The Monuments Men (11 page)

Shortly we will be fighting our way across the Continent of Europe in battles designed to preserve our civilization. Inevitably, in the path of our advance will be found historical monuments and cultural centers which symbolize to the world all that we are fighting to preserve.

It is the responsibility of every commander to protect and respect these symbols whenever possible.

In some circumstances the success of the military operation may be prejudiced in our reluctance to destroy these revered objects. Then, as at Cassino, where the enemy relied on our emotional attachments to shield his defense, the lives of our men are paramount. So, where military necessity dictates, commanders may order the required action even though it involves destruction to some honored site.

But there are many circumstances in which damage and destruction are not necessary and cannot be justified. In such cases, through the exercise of restraint and discipline, commanders will preserve centers and objects of historical and cultural significance. Civil Affairs Staffs at higher echelons will advise commanders of the locations of historical monuments of this type, both in advance of the frontlines and in occupied areas. This information, together with the necessary instruction, will be passed down through command channels to all echelons.

EISENHOWER

The following day, the MFAA forwarded to General Eisenhower’s headquarters at SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces) a list of protected monuments in France. Everyone, military and civilian, was on edge. The whole war hinged on one great leap into the unknown: Operation Overlord, the landing in France. After being briefed on the plans, Winston Churchill had grasped Eisenhower’s hand and told him, with tears in his eyes, “I am with you to the end, and if it fails we will go down together.”
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A defeat would mean at best another two years to regroup and replan, and at worst the fall of Britain. Nobody, least of all the field officers approving the “Off-Limits” lists in the upcoming battle zone, wanted to stand in the way of success. The MFAA list of Protected Monuments was rejected by field officers as too comprehensive and detrimental to battlefield maneuvers.

MFAA leaders had a decision to make: Would they bow to military pressure or stand for their mission and their beliefs? Instead of modifying the list, Woolley decided to explain it. Of the 210 protected buildings in Normandy, he told SHAEF, eighty-four were churches. Most of the others were Roman or medieval ruins, prehistoric stone circles, fountains, and similar structures that would do the army little good. In the whole of Normandy, he estimated, only thirty-five buildings that could be used for legitimate military purposes were being denied by MFAA restrictions. The army brass read the explanation, and the list was promptly approved. By June 1, the MFAA had reached its battle-ready number. Fifteen men would be serving on the continent, excluding Italy: eight Americans and seven British (another American and three British had arrived since Stout’s “group portrait” in March, assigned to the “country units” of France, Belgium, and Germany). Seven of the men would serve at SHAEF headquarters in a strictly organizational capacity. The other eight men were assigned to British and American armies and the Communications Zone. To emphasize the joint nature of the operation, they served across lines, with one American in the British Twenty-first Army Group and one British in U.S. First Army. As impossible as it seems, it was the duty of these eight officers to inspect and preserve every important monument the Allied forces encountered between the English Channel and Berlin.

SECTION

II

Northern Europe

Letter from James Rorimer

To his wife, Katherine

June 6, 1944

Dear Ones:

We are told that the invasion of Western Europe by overwhelming forces is underway. I read the morning paper and was delighted to know that Rome has been spared. Now I am thinking of the combat troops and the task which is theirs. We older men are anxious on the one hand to help deal the death blow to tyranny, and on the other we think of our families at home and the obligations which we have as husbands, fathers, sons, and members of the peace-time community.

My status has changed but little. I have no idea as to what the future holds in store. I do hope that I can be useful. I am convinced my low rank alone is making an assignment difficult. Knowledge of Europe and Europeans, ability to make and keep friends, a sense of
real
values, a successful career, a useful mind and body, connections—none of these including a will to be useful—what is called of service to humanity—seem to make things click. I expect to continue as a Monuments and Fine Arts officer—but there is no indication of what kind of work I’ll have.

Love,

Jim

CHAPTER 10

Winning Respect

Normandy, France

June–August 1944

T
he naval bombardment of Omaha Beach began at 5:37 a.m. on the morning of June 6, 1944. Near dawn, the aerial bombardment began. The first wave of Allied troops hit Omaha Beach at “H-Hour”: 6:30 a.m. It didn’t take them long to realize the naval and aerial bombardments hadn’t worked. Flying in a heavy fog and fearful of dropping short on their own troop carriers, the bombers had dropped their bombs too far inland, leaving the dug-in German coastal forces untouched. The eastern and westernmost American units on Omaha took heavy casualties before they could crawl halfway up the beach. The second wave, coming in thirty minutes later, found the survivors pinned down on the small sandbank that marked the high-tide line. They were soon pinned down too, their equipment jammed on the overcrowded beach, their wounded drowning in the incoming tide. After six hours of fighting and dying, the Americans held a perilously small strip of land. The tide was eating up their beachhead almost as quickly as they could secure it.

Still the troops came, wave after wave. With the natural conduits from the beach cut off by German crossfire, small groups began to scale the bluffs. Colonel George A. Taylor rallied survivors with the cry, “Two kinds of people are staying on this beach, the dead and those who are going to die. Now let’s get the hell out of here.”
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Forty-three thousand troops were ferried across the English Channel to “Bloody Omaha” that day; more than twenty-two hundred died there. They were mostly enlisted men and volunteers, trained and drilled for this battle but still bearing the marks of their lives as teachers, mechanics, laborers, and office workers. They died at Sword Beach, Gold Beach, Juno Beach, and Pointe du Hoc, too. They came in waves at Utah Beach, more than 23,000 men, rising out of the fog and surf, moving endlessly inland toward the German lines. The 101st and 82nd Airborne divisions had parachuted 13,000 men behind enemy lines, and if the soldiers coming ashore didn’t rendezvous with them by nightfall the paratroopers could be wiped out. And even if they met the airborne units, or what was left of them, these soldiers knew the battle was far from over, that the beachhead was precarious, and that a million German fighters lay hidden in the hedgerows, ready to bury them forever in the soil of France.

The Germans had miscalculated. They thought the Western Allies could never supply an army without a port, but the soldiers poured onto the beach at Utah carrying ammunition, weapons, and cans of gasoline. They came not just the first morning, but day after day, mostly infantry troops but also tankers, gunners, chaplains, ordnance officers, engineers, medics, reporters, typists, translators, and cooks. They landed from every manner of watercraft, but especially the LSTs (Landing Ship, Tanks). For miles there were “LSTs at every beach, their great jaws yawning open, disgorging tanks and trucks and jeeps and bulldozers and big guns and small guns and mountains of cases of rations and ammunition, thousands of jerry cans filled with gasoline, crates of radios and telephones, typewriters and forms, and all else that men at war require.”
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Overhead, the roar of Allied aircraft was continual—14,000 sorties were flown on D-Day alone, with almost as many on every succeeding clear day. The English Channel was so full of ships that for more than a month the one day crossing took three days. And within that tempest, just a few yards off Utah Beach, stood a small, quiet, four-hundred-year-old church.

Who knows what the soldiers thought of the church? Most of the men at three-mile-wide Utah Beach probably never saw it. Many others rushed right by it, for it is rarely mentioned in memoirs or histories of the war. It probably served first as a resting point, then perhaps a meeting point to organize before moving inland. Doubtless, men died there, brought by comrades or felled by German mortars, bullets, or mines. The roof took artillery fire, the beams splintered, but the small chapel stood and, in time, began to house daily services for some of the thousands of men coming ashore, and the hundreds more returning from the front.

In the first days of August, for the first time, a soldier noticed the stones. “Chapel called Ste-Madeleine,” he wrote. “Fr. McAvoy has posted a sign calling for daily services at 1700. Good sixteenth-century Renaissance architecture in
Maison Carrée
style. Fragments which can be used for restoration are in and about the immediate area which is off the highway. Main portal damaged by fragmentation from south or west. Wooden roof in good condition except for minor damage.”
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Then he took a photograph to file and send to England. The soldier was Second Lieutenant James Rorimer, the dogged curator of the Metropolitan Museum, and unlike the thousands of other troops who had crossed Utah Beach, he wasn’t in France to use the little chapel for whatever purposes war required. As a Monuments Man, he was there to save it.

As with most things at Normandy, Lieutenant Rorimer’s deployment didn’t go exactly as planned. He was supposed to land earlier, but his passage was delayed as the army rushed higher priority personnel to the front lines. Even when finally assigned passage, he missed his boat—the duty captain wasn’t expecting a Monuments Man, one of the few soldiers crossing not assigned to a unit, and left early. Given a choice of ships the next day, he chose to cross with a shipload of French veterans from the North African campaign. He wanted to land on French soil with Free French troops.

By late July, the Allies thought they would be racing across France; but after eight weeks, they had advanced only twenty-five miles inland, on a front of less than eighty miles. In many places, progress was worse. In early August, the British Second Army and its Monuments officer Bancel LaFarge were only a few miles past Caen, their objective on the first day. Five other Monuments Men had arrived in France, but they too found their areas of operation limited by the slow advance. A planned sprint had turned into a quagmire, and the press was beginning to utter the dreaded word “stalemate.” James Rorimer, coming ashore August 3, was the last Monuments Man to land during major combat operations at Normandy.