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Table of Contents
PostgreSQL Server Programming Second Edition
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Support files, eBooks, discount offers, and more
Why subscribe?
Free access for Packt account holders
Preface
What this book covers
What you need for this book
Who this book is for
Conventions
Reader feedback
Customer support
Downloading the example code
Errata
Piracy
Questions
1. What Is a PostgreSQL Server?
Why program in the server?
Using PL/pgSQL for integrity checks
About this book's code examples
Switching to the expanded display
Moving beyond simple functions
Data comparisons using operators
Managing related data with triggers
Auditing changes
Data cleaning
Custom sort orders
Programming best practices
KISS – keep it simple stupid
 DRY – don't repeat yourself
YAGNI – you ain't gonna need it
SOA – service-oriented architecture
Type extensibility
Caching
Wrapping up – why program in the server?
Performance
Ease of maintenance
Improved productivity
Simple ways to tighten security
Summary
2. Server Programming Environments
Cost of acquisition
Availability of developers
Licensing
Predictability
Community
Procedural languages
Third-party tools
Platform compatibility
Application design
Databases are considered harmful
Encapsulation
What does PostgreSQL offer?
Data locality
More basics
Transactions
General error reporting and error handling
User-defined functions
Other parameters
More control
Summary
3. Your First PL/pgSQL Function
Why PL/pgSQL?
The structure of a PL/pgSQL function
Accessing function arguments
 Conditional expressions
Loops with counters
Statement termination
Looping through query results
PERFORM versus SELECT
Looping Through Arrays
Returning a record
Acting on the function's results
Summary
4. Returning Structured Data
Sets and arrays
Returning sets
Returning a set of integers
Using a set returning function
Functions based on views
OUT parameters and records
OUT parameters
Returning records
Using RETURNS TABLE
Returning with no predefined structure
Returning SETOF ANY
Variadic argument lists
A summary of the RETURN SETOF variants
Returning cursors
Iterating over cursors returned from another function
Wrapping up of functions returning cursors
Other ways to work with structured data
Complex data types for the modern world – XML and JSON
XML data type and returning data as XML from functions
Returning data in the JSON format
Summary
5. PL/pgSQL Trigger Functions
Creating the trigger function
Creating the trigger
Working on a simple "Hey, I'm called" trigger
The audit trigger
 Disallowing DELETE
Disallowing TRUNCATE
Modifying the NEW record
The timestamping trigger
The immutable fields trigger
Controlling when a trigger is called
Conditional triggers
Triggers on specific field changes
Visibility
Most importantly – use triggers cautiously!
Variables passed to the PL/pgSQL TRIGGER function
Summary
6. PostgreSQL Event Triggers
Use cases for creating event triggers
Creating event triggers
Creating an audit trail
Preventing schema changes
A roadmap of event triggers
Summary
7. Debugging PL/pgSQL
Manual debugging with RAISE NOTICE
Throwing exceptions
Logging to a file
The advantages of RAISE NOTICE
The disadvantages of RAISE NOTICE
Visual debugging
Installing the debugger
Installing the debugger from the source
Installing pgAdmin3
Using the debugger
The advantages of the debugger
The disadvantages of the debugger
Summary
8. Using Unrestricted Languages
Are untrusted languages inferior to trusted ones?
Can you use untrusted languages for important functions?
 Will untrusted languages corrupt the database?
Why untrusted?
Why PL/Python?
Quick introduction to PL/Python
A minimal PL/Python function
Data type conversions
Writing simple functions in PL/Python
A simple function
Functions returning a record
Table functions
Running queries in the database
Running simple queries
Using prepared queries
Caching prepared queries
Writing trigger functions in PL/Python
Exploring the inputs of a trigger
A log trigger
Constructing queries
Handling exceptions
Atomicity in Python
Debugging PL/Python
Using plpy.notice() to track the function's progress
Using assert
Redirecting sys.stdout and sys.stderr
Thinking out of the "SQL database server" box
Generating thumbnails when saving images
Sending an e-mail
Listing directory contents
Summary
9. Writing Advanced Functions in C
The simplest C function – return (a + b)
add_func.c
Version 0 call conventions
Makefile
CREATE FUNCTION add(int, int)
add_func.sql.in
 Summary for writing a C function
Adding functionality to add(int, int)
Smart handling of NULL arguments
Working with any number of arguments
Basic guidelines for writing C code
Memory allocation
Use palloc() and pfree()
Zero-fill the structures
Include files
Public symbol names
Error reporting from C functions
"Error" states that are not errors
When are messages sent to the client?
Running queries and calling PostgreSQL functions
A sample C function using SPI
Visibility of data changes
More info on SPI_* functions
Handling records as arguments or returned values
Returning a single tuple of a complex type
Extracting fields from an argument tuple
Constructing a return tuple
Interlude – what is Datum?
Returning a set of records
Fast capturing of database changes
Doing something at commit/rollback
Synchronizing between backends
Writing functions in C++
Additional resources for C
Summary
10. Scaling Your Database with PL/Proxy
Creating a simple single-server chat
Dealing with success – splitting tables over multiple databases
What expansion plans work and when?
Moving to a bigger server
Master-slave replication – moving reads to slave
Multimaster replication
 Data partitioning across multiple servers
Splitting the data
PL/Proxy – the partitioning language
Installing PL/Proxy
The PL/Proxy language syntax
CONNECT, CLUSTER, and RUN ON
SELECT and TARGET
SPLIT – distributing array elements over several partitions
The distribution of data
Configuring the PL/Proxy cluster using functions
Configuring the PL/Proxy cluster using SQL/MED
Moving data from the single to the partitioned database
Connection Pooling
Summary
11. PL/Perl – Perl Procedural Language
When to use PL/Perl
Installing PL/Perl
A simple PL/Perl function
Passing and returning non-scalar types
Writing PL/Perl triggers
Untrusted Perl
Summary
12. PL/Tcl – Tcl Procedural Language
Installing PL/Tcl
A simple PL/Tcl function
Null checking with Strict functions
The parameter format
Passing and returning arrays
Passing composite-type arguments
Accessing databases
Writing PL/Tcl triggers
Untrusted Tcl
Summary
13. Publishing Your Code as PostgreSQL Extensions
When to create an extension
Unpackaged extensions
 Extension versions
The .control file
Building an extension
Installing an extension
Viewing extensions
Publishing your extension
Introduction to PostgreSQL Extension Network
Signing up to publish your extension
Creating an extension project the easy way
Providing the metadata about the extension
Writing your extension code
Creating the package
Submitting the package to PGXN
Installing an extension from PGXN
Summary
14. PostgreSQL as an Extensible RDBMS
What can't be extended?
Creating a new operator
Overloading an operator
Optimizing operators
COMMUTATOR
NEGATOR
Creating index access methods
Creating user-defined aggregates
Using foreign data wrappers
Summary
Index
PostgreSQL Server
Programming Second Edition
PostgreSQL Server
Programming Second Edition
Copyright © 2015 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored

in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the
case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure
the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information
contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or
implied. Neither the authors, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers
and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or
alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information

about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by
the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot
guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: June 2013

Second edition: February 2015

Production reference: 1210215

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

35 Livery Street

Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78398-058-1

www.packtpub.com
Credits
Authors

Usama Dar

Hannu Krosing

Jim Mlodgenski

Kirk Roybal

Reviewers

Stephen Frost

Rick van Hattem

Vibhor Kumar

Jeff Lawson

Mariano Reingart

Julien Tachoires

Commissioning Editor

Usha Iyer

Acquisition Editors

Antony Lowe

Meeta Rajani

Sam Wood
Content Development Editor

Adrian Raposo

Technical Editors

Mrunmayee Patil

Chinmay Puranik

Copy Editors

Dipti Kapadia

Aarti Saldanha

Project Coordinator

Kinjal Bari

Proofreaders

Maria Gould

Linda Morris

Indexer

Monica Ajmera Mehta

Production Coordinator

Nitesh Thakur

Cover Work

Nitesh Thakur
About the Authors
Usama Dar is a seasoned software developer and architect. During
his 14 years' career, he has worked extensively with PostgreSQL and
other database technologies. He worked on PostgreSQL internals
extensively while he was working for EnterpriseDB. Currently, he
lives in Munich where he works for Huawei's European Research
Center. He designs the next generation of high-performance
database systems based on open source technologies, such as
PostgreSQL, which are used under high workloads and strict
performance requirements.

Hannu Krosing was a PostgreSQL user before it was rewritten to

use SQL as its main query language in 1995. Therefore, he has both
the historic perspective of its development, as well as almost 20
years of experience in using it to solve various real-life problems.

He was the first database administrator and database architect at

Skype, where he invented the sharding language PL/Proxy that
allows you to scale the user database in order to work with billions
of users.

After he left Skype at the end of 2006—about a year after it was

bought by eBay—he has been working as a PostgreSQL consultant
with 2ndQuadrant, the premier PostgreSQL consultancy with a global
reach and local presence in most parts of the world.

He has coauthored PostgreSQL 9 Administration Cookbook, Packt

Publishing, together with one of the main PostgreSQL developers,
Simon Riggs.

I want to sincerely thank my wife, Evelyn, for her support while

writing this book.
Jim Mlodgenski is the CTO of OpenSCG, a professional services
company focused on leveraging open source technologies for
strategic advantage. He was formerly the CEO of StormDB, a
database cloud company focused on horizontal scalability. Prior to
StormDB, he has held highly technical roles at Cirrus Technology,
Inc., EnterpriseDB, and Fusion Technologies.

Jim is also a fervent advocate of PostgreSQL. He is on the board of

the United States PostgreSQL Association as well as a part of the
organizing teams of the New York PostgreSQL User Group and
Philadelphia PostgreSQL User Group.

Kirk Roybal has been an active member of the PostgreSQL

community since 1998. He has helped organize user groups in
Houston, Dallas, and Bloomington, IL. He has mentored many junior
database administrators and provided cross-training to senior
database engineers. He has provided solutions using PostgreSQL for
reporting, business intelligence, data warehousing, applications, and
development support.

He saw the scope of PostgreSQL when his first small-scale business

customer asked for a web application. At that time, competitive
database products were either extremely immature or cost
prohibitive.

Kirk has stood by his choice of PostgreSQL for many years now. His
expertise is founded on keeping up with features and capabilities as
they become available.

Writing a book has been a unique experience for me. Many

people fantasize about it, few start one, and even fewer get to
publication. I am proud to be part of a team that actually made it
to the book shelf (which itself is a diminishing breed). Thanks to
Sarah Cullington from Packt Publishing for giving me a chance to
participate in the project. I believe that the PostgreSQL
community will be better served by this information, and I hope
that they receive this as a reward for the time that they have
invested in me over the years.

A book only has the value that the readers give it. Thank you to
the PostgreSQL community for all the technical, personal, and
professional development help you have provided. The
PostgreSQL community is a great bunch of people, and I have
enjoyed the company of many of them. I hope to contribute
more to this project in the future, and I hope you find my
contributions as valuable as I find yours.

Thank you to my family for giving me a reason to succeed and

for listening to the gobbledygook and nodding appreciatively.

Have you ever had your family ask you what you were doing and
answered them with a function? Try it. No, then again, don't try
it. They may just have you involuntarily checked in somewhere.
About the Reviewers
Stephen Frost is a major contributor and committer to PostgreSQL,
who has been involved with PostgreSQL since 2002, and has
developed features such as the role system and column-level
privileges.

He is the chief technology officer at Crunchy Data Solutions, Inc., the

PostgreSQL company for Secure Enterprises. He is involved in the
advancement of PostgreSQL's capabilities, particularly in the area of
security in order to support the needs of government and financial
institutions who have strict security and regulatory requirements.

Rick van Hattem is an entrepreneur with a computer science

background and a long-time open source developer with vast
experience in the C, C++, Python, and Java languages. Additionally,
he has worked with most large database servers such as Oracle, MS
SQL, and MySQL, but he has been focusing on PostgreSQL since
Version 7.4.

He is one of the founders of the Fashiolista.com social network, and

until recently, he was the CTO. Here, he used PostgreSQL to scale
the feeds for millions of users to show that PostgreSQL can hold up
to NoSQL solutions, given some tuning and additional tools. After
Fashiolista, he worked as a freelance consultant for several
companies, including 2ndQuadrant.

He is currently the founder of PGMon.com, a monitoring service that

analyzes your databases, indexes, and queries to keep them running
at peak performance. In addition to analyzing your database
settings, the system actively monitors your queries and gives you
recommendations to enhance performance.

He is also the creator and maintainer of a large number of open

source projects, such as pg_query_analyser, pg_cascade_timestamp,
QtQuery, Python-Statsd, and Django-Statsd.

Vibhor Kumar is a principal system architect at EnterpriseDB who

specializes in assisting Fortune 100 companies to deploy, manage,
and optimize Postgres databases. He joined EnterpriseDB in 2008 to
work with Postgres after several years of working with Oracle
systems. He has worked in team leadership roles at IBM Global
Services and BMC Software as well as an Oracle database
administrator at CMC Ltd. for several years. He has developed
expertise in Oracle, DB2, and MongoDB and holds certifications in
them. He has experience working with MS SQL Server, MySQL, and
data warehousing. He holds a bachelor's degree in computer science
from the University of Lucknow and a master's degree in computer
science from the Army Institute of Management, Kolkata. He is a
certified PostgreSQL trainer and holds a professional certification in
Postgres Plus Advanced Server from EnterpriseDB.

Jeff Lawson has been a fan and user of PostgreSQL since the time
he discovered it in 2001. Over the years, he has also developed and
deployed applications for IBM DB2, Oracle, MySQL, Microsoft SQL
Server, Sybase, and others, but he always prefers PostgreSQL for its
balance of features and openness. Much of his experience involves
developing for Internet-facing websites/projects that require highly
scalable databases with high availability or with provisions for
disaster recovery.

He currently works as the director of software development for

FlightAware, which is an airplane-tracking website that uses
PostgreSQL and other open source software to store and analyze the
positions of the thousands of flights that are operated worldwide
every day. He has extensive experience in software architecture,
data security, and network protocol design from the software
engineering positions he has held at Univa / United Devices,
Microsoft, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and WolfeTech. He is a
founder of distributed.net, which pioneered distributed computing in
the 1990s, and he continues to serve as the chief of operations and
as a member of the board there. He earned a BSc degree in
computer science from Harvey Mudd College.

He is fond of cattle, holds an FAA private pilot certificate, and owns

an airplane based in Houston, Texas.

Mariano Reingart lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and is a

specialist in the software development of applications and libraries
(web services, PDF, GUI, replication, and so on) with more than 10
years of experience. Currently, he is the PostgreSQL regional contact
for Argentina and a Python Software Foundation member.

He is a major contributor to the web2py Python web framework, and

now he's working on the wxWidgets multiplatform GUI toolkit
(specifically in the Qt port and Android mobile areas). Also, he has
contributed to more than a dozen open source projects, including an
interface for Free Electronic Invoice web services (PyAfipWs) and
Pythonic replication for PostgreSQL (PyReplica).

He has a bachelor's degree in computer systems analysis, and

currently, he's a master's candidate for the MSc in free software
degree at the Open University of Catalonia.

He works on his own funded entrepreneurial venture formed by an

open group of independent professionals, dedicated to software
development, training, and technical support, focusing on open
source tools (GNU/Linux, Python, PostgreSQL, and
web2py/wxPython).

He has worked for local Python-based companies in large business

applications (ERP, SCM, and CRM) and mission critical systems
(election counting, electronic voting, and 911 emergency events
support). He has contributed to books such as web2py Enterprise
Web Framework, Third Edition, and web2py Application
Development Cookbook, Packt Publishing, and several Spanish
translations of the PostgreSQL official documentation.
His full resume is available at
http://reingart.blogspot.com/p/resume.html.

Julien Tachoires is a PostgreSQL specialist, who works as

consultant for the French PostgreSQL company Dalibo. He is the
main developer of pg_activity, a top-end software dedicated to
follow the PostgreSQL incoming traffic in real time, which is written
in Python.

I want to thank my employer Dalibo; my wife, Camille; and my

son, Arthur.
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Preface
This fascinating guide to server programming will take your skills of
PostgreSQL to a whole new level. A step-by-step approach with
illuminating examples will educate you about the full range of
possibilities. You will understand the extension framework of
PostgreSQL and leverage it in ways you haven't even invented yet.
You will learn how to write functions and create your own data
types, all in your favorite programming language. It is a step-by-step
tutorial, with plenty of tips and tricks to kick-start server
programming.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, What Is a PostgreSQL Server?, introduces you to the
PostgreSQL server and will set the tone for the rest of the book. It
introduces you to the ways in which a PostgreSQL server is
extendible, and shows you that it can be treated as a complete
software development framework instead of just a database server.

Chapter 2, Server Programming Environments, elaborates that

PostgreSQL is built to handle user needs, but more importantly, it is
built not to change underneath users in the future. It will touch upon
the environments and will highlight some of the important things to
be kept in mind when programming on the server in PostgreSQL.

Chapter 3, Your First PL/pgSQL Function, builds the foundations by

demonstrating how to write simple PL/pgSQL functions.

Chapter 4, Returning Structured Data, builds on the knowledge of

writing PL/pgSQL functions and demonstrates how to write functions
that return a set of values such as rows, arrays, and cursors.

Chapter 5, PL/pgSQL Trigger Functions, discusses how to write

PL/pgSQL functions that are used to write trigger logic. It also
discusses the various types of triggers available in PostgreSQL and
the options that a database developer has when writing such
functions.

Chapter 6, PostgreSQL Event Triggers, discusses PostgreSQL's event

trigger functionality. Event triggers are fired when running a DDL
operation on a table. This chapter discusses the various possibilities
and options of creating event triggers and their limitations in
PostgreSQL.

Chapter 7, Debugging PL/pgSQL, elaborates on how to debug

PL/pgSQL's stored procedures and functions in PostgreSQL. This
chapter explains how to install the debugger plugin and use the
pgAdmin debugger console.

Chapter 8, Using Unrestricted Languages, explains the differences

between restricted and unrestricted PostgreSQL languages. This
chapter uses PL/Python as an example and demonstrates the
examples of both restricted and unrestricted functions in PL/Python.

Chapter 9, Writing Advanced Functions in C, explains how to extend

PostgreSQL by writing user-defined functions (UDFs) in C.

Chapter 10, Scaling Your Database with PL/Proxy, explains the use
of a special programming language in PostgreSQL called PL/Proxy
and how to use it in order to partition and shard your database.

Chapter 11, PL/Perl – Perl Procedural Language, discusses a popular

PL language in PostgreSQL called PL/Perl. This chapter uses some
simple examples to demonstrate how you can use Perl to write
database functions.

Chapter 12, PL/Tcl – Tcl Procedural Language, discusses Tcl as a

language of choice when writing database functions. It discusses the
pros and cons of using Tcl in the database.

Chapter 13, Publishing Your Code as PostgreSQL Extensions,

discusses how to package and distribute the PostgreSQL extensions.
Well-packaged extensions can be easily distributed and installed by
other users. This chapter also introduces you to the PostgreSQL
Extension Network (PGXN) and shows you how to use it to get the
extensions published by other developers.

Chapter 14, PostgreSQL as an Extensible RDBMS, discusses more

extensibility options in PostgreSQL, such as creating new data types,
operators, and index methods.
What you need for this book
In order to follow this book, you need the following software:

PostgreSQL Database Server 9.4

Linux/Unix Operating System
Python 2, Perl, and Tcl
Who this book is for
This book is for moderate to advanced level PostgreSQL database
professionals. To get a better understanding of this book, you should
have a general experience in writing SQL, a basic idea of query
tuning, and some coding experience in a language of your choice.
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish
between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of
these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames,

file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter
handles are shown as follows: "If any of the checks fail, you should
do ROLLBACK instead of COMMIT."

A block of code is set as follows:

CREATE TABLE accounts(owner text,

balance numeric, amount numeric);
INSERT INTO accounts VALUES
('Bob',100);
INSERT INTO accounts VALUES
('Mary',200);

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code

block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION

fibonacci_seq(num integer)
RETURNS SETOF integer AS $$
DECLARE
a int := 0;
b int := 1;
BEGIN
IF (num <= 0)
THEN RETURN;
END IF;
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
 After making several inquiries, we eventually located a small
house on the edge of town. In response to our insistent hammering,
the door of the house was finally opened by a pallid young man
probably in his late twenties. If he was the object of the captain’s
search he had certainly undergone a remarkable metamorphosis, for
he bore little resemblance to the dapper officer of whom Captain
Vassalle carried a photograph for identification. The captain seemed
satisfied that he was the man. So leaving them in conversation, the
three of us followed up the business of the reported works of art. The
other two occupants of the house—an old man and a young woman
who may have been the wife of the man who had opened the door—
responded to our questions with alacrity and took us to the cellar.
There we were shown a cache of pictures, all of them unframed and
none of them of any value. They appeared to be what the old man
claimed—their own property, brought to Bad Brückenau when they
had left Frankfurt to escape the bombings. In any case, we made a
listing of the canvases, identifying them as best we could and
making notations of the sizes, and also admonishing the couple not
to remove them from the premises.
After that the old man took us across the back yard to a large
modern barn which was heavily padlocked. Once inside he
unshuttered a row of windows along one side of the main, ground-
floor room. It was jammed to the ceiling with every conceivable item
of household furnishings: chairs, tables, beds, bedding, kitchen
utensils and porcelain. But no pictures. We poked around enough to
satisfy ourselves that first appearances were not deceiving. They
weren’t, so, having made certain that the old fellow, who claimed to
be merely the custodian of these things, understood the regulations
forbidding their removal, we picked up Captain Vassalle. He had
completed his interrogation of the alleged SS officer and placed him
under house arrest.
Our next objective was an old Schloss which, according to our
map, was still a good hour’s drive to the northeast. As it was nearly
noon and we were all hungry, we decided to investigate the
possibilities of food in the neighborhood. On our way back through
Bad Brückenau we stopped at the office of a small detachment of
troops and asked where we could get some lunch. The hospitable
second lieutenant on duty in the little stucco building, which had
once been part of the Kurhaus establishment, gave us directions to
the sprawling country hotel, high up above the town, where his outfit
was quartered. He said that he would telephone ahead to warn the
mess sergeant of our arrival.
For a little way we followed along the Sinn, which flows through
the grassy valley in which Bad Brückenau nestles. Then we began to
mount sharply and, for the next fifteen minutes, executed a series of
hairpin turns and ended abruptly beside a rambling structure which
commanded a wonderful view of the valley and the wooded hills on
the other side. Our hosts were a group of friendly young fellows who
seemed delighted to have the monotony of their rural routine
interrupted by our visit. They asked Charlie and me the usual
question—what was the Navy doing in the middle of Germany—and
got our stock reply: we are planning to dig a canal from the North
Sea to the Mediterranean.
We had a heavy downpour during lunch, and we waited for the
rain to let up before starting out again. Then we took the winding
road down into town, crossed the river and drove up into the hills on
the other side of the valley. An hour’s drive brought us to upland
meadow country and a grove of handsome lindens. At the end of a
long double row of these fine trees stood Schloss Rossbach.
“Castle” was a rather pompous name for the big seventeenth century
country house with whitewashed walls and heavily barred ground-
floor windows.
We were received by the owners, a Baron Thüngen and his wife,
and explained that we had come to examine the condition of the
works of art, which, according to our information, had been placed
there for safekeeping. They ushered us up to a comfortable sitting
room on the second floor where we settled down to wait while the
baroness went off to get the keys. In the meantime we had a few
words with her husband. His manner was that of the haughty landed
proprietor, and he looked the part. He was a big, burly man in his
sixties. He was dressed in rough tweeds and wore a matching hat,
adorned with a bushy “shaving brush,” which he hadn’t bothered to
remove indoors. That may have been unintentional, but I idly
wondered if it weren’t deliberate discourtesy and rather wished that I
had kept my own cap on. I wished also that I could have matched his
insolent expression, but thought it unlikely because I was frankly
enjoying the obvious distaste which our visit was causing the old
codger.
However, his attitude was almost genial compared with that of his
waspish wife, who reappeared about that time, armed with a huge
hoop from which a great lot of keys jangled. The baroness, who was
much younger than her husband, had very black hair and
discontented dark eyes. She spoke excellent English, without a trace
of accent. I felt reasonably sure that she was not German but
couldn’t guess her nationality. It turned out that she was from the
Argentine. She was a sullen piece and made no effort to conceal her
irritation at our intrusion. She explained that neither she nor her
husband had anything to do with the things stored there; that, in fact,
it was a great inconvenience having to put up with them. She had
asked the young woman who knew all about them to join us.
The young woman in question arrived and was completely
charming. She took no apparent notice of the baroness’ indifference,
which was that of a mistress toward a servant whom she scarcely
knew. Her fresh, open manner cleared the atmosphere instantly. She
introduced herself as Frau Holzinger, wife of the director of
Frankfurt’s most famous museum, the Staedelsches Kunstinstitut.
Because of conditions in Frankfurt, and more particularly because
their house had been requisitioned by the American military
authorities, she had come to Schloss Rossbach with her two young
children. Country life, she continued, was better for the youngsters
and, besides, her husband had thought that she might help with the
things stored at the castle. I had met Dr. Holzinger when I went one
day to have a look at what remained of the museum, so his wife and
I hit it off at once. I was interested to learn that she was Swiss and a
licensed physician. She smilingly suggested that we make a tour of
the castle and she would show us what was there.
The first room to be inspected was a library adjoining the sitting
room in which we had been waiting. Here we found a quantity of
excellent French Impressionist paintings, all from the permanent
collection of the Staedel, and a considerable number of fine Old
Master drawings. Most of these were likewise the property of the
museum, but a few—I remember one superb Rembrandt sketch—
appeared to have come from Switzerland. Those would, of course,
have to be looked into later, to determine their exact origin and how
they came to be on loan at the museum. But for the moment we
were concerned primarily with storage conditions and the problem of
security. In another room we found an enormous collection of books,
the library of one of the Frankfurt museums. In a third we
encountered an array of medieval sculpture—saints of all sizes and
description, some of carved wood, others of stone, plain or
polychromed. These too were of museum origin.
The last storage room was below ground, a vast, cavernous
chamber beneath the house. Here was row upon row of pictures,
stacked in two tiers down the center of the room and also along two
sides. From what we could make of them in the poor light, they were
not of high quality. During the summer months they would be all right
in this underground room, but we thought that the place would be
very damp in the winter. Frau Holzinger assured us that this was so
and that the pictures should be removed before the bad weather set
in.
The baroness chipped in at this point and affably agreed with that
idea, undoubtedly happy to further any scheme which involved
getting rid of these unwelcome objects. She also warned us that the
castle was far from safe as it was, what with roving bands of Poles
all over the countryside. As we indicated that we were about to take
our leave, she elaborated upon this theme, declaring that their very
lives were in danger, that every night she and her husband could
hear prowlers in the park. Since they—as Germans—were not
allowed to have firearms, they would be at the mercy of these foreign
ruffians if they should succeed in breaking into the castle. By this
time we were all pretty fed up with the whining baroness. As we
turned to go, Charlie Kuhn, eyeing her coldly, asked, “Who brought
those Poles here in the first place, madam? We didn’t.”
 To our delight, the weather had cleared and the sun was shining.
Ahead of us on the roadway, the foliage of the lindens made a gaily
moving pattern. Our work for the day was done and we still had half
the afternoon. I got out the map and, after making some quick
calculations, proposed that we could take in Würzburg and still get
back to Frankfurt at a reasonable hour. We figured out that, with the
extra jerry can of gas we had with us, we could just about make it.
We would be able to fill up at Würzburg for the return trip. So,
instead of continuing on the road back to Bad Brückenau, we turned
south in the direction of Karlstadt.
It was pleasant to be traveling a good secondary road instead of
the broad, characterless Autobahn, on which there were no
unexpected turns, no picturesque villages. There was little traffic, so
we made very good time. In half an hour we had threaded our way
through Karlstadt-on-the-Main. In this part of Franconia the Main is a
capricious river, winding casually in and out of the gently undulating
hills. A little later we passed the village of Veitschöchheim where the
Prince-Bishops of Würzburg had an elaborate country house during
the eighteenth century. The house still stands, and its gardens, with
a tiny lake and grottoes in the Franco-Italian manner, remain one of
the finest examples of garden planning of that day. As we drove by
we were glad that this inviting spot had not attracted the attention of
our bombers.
Alas, such was not the case with Würzburg, as we realized the
minute we reached its outskirts! The once-gracious city, surely one
of the most beautiful in all Germany, was an appalling sight. Its broad
avenues were now lined with nothing but the gaping, ruined
remnants of the stately eighteenth century buildings which had lent
the city an air of unparalleled distinction and consistency of design.
High on its hilltop above the Main, the mellow walls of the medieval
fortress of Marienberg caught the rays of the late afternoon sun.
From the distance, the silhouette of that vast structure appeared
unchanged, but the proud city of the Prince-Bishops which it
overlooked was laid low.
We drove slowly along streets not yet cleared of rubble, until we
came to the Residenz, the great palace of the Prince-Bishops, those
lavish patrons of the arts to whom the city owed so much of its
former grandeur. This magnificent building, erected in the first half of
the eighteenth century by the celebrated baroque architect, Johann
Balthasar Neumann, for two Prince-Bishops of the Schönborn family,
was now a ghost palace, its staring glassless windows and
blackened walls pathetic vestiges of its pristine splendor.
We walked up to the main entrance wondering if it could really be
true that the crowning glory of the Residenz—the glorious ceiling by
Tiepolo, representing Olympus and the Four Continents—was, as we
had been told, still intact. With misgivings we turned left across the
entrance hall to the Treppenhaus and mounted the grand staircase.
We looked up and there it was—as dazzling and majestically
beautiful as ever—that incomparable fresco, the masterpiece of the
last great Italian painter. Someone with a far greater gift for words
than I may be able to convey the exaltation one experiences on
seeing that ceiling, not just for the first time but at any time. I can’t. It
leaves artist and layman alike absolutely speechless. I think that, if I
had to choose one great work of art, it would be this ceiling in the
Residenz. You can have even the Sistine ceiling. I’ll take the Tiepolo.
For the next half hour we examined every corner of it. Aside from
a few minor discolorations, the result of water having seeped through
the lower side of the vault just above the cornice, the fresco was
undamaged. Considering the destruction throughout the rest of the
building, I could not understand how this portion of the palace could
be in such a remarkable state of preservation. The explanation was
an interesting example of how good can sometimes come out of evil.
Some forty years ago, as I remember the story, there was a fire in
the Residenz. The wooden roof over a large portion, if not all, of the
building was burned away. When it came to replacing the roof, the
city fathers decided it would be a prudent idea to cover the part
above the Tiepolo with steel and concrete. This was done, and
consequently, when the terrible conflagration of March 1945 swept
Würzburg—following the single raid of twenty minutes which
destroyed the city—the fresco was spared. As we wandered through
other rooms of the Residenz—the Weisser Saal with its elaborate
stucco ornamentation and the sumptuous Kaiser Saal facing the
garden, once classic examples of the Rococo—I wished that those
city fathers had gone a little farther with their steel and concrete.
We stopped briefly to examine the chapel in the south wing. Here,
miraculously enough, there had been relatively little damage, but the
caretaker expressed concern over the condition of the roof and said
that if it weren’t repaired before the heavy rains the ceiling would be
lost. Knowing how hard it was to obtain building materials for even
the most historic monuments when people didn’t have a roof over
their heads, we couldn’t reassure him with much conviction.
The spectacle of ruined Würzburg had a depressing effect upon
us, so we weren’t very talkative on our way back to Frankfurt. We
passed through only one town of any size, Aschaffenburg, which,
like Würzburg, had suffered severe damage. Although I had not
been long in Germany and had seen but few of her cities, I was
beginning to realize that the reports of the Allied air attacks had not
been exaggerated. I was ready to believe that there were only small
towns and villages left in this ravaged country.
One morning Charlie Kuhn rang up to say that I should meet him
at the Reichsbank early that afternoon. This was something I had
been looking forward to for some time, the chance to look at the
wonderful things from the Merkers mine which were temporarily
stored there. With Charlie came two members of the MFA&A
organization whom I had not seen since Versailles and then only
briefly. They had been stationed at Barbizon, as part of the Allied
Group Control Council for Germany (usually referred to simply as
“Group CC”) the top level policy-making body as opposed to SHAEF,
which dealt with the operational end of things. These two gentlemen
were John Nicholas Brown, who had come over to Germany with the
assimilated rank of colonel as General Eisenhower’s adviser on
cultural affairs, and Major Mason Hammond, in civilian life professor
of the Classics at Harvard.
It had been decided, now that we were about to acquire a
permanent depot in which to store the treasures, to make one
Monuments officer responsible for the entire collection. By this
transfer of custody, the Property Control Officer in whose charge the
things were at present, could be relieved of that responsibility. Major
Hammond had with him a paper designating me as custodian.
Knowing in a general way what was stored in the bank, I felt that I
was on the point of being made a sort of director, pro tem, of the
Kaiser Friedrich Museum.
The genial Property Control Officer, Captain William Dunn, was all
smiles at the prospect of turning his burden over to someone else.
But before this transfer could be made, a complete check of every
item was necessary. Major Hammond knew just how he wanted this
done. I was to have two assistants, who could come over the next
morning from his office in Hoechst, twenty minutes from Frankfurt.
The three of us, in company with Captain Dunn, would make the
inventory.
We wandered through the series of rooms in which the things
were stored. In the first room were something like four hundred
pictures lined up against the wall in a series of rows. In two adjoining
rooms were great wooden cases piled one above another. In a fourth
were leather-bound boxes containing the priceless etchings,
engravings and woodcuts from the Berlin Print Room. Still another
room was filled with cases containing the renowned Egyptian
collections. It was rumored that one of them held the world-famous
head of Queen Nefertete, probably the best known and certainly the
most beloved single piece of all Egyptian sculpture. It had occupied
a place of special honor in the Berlin Museum, in a gallery all to
itself.
Still other rooms were jammed with cases of paintings and
sculpture of the various European schools. In a series of smaller
alcoves were heaped huge piles of Oriental rugs and rare fabrics.
And last, one enormous room with bookshelves was filled from floor
to ceiling with some thirty thousand volumes from the Berlin Patent
Office. Quite separate and apart from all these things was a unique
collection of ecclesiastical vessels of gold and silver, the greater part
of them looted from Poland. These extremely precious objects were
kept in a special vault on the floor above.
 Captain Dunn brought out a thick stack of papers. It was the
complete inventory. Major Hammond said that the two officers who
would help with the checking were a Captain Edwin Rae and a WAC
lieutenant named Standen. Aside from having heard that Rae had
been a student of Charlie Kuhn’s at Harvard, I knew nothing about
him. But the name Standen rang a bell: was she, by any chance,
Edith Standen who had been curator of the Widener Collection?
Major Hammond smilingly replied, “The same.” I had known her
years ago in Cambridge where we had taken Professor Sachs’
course in Museum Administration at the same time. I remembered
her as a tall, dark, distinguished-looking English girl. To be exact,
she was half English: her father had been a British Army officer, her
mother a Bostonian. Recalling her very reserved manner and her
scholarly tastes, I found it difficult to imagine her in uniform.
Early the following morning, I met my cohorts at the entrance to
the Reichsbank. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Captain Rae
was an old acquaintance if not an old friend. He also had been
around the Fogg Museum in my time. Edith looked very smart in her
uniform. She had a brisk, almost jovial manner which was not to be
reconciled with her aloof and dignified bearing in the marble halls of
the Widener house at Elkins Park. We hunted up Captain Dunn and
set to work. Our first task was to count and check off the paintings
stacked in the main room. We got through them with reasonable
speed, refraining with some difficulty from pausing to admire certain
pictures we particularly fancied. Then we tackled the Oriental rugs,
and that proved to be a thoroughly thankless and arduous task. We
had a crew of eight PWs—prisoners of war—to help us spread the
musty carpets out on the floor. Owing to the fact that the smaller
carpets—in some cases they were hardly more than fragments—had
been rolled up inside larger ones, we ended with nearly a hundred
more items than the inventory called for. That troubled Captain Dunn
a bit, but I told him that it didn’t matter so long as we were over. We’d
have to start worrying only if we came out short. By five o’clock we
were tired and dirty and barely a third of the way through with the
job.
 The next day we started in on the patent records. There had been
a fire in the mine where the records were originally stored. Many of
them were slightly charred, and all of them had been impregnated
with smoke. When we had finished counting the whole thirty
thousand, we smelled just the way they did. As a matter of fact we
hadn’t wanted to assume responsibility for these records in the first
place. Certainly they had nothing to do with art. But Major Hammond
had felt that they properly fell to us as archives. And of course they
were archives of a sort.
On the morning of the third day, as I was about to leave my office
for the Reichsbank, I had a phone call from Charlie Kuhn. He asked
me how the work was coming along and then, in a guarded voice,
said that something unexpected had turned up and that he might
have to send me away for a few days. He told me he couldn’t talk
about it on the telephone, and anyway, it wasn’t definite. He’d
probably know by afternoon. I was to call him later. This was hardly
the kind of conversation to prepare one for a humdrum day of taking
inventory, even if one were counting real treasure. And for a person
with my curiosity, the morning’s work was torture.
When I called Charlie after lunch he was out but had left word that
I was to come to his office at two o’clock. When I got there he was
sitting at his desk. He looked up from the dispatch he was reading
and said with a rueful smile, “Tom, I am going to send you out on a
job I’d give my eyeteeth to have for myself.” Then he explained that
certain developments had suddenly made it necessary to step up the
work of evacuating art repositories down in Bavaria and in even
more distant areas. For the first time in my life I knew what was
meant by the expression “my heart jumped a beat”—for that was
exactly what happened to mine! No wonder Charlie was envious.
This sounded like the real thing.
Charlie told me that I was to fly down to Munich the next morning
and that I would probably be gone about ten days. To save time he
had already had my orders cut. All I had to do was to pick them up at
the AG office. I was to report to Third Army Headquarters and get in
touch with George Stout as soon as possible. Charlie didn’t know
just where I’d find George. He was out in the wilds somewhere. As a
matter of fact he wasn’t too sure about the exact location of Third
Army Headquarters. A new headquarters was being established and
the only information he had was that it would be somewhere in or
near Munich. The name, he said, would be “Lucky Rear” and I would
simply have to make inquiries and be guided by signs posted along
the streets.
I asked Charlie what I should do about the completion of the
inventory at the Reichsbank, and also about the impending report
from the Corps of Engineers on the University of Frankfurt building.
He suggested that I leave the former in Captain Rae’s hands and the
latter with Lieutenant Buchman. Upon my return I could take up
where I had left off.
That evening I threw my things together, packing only enough
clothes to see me through the next ten days. Not knowing where I
would be billeted I took the precaution of including my blankets.
Even at that my luggage was compact and light, which was desirable
as I was traveling by air.
 (3)
MUNICH AND THE BEGINNING OF FIELD WORK

The next morning I was up before six and had early breakfast. It
was a wonderful day for the trip, brilliantly clear. The corporal in our
office took me out to the airfield, the one near Hanau where Craig
Smyth and I had landed weeks before. It was going to be fun to see
Craig again and find out what he had been up to since we had
parted that morning in Bad Homburg. The drive to the airfield took
about forty-five minutes. There was a wait of half an hour at the field,
and it was after ten when we took off in our big C-47. We flew over
little villages with red roofs, occasionally a large town—but none that
I could identify—and now and then a silvery lake.
Just before we reached Munich, someone said, “There’s Dachau.”
Directly below us, on one side of a broad sweep of dark pine trees,
we saw a group of low buildings and a series of fenced-in
enclosures. On that sunny morning the place looked deserted and
singularly peaceful. Yet only a few weeks before it had been filled
with the miserable victims of Nazi brutality.
In another ten minutes we landed on the dusty field of the principal
Munich airport. Most of the administration buildings had a slightly
battered look but were in working order. It was a welcome relief to
take refuge from the blazing sunshine in the cool hallway of the main
building. The imposing yellow brick lobby was decorated with painted
shields of the different German states or “Länder.” The arms of
Bavaria, Saxony, Hesse-Nassau and the rest formed a colorful frieze
around the walls.
A conveyance of some kind was scheduled to leave for town in a
few minutes. Meanwhile there were sandwiches and coffee for the
plane passengers. By the time we had finished, a weapons carrier
had pulled up before the entrance. Several of us climbed into its
dust-encrusted interior. It took me a little while to get my bearings as
we drove toward Munich. I had spotted the familiar pepper-pot
domes of the Frauenkirche from the air but had recognized no other
landmark of the flat, sprawling city which I had known well before the
war.
It was not until we turned into the broad Prinz Regenten-Strasse
that I knew exactly where I was. As we drove down this handsome
avenue, I got a good look at a long, colonnaded building of white
stone. The roof was draped with what appeared to be an enormous,
dark green fishnet. The billowing scallops of the net flapped about
the gleaming cornice of the building. It was the Haus der Deutschen
Kunst, the huge exhibition gallery dedicated by Hitler in the middle
thirties to the kind of art of which he approved—an art in which there
was no place for untrammeled freedom of expression, only the
pictorial and plastic representation of all the Nazi regime stood for.
The dangling fishnet was part of the elaborate camouflage. I judged
from the condition of the building that the net had admirably served
its purpose.
In a moment we rounded the corner by the Prinz Karl Palais.
Despite the disfiguring coat of ugly olive paint which covered its
classic façade, it had not escaped the bombs. The little palace,
where Mussolini had stayed, had a hollow, battered look and the
formal garden behind it was a waste of furrowed ground and
straggling weeds. We turned left into the wide Ludwig-Strasse and
came to a grinding halt beside a bleak gray building whose walls
were pockmarked with artillery fire. I asked our driver if this were
Lucky Rear headquarters and was told curtly that it wasn’t, but that it
was the end of the line. It was MP headquarters and I’d have to see
if they’d give me a car to take me to my destination, which the driver
said was “’way the hell” on the other side of town.
Before going inside I looked down the street to the left. The
familiar old buildings were still standing, but they were no longer the
trim, cream-colored structures which had once given that part of the
city such a clean, orderly air. Most of them were burned out. Farther
along on the right, the Theatinerkirche was masked with scaffolding.
At the end of the street the Feldherren-Halle, Ludwig I’s copy of the
Loggia dei Lanzi, divested of its statuary, reared its columns in the
midst of the desolation.
It was gray and cool in the rooms of the MP building, but the place
was crowded. Soldiers were everywhere and things seemed to be at
sixes and sevens. After making several inquiries and being passed
from one desk to another, I finally got hold of a brisk young sergeant
to whom I explained my troubles. At first he said there wasn’t a
chance of getting a ride out to Lucky Rear. Every jeep was tied up
and would be for hours. They had just moved into Munich and hadn’t
got things organized yet. Then all at once he relented and with a grin
said, “Oh, you’re Navy, aren’t you? In that case I’ll have to fix you up
somehow. We can’t have the Navy saying the Army doesn’t co-
operate.”
He walked over to a window that looked down on the courtyard
below, shouted instructions to someone and then told me I’d find a
jeep and driver outside. “Think nothing of it, Lieutenant,” he said in
answer to my thanks. “Maybe I’ll be wanting a ship to take me home
one of these days before long. Have to keep on the good side of the
Navy.”
 In the Kaiser Josef chamber of the Alt Aussee mine Karl Sieber
and Lieutenant Kern view Michelangelo’s Madonna and Child,
stolen from a church at Bruges.

Lieutenants Kovalyak, Stout and Howe pack the Michelangelo

Madonna for return to Bruges. The statue was restored to the
Church of Notre Dame in September of 1945.
 The famous Ghent altarpiece by van Eyck was flown from the Alt
Aussee mine to Belgium in the name of Eisenhower as a token
restitution.

Karl Sieber, German restorer, Lieutenant Kern, American

Monuments officer, and Max Eder, Austrian engineer, examine the
panels of the Ghent altarpiece stored in the Alt Aussee mine.
 On my way out I gathered up my luggage from the landing below
and climbed into the waiting jeep. We turned the corner and followed
the Prinz Regenten-Strasse to the river. I noticed for the first time
that a temporary track had been laid along one side. This had been
done, the driver said, in order to cart away the rubble which had
accumulated in the downtown section. We turned right and followed
the Isar for several blocks, crossed to the left over the Ludwig bridge,
then drove out the Rosenheimer-Strasse to the east for a distance of
about three miles. Our destination was the enormous complex of
buildings called the Reichszeugmeisterei, or Quartermaster Corps
buildings, in which the rear echelon of General Patton’s Third Army
had just established its headquarters.
Even in the baking sunlight of that June day, the place had a cold,
unfriendly appearance. We halted for identification at the entrance,
and there I was introduced to Third Army discipline. One of the
guards gave me a black look and growled, “Put your cap on.”
Startled by this burly order, I hastily complied and then experienced
a feeling of extreme irritation at having been so easily cowed. I could
at least have asked him to say “sir.”
The driver, sensing my discomfiture, remarked good-naturedly,
“You’ll get used to that sort of thing around here, sir. They’re very,
very fussy now that the shooting’s over. Seems like they don’t have
anything else to worry about, except enforcing a lot of regulations.”
This was my first sample of what I learned to call by its popular
name, “chicken”—a prudent abbreviation for the exasperating rules
and regulations one finds at an Army headquarters. Third Army had
its share of them—perhaps a little more than its share. But I didn’t
find that out all at once. It took me all of two days.
My driver let me out in front of the main building, over the central
doorway of which the emblem of the Third Army was proudly
displayed—a bold “A” inside a circle. The private at the information
desk had never heard of the “Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives
Section,” but said that if it was a part of G-5 it would be on the fifth
floor. I found the office of the Assistant Chief of Staff and was
directed to a room at the end of a corridor at least two blocks long. I
was told that the officer I should see was Captain Robert Posey. I
knew that name from the reports I had studied at Versailles, as well
as from a magazine article describing his discovery, months before,
of some early frescoes in the little Romanesque church of Mont St.
Martin which had been damaged by bombing. The article had been
written by an old friend of mine, Lincoln Kirstein, who was connected
with the MFA&A work in Europe.
When I opened the door of the MFA&A office, George Stout was
standing in the middle of the room. The expression of surprise on his
face changed to relief after he had read the letter I handed him from
Charlie Kuhn.
“You couldn’t have arrived at a more opportune time,” he said. “I
came down from Alt Aussee today to see Posey, but I just missed
him. He left this morning for a conference in Frankfurt. I wanted to
find out what had happened to the armed escort he promised me for
my convoys. We’re evacuating the mine and desperately
shorthanded, so I’ve got to get back tonight. It’s a six-hour drive.”
“Charlie said you needed help. What do you want me to do?” I
asked. I hoped he would take me along.
“I’d like to have you stay here until we get this escort problem
straightened out. I was promised two half-tracks, but they didn’t
show up this morning. I’ve got a call in about them right now. It’s
three o’clock. I ought to make Salzburg by five-thirty. There’ll surely
be some word about the escort by that time, and I’ll phone you from
there.”
Before he left, George introduced me to Lieutenant Colonel
William Hamilton, the Assistant Chief of Staff, and explained to him
that I had come down on special orders from SHAEF to help with the
evacuation work. George told the colonel that I would be joining him
at the mine as soon as Captain Posey returned and provided me
with the necessary clearance. After we had left Colonel Hamilton’s
office, I asked George what he meant by “clearance.” He laughed
and said that I would have to obtain a written permit from Posey
before I could operate in Third Army territory. As Third Army’s
Monuments Officer, Posey had absolute jurisdiction in all matters
pertaining to the fine arts in the area occupied by his Army. At that
time it included a portion of Austria which later came under General
Mark Clark’s command.
“Don’t worry,” said George. “I’ll have you at the mine in a few days,
and you’ll probably be sorry you ever laid eyes on the place.”
I went back to the MFA&A office and was about to settle down at
Captain Posey’s vacant desk. I looked across to a corner of the room
where a lanky enlisted man sat hunched up at a typewriter. It was
Lincoln Kirstein, looking more than ever like a world-weary
Rachmaninoff. Lincoln a private in the U. S. Army! What a far cry
from the world of modern art and the ballet! He was thoroughly
enjoying my astonishment.
“This is a surprise, but it explains a lot of things,” I said, dragging a
chair over to his desk. “So you are the Svengali of the Fine Arts here
at Third Army.”
“You mustn’t say things like that around this headquarters,” he said
apprehensively.
During the next two hours we covered a lot of territory. First of all, I
wanted to know why he was an enlisted man chained to a typewriter.
With his extraordinary intelligence and wide knowledge of the Fine
Arts, he could have been more useful as an officer. He said that he
had applied for a commission and had been turned down. I was
sorry I had brought up the subject, but knowing Lincoln’s fondness
for the dramatic I thought it quite possible that he had wanted to be
able to say in later years that he had gone through the war as an
enlisted man. He agreed that he could have been of greater service
to the Fine Arts project as an officer.
Then I asked him what his “boss”—he was to be mine too—was
like. He said that Captain Posey, an architect in civilian life, had had
a spectacular career during combat. In the face of almost
insurmountable obstacles, such as lack of personnel and
transportation and especially the lack of any real co-operation from
the higher-ups, he had accomplished miracles. Now that the press
was devoting more and more space to the work the Monuments
officers were doing—the discovery of treasures in salt mines and so
on—they were beginning to pay loving attention to Captain Posey
around the headquarters.
I gathered from Lincoln that the present phase of our activities
appealed to the captain less than the protection and repair of historic
monuments under fire. If true, this was understandable enough. He
was an architect. Why would he, except as a matter of general
cultural interest, find work that lay essentially in the domain of a
museum man particularly absorbing? It seemed reasonable to
assume that Captain Posey would welcome museum men to
shoulder a part of the burden. But I was to learn later that my
assumption was not altogether correct.
Eventually I had to interrupt our conversation. It was getting late,
and still no word about the escort vehicles. Lincoln told me where I
would find the officer who was to have called George. He was
Captain Blyth, a rough-and-ready kind of fellow, an ex-trooper from
the state of Virginia. The outlook was not encouraging. No vehicles
were as yet available. Finally, at six o’clock, he rang up to say that
he wouldn’t know anything before morning.
Lincoln returned from chow, I gave him the message in case
George called while I was out and went down to eat. It was after
eight when George telephoned. The connection from Salzburg was
bad, and so was his temper when I told him I had nothing to report.
Lincoln usually spent his evenings at the office. That night we
stayed till after eleven. Here and there he had picked up some
fascinating German art books and magazines, all of them Nazi
publications lavishly illustrated. They bore eloquent testimony to
Hitler’s patronage of the arts. The banality of the contemporary work
in painting was stultifying—dozens of rosy-cheeked, buxom maidens
and stalwart, brown-limbed youths reeking with “strength through
joy,” and acres of idyllic landscapes. The sculpture was better,
though too often the tendency toward the colossal was tiresomely in
evidence. It was in recording the art of the past, notably in the
monographs dealing with the great monuments of the Middle Ages
and the Baroque, that admirable progress had been made. I asked
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