The Monuments Men (25 page)

He wondered what that boy would think if he could see himself now. He had seen actual mountains. He had seen ice a thousand feet thick in the Arctic. He had designed runways on that ice, in case American pilots needed to fly there. He had designed a pontoon bridge, only to see it fail and plunge a tank into the muddy waters of a Pennsylvania river. He had been in London. He had not only visited but worked in New York City.

Now he was in Europe. He could walk outside into an ancient city and see snow in piles along the streets and rows of buildings wrapping behind them. No, he wasn’t just here. He was an expert; it was his job to preserve this city. And he was a soldier. He had met with General George S. Patton Jr., the greatest fighting man in the U.S. Army. A man who when you called him a bastard—and every man in Third Army sometimes did—you did so with admiration.

Posey remembered a story he had heard other soldiers telling about Patton’s days commanding U.S. Seventh Army in Sicily in 1943. General Patton, upon seeing the Roman ruins at Agrigento, remarked to a local expert, “Seventh Army didn’t cause that destruction, did it, sir?”

The man replied, “No sir, that happened in the last war.”

“What war was that?”

“The Second Punic War.”
5

The story got a laugh, but hid a serious message: That history was long; that legacy was important; that Third Army must strive in all ways to be the greatest fighting force since Hannibal took his elephants across the Alps in that Punic War and almost crushed the fledgling Roman Empire. Robert Posey wasn’t an infantryman. He didn’t fire a gun. But his job was important, and he was determined to put his heart and muscle into it. Weather and danger be damned. There was no place in the world Robert Posey would rather be than in Third Army.

Except maybe home.

Once again, he put down his pencil. He looked at the other boxes from Alice and Woogie. It was December 10, two weeks until Christmas, but he didn’t want to wait any longer.

The first box contained little presents for French children. He had told Alice not to send them, that he was always moving and didn’t know any children, but she sent them anyway. He went out with the presents the next day and, to his surprise, found children in the streets gathering handfuls of tinfoil to decorate Christmas trees. German airplanes had dropped the tinfoil to break up Allied radio transmissions; it was the only thing in abundance that year. It reminded him of his own deprived youth, and he wondered at Alice’s understanding. He found a group of French girls. He offered them Alice’s presents, but under one condition: that they write letters in French to his son.

Letter from Robert Posey To his young son “Woogie”

November 29, 1944

Dear Dennis:

I am sure you would like to have this Third Army Christmas card all for yourself. I hope you received the Third Army shoulder patch I sent you about two months ago in a letter.

The card shows our tanks breaking through the German lines in Normandy, crashing through into Brittany, racing across France and now headed for Berlin. I have been here to see it all and we are so very strong that I am sure it will not be too very long until we are in Berlin.

All of this is very spectacular and dramatic but it is also bad for it causes great suffering to people who live where the actual fighting is going on. It also takes soldiers away from their homes and causes them to become tough and sometimes bitter.

Germany started this war by invading one small country after another until finally France and England had to declare war on her. We helped France and England but didn’t start fighting. Then suddenly Japan attacked us and Germany declared war on us at the same time. And so we had to fight, painfully at first for we were unprepared. Now we are strong; England is strong; Russia, who was attacked by Germany is strong; Italy who fought with Germany has been defeated by us and has swung over to our side; France who was defeated by Germany but liberated by us is building a powerful army. Greece, Belgium, and part of Holland have been liberated and are helping us; China is painfully shaking off the treacherous Japanese yoke.

And so, these are the reasons that I think we will soon defeat Germany and Japan and teach them such a lesson that when you and other little boys like you grow up you will not have to fight them all over again. And I hope no other country will start a fight to get its way for wars are bad.

Realizing all of this helps me to be satisfied with being away from you and Momie this Christmas. I hope that you have a wonderful time with lots of nice presents. Please take my place and buy Momie nice presents for her birthday anniversary and Christmas.

Good bye for now with love.

Bob

CHAPTER 20

The Madonna of La Gleize

La Gleize, Belgium

December 1944

W
hile Robert Posey worked in eastern France, the sculptor Walker Hancock drove through the Belgian countryside, consolidating his work in the conquered territory just behind the front lines. Places like the Belgian village of La Gleize, one of the middle stops on his tour, didn’t offer the awe of Aachen or the thrill of finding a possible Breughel painting on the front lines, but it was peaceful here, nothing more than a small group of rough buildings sitting quietly atop a hill beneath a huge white winter sky. Hancock had come to inspect the cathedral, described on his list of protected monuments as dating to the eleventh century. Looking at it now, he was deeply disappointed. He could see immediately the building was beyond salvage. The tower was lopped off and the old stone walls destroyed. This wasn’t the brutality of war, however, but of ill-conceived renovations. The monument was clearly unworthy of inclusion on the list.

He decided, especially given the cold, to go inside. Just beyond the door, on a pedestal in the middle of the nave, stood a small wooden statue of the Virgin Mary. He stopped. The workmanship was crude, but the rough exterior heightened the figure’s extraordinary grace. She was only a few feet tall and fragile in appearance, but somehow she seemed to dominate the interior of the church. She held one hand over her heart, the other open, and although the fingers of her raised hand looked impossibly delicate, the gesture would stop anyone in their tracks. It was a rough yet simple work of art, and it possessed a beauty that transcended its humble surroundings.

The
curé
of the cathedral was away, but a young woman in the tourism office agreed to give Hancock a tour of La Gleize. The view over sloping fields to the Ardennes Forest was sublimely beautiful, but the town, almost deserted, was little more than farmers’ dwellings and small stores. Hancock found it charmless, but the young woman delightful. Her father ran the local inn, but since tourism was nonexistent he spent most of his time farming. The statue, known as the Madonna of La Gleize, was the envy of the neighboring parishes. It was carved in the 1300s, but had been found in the tower only fifty years prior during one of the ill-conceived renovations. She had stood in the nave only a few years.

The young woman gave Hancock a postcard of the Virgin, the only photograph available, and invited him to dinner. The house was a pleasant two-story stone structure, built by her father, Monsieur Geneen. The food was almost too good to be eaten after a month of living on K-rations, and the company lively and warm. The simple beauty of people who worked the land, and of the rural village that he had just that afternoon found so crude, came flooding in as Hancock sat at the rustic wooden table. The memories of that dinner and of the miraculous, unknown Madonna stayed with him in the months that followed, through the rain and the cold, the trenches, the bombardments, and the ruined towns. If ever a place seemed untouched by the war, it was La Gleize.

Letter from Walker Hancock To his new wife, Saima

December 4, 1944

Precious Saima—

This is the great day of our lives—the anniversary of the happiest one in mine. And if I loved you a year ago today, I do so many times more this fourth of December. For even though we have spent such a small part of this year together, we have been together the whole time in the best sense, and you have helped me and nourished me through these interesting but trying months in a way that you would hardly have had the opportunity to do in a happy normal life at home. That will come, and our joys will be boundless, but what you have been to me during these months of separation is something that I never could have imagined without the experience. Your letters have been my mainstay. Just the simple account of what you do and think—and between letters I think about
you
.

Today has been rather a grind—and one of those days when one seems to have just missed accomplishing something all along the line. But I hope I’ll be able to make up for it during the week. One just has to learn that things have to be done a little bit at a time in the army—and it doesn’t pay to bite off more than can be chewed…. There’s a Polish soldier sitting on the bunk beside me, saying that this will be his sixth Christmas in the army and away from his people. He’s pretty discouraged—but we are guaranteeing him this will be the last away from home.

Tomorrow or the next day I expect to see George Stout. I wonder if he will be coming back to the First Army. I hope so, for there is more work than I can keep up with at present. Worlds of love to you—you sweet creature—I
love
you—

Walker

CHAPTER 21

The Train

Paris, France

August 1944 and Late December 1944

R
ose Valland thought again of those last days at the Jeu de Paume. After the defeat of Ambassador Abetz by Jaujard and Wolff-Metternich, the Nazis had hit on a new scheme for “legally” transporting cultural objects out of France. On September 17, 1940, the Führer had given the ERR (Reich Leader Rosenberg’s Special Task Force) the authorization to “search lodges, libraries and archives in the occupied territories of the west for material valuable to Germany, and to safeguard the latter through the Gestapo.”
1
The official role of the ERR was to provide material for Alfred Rosenberg’s “scholarly” institutes, whose prime objective was to scientifically prove Jewish racial inferiority. It didn’t take long for the Nazis to realize the ERR was the perfect cover for moving valuable artwork and cultural treasures out of France. In late October, only weeks after the authorization of the ERR, an artwork cataloguing, crating, and transporting operation had been established at the Jeu de Paume.

For the next four years, the Nazis had used the museum,
Valland’s museum
, as their clearinghouse for the spoils of France. For four years, the private collections of French citizens, especially Jews, moved through its galleries like water flowing downhill to the Reich. For four years, Gestapo guards assured that no one could enter but the chosen, those bearing the mark of Colonel Kurt von Behr, commandant of the Jeu de Paume and the local leader of the ERR. The staff had never been disciplined; in fact, the Jeu de Paume had been a hothouse of backstabbing, stealing, and intrigue since the moment the Nazis occupied it, and that was just among its leaders. But the operation had always run with depressing efficiency, moving load after load of stolen items through its processing rooms and on to the Fatherland.

But in the summer of 1944, it was coming to an end. The Allies were on the beaches at Normandy; everyone believed their arrival in Paris was just a matter of time. In June, Bruno Lohse, a slick, reptilian German art dealer who had schemed his way through the hierarchy of the ERR, returned from a ski vacation with a broken leg and kidney pain; both faked, the gossip said, because the desperate Germans were throwing every able-bodied man at the front lines. In late July, with the fighting at a critical stage, Lohse left for Normandy with a revolver stuck in his belt. His parting words were “off to battle!” but when he returned two days later, his truck was filled with chickens, butter, and a whole roasting lamb. There was a big party at his Paris apartment, and even Colonel von Behr, his boss and rival at the Jeu de Paume, was invited.
2

And then, suddenly, they were finished. “
Ouf!
” Valland wrote in her notes. Relief, finally!
3

But it was relief mixed with trepidation. In her four years at the museum, she had developed a routine, an understanding that made her isolation in the lion’s den almost… not pleasant, but acceptable. She knew what to expect. She had a good read on everyone. Dr. Borchers, the art historian charged with cataloguing and researching the looted goods, even trusted her with his confidences; she used him, without his knowledge, as one of her primary sources of information. Many a secret conveyed by Borchers had wound up in the hands of Jacques Jaujard and the French Resistance. She knew Borchers would never betray her; he considered her his only… non-enemy. Hermann Bunjes, a corrupt art scholar who had been lured from Wolff-Metternich’s noble Kunstschutz to the service of Reichsmarschall Göring and the ERR, found her beneath contempt. The wily, cowardly Lohse wanted her dead. She was sure of that. He was tall and handsome and very popular with the women of Paris, but Valland found him slick and cold-blooded. If a high official was going to have her killed, she felt it would be Lohse. He had said as much in February 1944, when he discovered her trying to decipher an address on some shipping documents.