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Authors: Robert M. Edsel
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appearance there would somehow reveal their invasion plans for Sicily. Even after Sicily was in Allied hands, Hammond could only find one volume of the three-volume set, Italian Touring Club Guide for Italy , which had been captured in Libya.
The lists of important monuments and churches in Sicily and maps showing their locations weren’t available because Paul Sachs and the team working at the Frick Art Reference Library in New York City had yet to finish them. Hammond departed with the hope that the needed reference materials would be provided after he arrived in Sicily. Only then did the true picture begin to emerge: he would be expected to do his job, still largely undefined, without transportation or staff support. For the foreseeable future, Captain Mason Hammond, the first Monuments officer in the United States Army, was on his own.
PERHAPS THE ONLY experience more frustrating than not being prepared for his assignment in Sicily was not being in Sicily. Not until July 28, almost three weeks after the Allied invasion began, did Hammond finally reach Italy’s largest region and island. When he landed in the ancient town of Syracuse, the professor of classics and student of the humanities felt he had, in a sense, returned home. He spent the first few months working with municipal officials in each town he could reach. In some settlements he discovered that local museum employees had walked off the job for lack of income. Hammond worked through the problem with the Civil Affairs Finance Section of Allied Military Government to get funds flowing to municipal officials. Only then would the knowledgeable workers be able to feed their families and return to work to help with temporary repairs and protective efforts.
Hammond had pathetically few tools to do his job: a desk, a chair, and the use—as he put it—of the “ancient” portable typewriter he’d brought with him from the States. His job, assessing damage to churches and other monuments in the island’s smaller towns, depended on transportation, which he had no hope of getting from the army. Thus began a series of independent efforts by Hammond to secure a vehicle, a pattern that would be repeated by virtually all Monuments officers who came after him. His British counterpart, Monuments officer Captain Frederick H. J. Maxse, who arrived in early September, nearly six weeks late, described one of Hammond’s early field demonstrations on the art of improvisation. Using “methods too devious to bear the cold light of print,” Hammond found a car that would assume legendary status in his reports, a “small and decrepit” Balilla. Not without a sense of humor, they named it “Hammond’s Peril.”
An amusing story accompanied each subsequent addition to their expanding motor pool. A Lancia, “model about 1927, of stately elegance and abundant room, was requisitioned for Advisers. However, the owner showed such an attachment to this Ancient Monument, and the question of maintenance was so problematical, that the Advisers felt that their official position required its return for conservation before it suffered ‘war damage.’ ” As Hammond and Maxse wryly observed about their fleet of vehicles, “None of these has endured and the Advisers ended their career as they began, on their feet.”
Despite these and other frustrating experiences—Hammond had only learned about the creation of the Roberts Commission by reading a clipping from The New York Times —his odyssey in Sicily as the first official Adviser on Fine Arts and Monuments affirmed the concept envisioned by George Stout, embraced by Paul Sachs, and endorsed by President Roosevelt. Hammond assessed damage to monuments, effected temporary repairs where possible, got superintendents and other local museum and church officials back to work, and cut down on billeting problems by well-intended troops seeking shelter. His work in the field proved the job could be done.
Serving as the guinea pig for
The lists of important monuments and churches in Sicily and maps showing their locations weren’t available because Paul Sachs and the team working at the Frick Art Reference Library in New York City had yet to finish them. Hammond departed with the hope that the needed reference materials would be provided after he arrived in Sicily. Only then did the true picture begin to emerge: he would be expected to do his job, still largely undefined, without transportation or staff support. For the foreseeable future, Captain Mason Hammond, the first Monuments officer in the United States Army, was on his own.
PERHAPS THE ONLY experience more frustrating than not being prepared for his assignment in Sicily was not being in Sicily. Not until July 28, almost three weeks after the Allied invasion began, did Hammond finally reach Italy’s largest region and island. When he landed in the ancient town of Syracuse, the professor of classics and student of the humanities felt he had, in a sense, returned home. He spent the first few months working with municipal officials in each town he could reach. In some settlements he discovered that local museum employees had walked off the job for lack of income. Hammond worked through the problem with the Civil Affairs Finance Section of Allied Military Government to get funds flowing to municipal officials. Only then would the knowledgeable workers be able to feed their families and return to work to help with temporary repairs and protective efforts.
Hammond had pathetically few tools to do his job: a desk, a chair, and the use—as he put it—of the “ancient” portable typewriter he’d brought with him from the States. His job, assessing damage to churches and other monuments in the island’s smaller towns, depended on transportation, which he had no hope of getting from the army. Thus began a series of independent efforts by Hammond to secure a vehicle, a pattern that would be repeated by virtually all Monuments officers who came after him. His British counterpart, Monuments officer Captain Frederick H. J. Maxse, who arrived in early September, nearly six weeks late, described one of Hammond’s early field demonstrations on the art of improvisation. Using “methods too devious to bear the cold light of print,” Hammond found a car that would assume legendary status in his reports, a “small and decrepit” Balilla. Not without a sense of humor, they named it “Hammond’s Peril.”
An amusing story accompanied each subsequent addition to their expanding motor pool. A Lancia, “model about 1927, of stately elegance and abundant room, was requisitioned for Advisers. However, the owner showed such an attachment to this Ancient Monument, and the question of maintenance was so problematical, that the Advisers felt that their official position required its return for conservation before it suffered ‘war damage.’ ” As Hammond and Maxse wryly observed about their fleet of vehicles, “None of these has endured and the Advisers ended their career as they began, on their feet.”
Despite these and other frustrating experiences—Hammond had only learned about the creation of the Roberts Commission by reading a clipping from The New York Times —his odyssey in Sicily as the first official Adviser on Fine Arts and Monuments affirmed the concept envisioned by George Stout, embraced by Paul Sachs, and endorsed by President Roosevelt. Hammond assessed damage to monuments, effected temporary repairs where possible, got superintendents and other local museum and church officials back to work, and cut down on billeting problems by well-intended troops seeking shelter. His work in the field proved the job could be done.
Serving as the guinea pig for
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