A rather large creek ran through a large field where we had some 12,000 of these animals in one batch. They drank the creek dry in a single night. These horses had all been requisitioned by the German Army, mostly from farmers in Italy and Western Austria. The German Army as a rule was most correct when it requisitioned animals or materials. A complete record was kept and left with the proper Italian authorities. We soon found records on the animals in the offices of the Provincia in each province. By checking these records it was easy to ascertain how many animals had been taken from a given province. By a system of allocation based on the number requisitioned from each province we soon found that we had almost enough horses to replace those taken.
After selecting some of the best ones for mounted police in Milan, Turin, and other cities, the rest were allocated to the provinces which had lost animals. The provincial chief in each province between the Po Valley and Rome was notified that his province was entitled to so many horses. He could either send a special delegation for his quota of horses or he could allow farmers from his province who had lost horses to come and get them. The result was something to behold.
Farmers, men and women, official delegations, even small boys, poured into the area for their animals. Receipt was taken by the Army for each horse allocated. For days I saw hordes of horses grazing by the road, being ridden, led or even driven to their new homes by their new owners. The members of the agricultural staff deserve medals for the manner in which this complex transaction was handled by Captain James Kein, former 4-H Club leader from Pennsylvania, and Major Glenn Riddel of Arkansas, a long-time agricultural extension agent and educator.
Some 20,000 receipts for horses were taken; then arose the question of what to do with the receipts for th horses. They were sold to the Italian government. The government, in turn, sent them to each province and the province collected a specified number of Italian lira from each person who received a horse. Bargaining was out of the question. The price paid was based on so many lira for a small horse (under 800 pounds). This horse episode was just one of the many small or large problems which peace brought. One evening in this period we wrote in part in our little black book: "A rather tired old soldier takes a little breather and looks back on the events of the past few days.
"It is a rather sardonic commentary on the shape of things eternal that Hitler and Mussolini, whose gods were the military might adn who invented this total war and terror, should have their armies destroyed by the improved application of the blitz technique. If the reports are true -- both died by the application of their terror principle to their own persons. The reign of terror which these two developed as a principle of government and a national policy has borne fruit which not only destroyed them but will leave scars on the world which the centuries may never heal.
"Such violence breeds violence and violence feasts on its own self destruction. During the past winter we have seen the pits and caves around captured villages in the mountains where Italians, for one reason or the other, sought to oppose their captors and we've seen their bodies: men, women, and children -- rotting in those pits and caves. Whole groups were killed as a reprisal of some sort. The partisans here in Italy -- they mean different things to different people and they are and will be pretty tough customers to deal with in the future. Those fellows fought the Germans and the Republican Fascists with bare hands when the chips were down -- to fail simply meant death and many did die. Since they fought by terror methods -- it is not surprising, then that they became terrorist themselves in kind."
My earlier, rather optimistic expectations that I would be leaving Italy turned out to be accurate, although a bit premature. I had been to Rome attending one of the numerous conferences on the future of Northern Italy and the gossip was that I would either be moving on into Austria or perhaps return to the States and train for Japan. Actually, we were several more days rounding up things on the run in Northern Italy, and on May 11th our military government unit established headquarters at a beautiful lakeside hotel in Salo on Lake Maggorie in Northern Italy's Alpine country.
Our commander, Brigadier General Hume, was a "bear for decorations", especially for himself. He was greatly disappointed that during his assignment to military government he did not get deep enough into the fray to get nicked just a little so that he could be rewarded a silver star or a purple heart. He had somehow garnered a bronze star and nearly all of the rest of the decorations an army officer might gather. He did try to pass some of the honors around to his staff. Several, including myself, were recommended for the Bronze Star -- a matter I am told that still rests in the Pentagon files. I have never sought the details since I could hardly be enthusiastic about a decoration for rescuing cattle, rounding up pigs, and running down wheat and roasting ears. However, General Truscott, who had now taken over the Fifth Army Command, came up one morning and with all of us out in spic-and-shining order -- even pressed uniforms -- awarded our unit the Presidential Citation for Meritorious Service in the Army of the United States; the first and only Military Government Unit to receive such presidential citation.
We had expected things to continue quietly but as it turned out, that was not to be. There were the general's problems in addition to potato, sheep, apples, and border trade to take hold of. The General's problem was simple. Colonel Hume, born and reared on a farm in Tennessee, knew a good ear of green corn when he saw one. The Po Valley in May was dotted with waving green fields of corn just getting right for eating as roasting ears.
Italians, for some reason, do not eat green corn roasting ears. They are great on polenta made from mature flint corn, a meal patted into cakes and cooked in olive oil. It's a staple of the country diet in North Italy, delicious in taste and nutritious. But green corn roasting ears? No way! To them, only pigs eat that. General Hume, however, decreed that his mess must have roasting ears each day as long as the corn was right for such delicacy. We went out and talked an Italian farmer into letting us raid his corn field each day until the corn became too ripe for good roasting ears. Incidentally, this was delicious, although our Italian cooks, now taking over from GI mess, were a little bewildered about it all. Next, and we do not know whether General Clark, located in a fine villa on the coast, actually ordered it or whether some aide overstepped his bounds, but we were ordered to provide the General's mess so many days a week with a fresh-caught salmon out of Lake Maggori. This was done and duly dispatched by driver and jeep as long as we were at Salo. But potatoes and sheep were altogether another problem.
Our potato and sheep problems did not hit us until later in the summer when the clean-up crews had moved in, the warehouses of military equipment were cleaned out and placed in the new dumps and the work force of Germans, which had been retained by the allies to help carry out the surrender terms, had been sent to prison camps or exchanged for allied prisoners.
My experience in two world wars with German soldiers impressed me with several rather distinctive characteristics of the German Army and German soldiers in particular. The army in battle is ruthless, disciplined to the Nth degree, and courageous. Behind the lines, their conduct with the civilian population -- so long as the population obeys the rules -- is most correct and exemplary. Yet they are ruthless beyond imagination when the rules are broken. In accounting for materials taken for military use, in keeping precise records, everything is properly documented.
During the clean-up after the surrender, I observed miles of truck convoys supervised and manned by German prisoners with possibly an American sergeant over-seeing the whole outfit. The German convoy commander would be told to have so many trucks and so many men at a given place at a given time. Once could almost set a watch by their appearance. If they were told to drive the trucks at 30 miles per hour, 30 feet behind each other, one could bet that this would be exactly the case. Directed to have a list of articles in a warehouse by ten o'clock the next morning, one could count on the items being there. This was somewhat different from our experience with our new Italian allies. Trucks promised at seven o'clock by the Italians might arrive anytime from 7:00 to noon, always with a good excuse of some kind.
Even GI truck drivers were inclined to bunch their convoys, race wildly for a few miles, and then drop to a walk for another mile or so. It was also hard for our GIs to have a German military policeman tell him that this or that spot was out of bounds and make it stick. It was tougher yet on some young officers who saw German colonels and generals billeted in the finest hotel in town while they had to sleep in tents. It was even a little awkward for an AMG team to have to ask a German Major for permission to take rooms and set up business in a hotel in the town on the Austrian border.
During peacetime there was always lively trade between the Provinces of North Italy, formerly part of Austria, and Austria proper -- especially with the Innsbruck and Salzburg areas. Austrian farmers in these areas had usually harvested their wheat in late June and followed that wheat crop with a potato crop, and seed potatoes for this planting coming from Southern Italy.
By the same token Northern Italy, a larger producer of apples and peaches, and Mid-Italy, a heavy producer of grapes, required literally tons of Austrian copper sulphate to keep their trees and grapes free of disease and the famous wines of that area pure and in top quality. Obviously farmers from both sides of the border had needs and would be in real trouble if trade was not restored between the two countries.
Both nations were now under military occupation -- the U.S. 77th Division in Austria and elements of the U.S. Fifth Army in Italy. Border restrictions were tough; nothing, civilians or goods, trains or trucks, crossed the border without a proper military permit from both armies. Their permits were not issued in quantity and they took days and sometimes weeks to procure. Most farm supplies in Austria, as well as Italy, are handled by cooperative associations or societies.
An Italian group showed up at Salo one afternoon to explain their plight. I tried to help them by finding some way of getting their potatoes to Austria and Austrian copper sulphate into Italy. Finally, I sent word through unofficial channels (the grapevine) to the Austrians to meet an Italian delegation at the border for coffee one morning. Taking coffee at spots along the border was a traditional thing with tourists. There are places where two people can sit at a table in an outdoor cafe with the international border between them.
In preparation for such a meeting, I told the Italians to work out a deal whereby 200 tons of seed potatoes delivered to the border would be exchanged for an agreed quantity of copper sulphate delivered to the other side. I agreed to try to get railway cars containing these items bumped across the border. It was all agreed and both sides returned to their localities and began assembling the materials. The copper sulphate was rather quickly gotten together and delivered to the border. The changing Austrian and Italian crews simply pushed each car across the border and all was well.
In the South, however, the Italians had to harvest their seed potatoes, grade them, and get them on cars. They were slower but in time they got their goods to Bolzano, ready for the crossing. The young major in charge of the yards for the U.S. Army Transportation Service noted that the potato cargo had no permit to cross into Austria and he stopped the crewmen cold in shunting the potatoes across. A few days later I was in Bolzano and learned that the potato-filled cars were standing on a siding in the hot sun and the seed would soon be rotting unless something was done fast. I sought out the young major and asked why the cars had not been shunted across. "Sir," he told me quite flatly, "nothing crosses that border, so far as I am concerned, without a proper permit -- and those potatoes do not have such a permit. They will stay here and rot unless somebody bugger than I gives orders to move them."
At that time I was a Lieutenant Colonel (and clearly without authority) but I said, "Okay, Major ... I'm bigger than you are ... so shove them across."
He said "Yes sir," and the cars moved and the Austrians got the potatoes. It makes a good story, even though improbable to relate, that later in the fall I enjoyed an excellent meal in Salzburg in which one of the choice items was new potatoes cooked in cream.
In North Italy and Austria the opera again became a part of life, the churches continued their rituals, and the villages had their holidays and parades. A German light opera company had been caught in Salzburg by the surrender of the armies in Austria and North Italy and was put to work entertaining bored soldiers on a scrawling visit to Austria.
One night I sat in the audience, comprised mostly of GIs, where this company entertained. Between curtains a slim young German, blonde as a Viking, stepped out in tuxedo and black tie and sang "Lilli Marlene," the famed German song of the trenches. One might have expected catcalls and brick bats, but those GIs cheered that blonde German, yesterday's enemy, to the rafters and called for an encore.
A couple of members of our Military Government unit concerned with the historic preservation of the cultural and historical treasures of Italy and Austria -- one of them a member of the Boston Symphony -- were sent up to Salzburg in the summer of 1945 to assist in the reopening of the famed Salzburg festival. It was not the shining and massive performance of earlier days but that famous event went off on schedule, thanks to a lot of scrounging and improvisation by our people.
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