Occasionally, I publish some of Mr. Montgomery’s musings edited only for grammatical errors. Here is another of his reflection of earlier times. Mr. Montgomery wrote about much of his time enlisted in the U.S. Army, and this is ACT SIX of SIX.
ROBERT MONTGOMERY – Wartime ACT SIX – Headquarters in Germany
How to get involved in a WAR and stay SANE (or thereabouts)
Along about April 1945 I was sent with some other fellows to the locale of our new headquarters in Germany at Frankfurt-am-Maine, where SHAEF had set up headquarters on the premises of I.G.Farbenindustrie. This turned out to be the most elaborate headquarters set-up we could have found. It was centered in a very magnificent office building built for this major international chemical company in the mid 1930’s; seven floors and 2 basements in a curved frontage about a city block in size. I remember reading about the building in an architecture magazine when I was in high-school.
It turned out to be an ideal location for the US Army to impress visitors with headquarters.
When I first arrived in the building, it was only a few days after the 3rd Army had moved through. A lot of the workers in the local factories had been forced laborers by the Germans. They were Polish and other east European people conscripted by the Nazis. The Germans had abandoned these “displaced persons” with the arrival of Patton’s Army, and I think they decided to celebrate the occasion. I walked into this big office just next to the front entrance of this big office building. It was still a scene of chaos. Apparently a frenzied mob had invaded the building, and knocked over furniture, smashed files, but over the entry doors to this big office there were smears of ink stains high up on the wall over the door around a blank spot where a picture had once been located. I never saw the picture, there was just a light spot there with lots of ink stains and other garbage marks around it. Could it have been little Adolph’s picture?
I G Farben was a big international company, and they had what looked like maybe 1000 typewriters. They had all been gathered up and taken to a big storage room on the 7th floor, where I was expected to check them out and make them available for issue to US Army HQ offices that needed them. Our supply office for SHAEF would be in the basement directly under the main entrance to the building. The biggest problem with the German made typewriters was that the Z & Y were interchanged in location, and it was a difficult problem for the American typists to get used to the idea that the letter “Y” was down in the lower left corner of the keyboard. So I set up equipment and went to work resoldering the type bar actions on over 500 typewriters.
I had company once in a while. We were at roof level, and the British Royal Signal Corps was in charge of setting up the communications system for the Headquarters; radio, telephone, teletype, etc. I can remember seeing a bunch of these English soldiers crowded around what looked to me like a giant Bunsen burner (a big blow torch) they used to heat solder for their job. They were watching it carefully (this was important business), when one of them watching said: “she’s ready now”, and they started pouring their morning tea.
The great LIQUOR TRAIN CAPER and HQ life
The US Army headquarters had set up our Supply Operation in a big old German Army warehouse on the edge of Frankfurt. It was almost a city block square, and some parts were 3 stories high. There was a residence area at one end and our supply group commandeered this space. It had a dining room, kitchen, bath rooms, and 4 or 5 bed rooms on 2 floors. So the warehouse crew, typewriter shop, and most of the supply office group stayed here at this warehouse, rather than with the headquarters company about a mile away. We even took over a vacant floor area, and put up temporary walls, and made it into an army day room.
We found a pair of 16 mm projectors, and I took over the job of getting them operational, and running the projectors. Later on, I even set up a housing so that the clatter of the projectors didn’t annoy our audience. The warehouse itself had everything a military organization like this could desire. Not only that, if they wanted something we had the people to get it for them.
Sometime about the time I arrived, I was told that our 2 sergeants (Krause & ?????) had been sent off on some sort of secret mission to bring something back to the warehouse. A week or so later, the entire crew was rousted out and went down to the railroad tracks to unload a shipment. It was an entire train full of Liquor. This turned out to be the Germans stash of confiscated liquor from all over Europe. It was some 25 small German boxcars of bottles of every kind of liquor imaginable. It ran from expensive dated, French and Italian wines, champaign, etc to some stuff with the label “STAHL” on the bottles. One of our soldiers said it made a great lighter fluid. When it was brought in the shipment filled the entire lock-up area of the warehouse. The officers mess officials came down and spent hours going over this collection of goodies. We still ended up with hundreds of bottles by the time I left Germany.
It seems that our 2 sergeants, who spoke German like the natives, were sent off and found this collection of liquor and loaded up the entire lot, commandeered this train and brought it to Frankfurt. Among other things it helped to get movies for the day room, and other good things, when needed. The officer’s club loved us.
The fellow in charge of local procurement for Headquarters was Captain Callivet, who was considered an expert at finding things ordered by our authorities in need, no matter how strange or different the request.
Among the items our foragers picked up was a piano. It started out with the USO group needing a piano to use at a USO club in Frankfurt somewhere. So Capt Callivet and his crew went out, found a piano store with lots of pianos, and since he wasn’t sure what the USO man wanted, he picked up several pianos. I guess the USO man got one, although he refused two of them because they were too big, so they all came to the warehouse. We put one of them in our dayroom at the warehouse. It was a 9 ft Bechstein concert grand, the biggest piano I had ever seen. All we needed was Vladimir Horowitz to demonstrate it. I discovered our movers, in their haste, had lost the push rods for the foot pedals. So I looked around the warehouse and found some old broken typewriters with very wide carriages where I could remove the paper bail rods. These were nickel plated metal rods, that I cut for the right length and installed them in the pedal action of this big piano. Somewhere, if the piano is still in use, there is a Bechstein grand piano with engraved numbers on the nickel plated pedal push rods that indicate the printing position of a typewriter.
We did turn up one fellow who really could play it. Cpl Heisler apparently had taken piano lessons. He wouldn’t ordinarily play the piano, but on several occasions he would return in the middle of the night, having consumed something containing alcohol, and sit down and play. Things like Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, or Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody, or Brahms or Mozart. It was usually at 2:00 AM. Later on I looked at the other pianos in the collection, and found what looked to me like museum types. I do hope they got returned to their owners, 2 of them looked like rare antiques.
The END (of the World War II stories)
More on Mr. Montgomery’s musings later.