shot DeLuca a stern look.

  “Paul, get in the car.”

  On the 200 kilometer drive from Buxheim to Hohenschwanau, Clark couldn’t contain his excitement.

  “This could be the big find,” he told DeLuca as the Mercedes roared down the autobahn.

  “Bigger than Merkers?” DeLuca asked with an incredulous look.

  “Yes,” Clark replied. “Not bigger in numbers, but this could be the most important. According to Valland, much of the looted French art is in Neuschwanstein Castle—you’ll recognize it when you see it. What we found in Merkers was just German museums protecting their collections. This could be thousands of objects that were stolen from private French collectors, all waiting for us in one place. I just hope the Seventh Army has gotten that far. I guess I should have asked the MP back at the monastery.”

  Clark thought back to the bags of gold teeth and the ‘Melmer’ suitcases in Room Number 8 at Merkers.

  Am I going to recover French art only to find that the owners are all dead?

  They were now far enough into remote Bavaria that bomb damage was becoming less frequent, so DeLuca took advantage of the clear roads and pushed the Mercedes faster. The big car flew on the flat, straight pavement.

  In the late afternoon, Clark checked his maps and watch.

  “Great driving, Paul,” he said. “We should be there well before dark.”

  “Assuming we don’t get shot first,” DeLuca replied with a nervous look. They hadn’t seen any US Army personnel or vehicles in a long time.

  “Yes, well … let’s try not to think about that.”

  Clark pushed his holster back on his belt so DeLuca couldn’t see him unbuttoning the flap covering his M1911 pistol. A pistol that he hadn’t fired since qualifying with it three years ago.

  “Look,” he
said, pointing ahead. The snow-covered peaks of the Alps were now in view on the horizon. “We’re getting close.”

  The Bavarian countryside, dotted with farmhouses and churches, was open green fields with tree lines that snaked along streams. As they got closer to the Alpine foothills that marked the transition from the flat farmland to the towering Alps, the roads got narrower and DeLuca had to slow down.

  “OK… the road forks up ahead. Right goes to Füssen, left goes to Hohenschwangau. Go left,” Clark directed, consulting his red-covered 1936 Baedeker guide.

  “Alright,” DeLuca replied. “Then what?”

  Clark smiled. “You’ll know when you see it.”

  They soon came upon the fork and made the turn onto another signless road. A few minutes later, Clark sat up in his seat.

  “Ha!” he exclaimed. “There it is!”

  DeLuca squinted into the distance. “Where?”

  “At about 10 o’clock,” Clark said, pointing. “See that one hill in front of the big rocky peak?”

  DeLuca squinted some more.

  “I think so. Is there a white building on top?”

  “Not just a white building,” Clark said, laughing. “It’s a fairy-tale castle! Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, the Princess and the Pea… they all live there!”

  The road ended at a resort with thick woods on one side and a bright blue Alpine lake on the other. Now they could see their destination poking out from above the beech and fir trees: a tall, limestone castle with towers, gables and turrets—Schloss Neuschwanstein. Clark pointed at a narrow road in the trees and they began the slow, winding trip to the top. Soon they could no longer see the castle as the road was swallowed up by dense forest.

  At the top of the steep hill, a sweeping curve in the road brought them to the long northern side of Neuschwanstein. Built to look like it was coming straight out of the rock, the massive stone castle towered overhead.

  DeLuca stopped the car and looked up. “Wow.”

  With the top down on the Mercedes, they could crane their necks to see the top of the massive square guard tower with its turret on top. A five story stone wall connected it to an even taller building which was flanked by a round stair tower. Narrow windows dotted the walls.

  “I can definitely see Rapunzel tossing her hair out of that tower,” DeLuca remarked.

  Clark took a moment to be a tourist. He had his guidebook open to the page on Neuschwanstein.

  “That’s the Knights’ House straight ahead,” he said.

  “Knights … wow,” DeLuca replied. “What knights lived there?”

  “None!” Clark answered. “This castle isn’t some medieval relic—its only about seventy years old! Mad King Ludwig built it in the 1870s and 80s, mostly because he was so infatuated with Wagner that he wanted to live in his own opera. He even had a set designer draft it for him—not an architect.”

  DeLuca shook his head.

  “My Pop would love this place, look at all those stones.”

  “They’re just for show … the castle is really made of steel and brick. The stone is only the skin.”

  “Still, that’s a lot of limestone, and it all had to be cut and put in place just so.”

  Clark pointed to the eastern end.

  “Keep going,” he said. “There should be a bend just past that tower on the corner. The entrance will be around the other side.”

  DeLuca eased the big car forward. The road, which had been little more than a strip of pavement cut through the forest, was now part of the castle structure itself, formed of massive gray stones jutting out of the rock. Making a hairpin turn to the right, the road curled around a smaller tower of brown sandstone. DeLuca looked over the edge on his left where there was nothing but a sheer drop down a cliff face. The stones came at least three feet up the side. Still, he steered the Mercedes toward the middle of the road.

  Around the curve, they came to the eastern end of the castle where the gatehouse, made of bright red brick and sandstone, stood in stark contrast to the all-white building that loomed behind it. Two crenellated sandstone towers stood on either end. The entrance, an arched wooden door that Clark guessed was ten feet tall, looked like something that might be lowered over a moat. Looking closer, Clark could see the entrance was just more make-believe—it had two lower sections that were hinged like any other door. DeLuca switched off the car’s engine.

  A coat of arms with two lions holding a shield was carved into the sandstone over the door. Clark looked at the crow-stepped gable up above and at the tops of the two towers.

  “Well,” he said with a trace of nervousness. “No archers up there.”

  “Yeah, Nazis with Schmeissers is more like it,” DeLuca grumbled.

  With no noise but the wind in the trees and the ticking of the cooling Mercedes engine, Clark listened for any sounds coming from beyond the gatehouse. Hearing nothing, he unlatched the car door and started to get out when he froze.

  There were voices on the other side of the wooden door.

  “Shit,” DeLuca whispered. “There could be a thousand Waffen-SS in there … ” His hands shook as he reached to restart the Mercedes.

  Clark held up a hand. Wait. He listened to the muffled voices, trying to make out if they were speaking German. Whoever they were and whatever they were saying, it didn’t sound like an alarm had been sounded or that there were orders being given. It sounded like conversation.

  Then he heard laughter and a voice yell, “Knock it off, fellas! No more playing around.”

  They were Americans.

  Clark and DeLuca got out of the car and approached the entrance of the gatehouse. Clark expected some ornate door knocker or a bell rope but there was none so he rapped his knuckles on the door like he was the Fuller Brush man.

  The voices on the other side stopped and the wooden door creaked open. An Army captain with a week’s growth of beard stood in the opening. Clark noticed that he had the stepped yellow letter ‘A’ insignia on his sleeve: Seventh Army.

  Clark thought for a moment before he spoke, hoping to reverse his string of bad luck in dealing with Army bureaucracy. What was it that Paul said about how to deal with these guys?

  “Uh … Hi, Captain … ” Clark looked at the name patch on the man’s field jacket. “ … Piper. I’m Lieutenant James Clark and this is Private Paul DeLuca.”

  Nothing.

  “We’re from the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives section of the … uh … Operations Branch of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force.”

  The captain folded his arms and leaned against the doorway, smirking.

  “OK, Lieutenant,” Piper replied. “Go on.”

  “We need to … I mean, we would like to examine this site. It’s suspected of being a repository for cultural objects stolen by the Nazis.”

  The captain nodded, “I know it is.”

  “Oh, great,” Clark replied, relieved. He moved to come inside, but the captain didn’t budge. He just scratched his beard and looked at Clark.

  “My orders say I’m not to let anyone through this door,” Piper replied at last.

  Clark felt his temper flare, but he paused again before speaking.

  “Yes, I understand,” he said slowly. “But I’m the reason you have those orders. This castle is on a list of suspected locations that I sent up to SHAEF headquarters. And now I’m here to examine it, report on what I find and do what needs to be done to secure the site and protect whatever might be here.”

  The two men stared at each other for a long moment. The captain looked from Clark to DeLuca and back.

  “Alright,” he said with a shrug, pushing the door open wider. “Come on in. Welcome to Neuschwanstein Castle.”

  The surreal feeling of being in a fairy-tale only increased as they passed through the gatehouse. They were now in the lower courtyard, with the foundation of the enormous square guard tower to their right and a view of trees and craggy mountains to their left. In front of them was the base of the
upper courtyard—a foundation for a chapel and keep that were never built. Several soldiers were up there, taking pictures of each other and laughing.

  Piper directed them to the left where a stone staircase went to the upper courtyard.

  “No one has been inside,” he told Clark as the three of them ascended the stairs. “It’s exactly as we found it. And they are exactly as we found them.”

  As they stepped up to the upper courtyard, Clark saw two men and a woman, German civilians, standing by yet another stone staircase.

  “Who are they?” Clark asked.

  “Castle staff,” Piper answered. “One of the men speaks decent English and was pretty cooperative. I gathered that they’ve been working here since before the Nazis took over. Big tourist attraction, you know. Turns out you were right about this place. They say the SS, Wehrmacht and Nazis have been swarming all over the place for a couple years bring paintings, furniture, tapestries, coin collections—you name it—to store here.”

  Clark felt his pulse quicken.

  “Did they say where these things came from? France?” he asked.

  “No, didn’t ask,” Piper replied. “Why don’t you see for yourself?”

  He produced a large ring with ornate iron keys.

  Clark opened his guidebook again and looked up at the three buildings surrounding the courtyard. Directly ahead was a six-story building with a steep gable and pinnacles. Two frescoes, one of St. George and the dragon and another of the Virgin Mary, were painted on the front. On the right was the Knight’s House that Clark and DeLuca had seen from down below, to the left was the three-story Kemenate—the Ladies House.

  “Well, let’s look inside all of them,” he said. “Might as well start here with the Kemenate.”

  Piper found the key that opened the door, a miniature version of the gatehouse entrance. Clark felt his breath catch in his throat as Piper turned the key. The castle looked undamaged, but had Hitler’s Nero Decree been carried out on the objects inside?