PACKET II — LOOT

Lake Forest, Illinois, the third Saturday of October, 1945: the author is married in the stone church the machine-tool money built, ten days after his discharge and thirteen before his ship.

Frankfurt and the American zone, November–December 1945: the author joins the collection apparatus later notorious as Paperclip and conducts his first gathering: a beaten engineer, a cold…

Lower Bavaria, January 1946: sent south to put the chief of the Peenemünde rocket men on Sennett's ledger, the author meets the best salesman he ever heard, himself included, and closes o…

The Harz, late winter of 1946 by the author's calendar: sent to move the professor's dowry west by rail out of country already drawn for the Russians, the author counts everything, signs …

Continued directly from the number preceding: at first light the author goes into the Kohnstein with a carbide lamp, a Reichsbahn yardmaster, and seven soldiers, to bring out the last hun…

Sent home by a routing he had not chosen, the author spends one night in the four-power capital and keeps, at last, the appointment he has carried folded in a valise since New Mexico.

Home from the plunder, the author spends his year and a half in the desert making Americans of the men he shipped, and closes the German business by walking it across a bridge in its best…