Craig came back an hour and a half later with a jeep. We were about twenty miles outside Frankfurt. On the way in the driver said that the city had been eighty percent destroyed. He hadn’t exaggerated. As we turned into the Mainzer Landstrasse, we saw nothing but gutted buildings on either side. We continued up the Taunus Anlage and I recognized the Opera House ahead. At first I thought it was undamaged. Then I saw that the roof was gone, and only the outer walls remained. Most of the buildings were like that. This was just the shell of a city. Our first stop was SHAEF headquarters, newly established in the vast I. G. Farben building which, either by accident or design, was completely undamaged. There we got another car to take us to Bad Homburg. The little resort town where the fashionable world of Edward VII’s day had gone to drink the waters and enjoy the mineral baths consisted mostly of hotels. Some of them were occupied by our troops. Others were being used as hospitals for wounded German soldiers. The big Kurhaus had received a direct hit, but the rest of the buildings appeared to be undamaged. At ECAD headquarters we were assigned a billet in the Grand Hotel Parc. That sounded pretty snappy to us—another Royal Monceau, maybe. The billeting officer must have guessed our thoughts, because he shook his head glumly and said, “’Tain’t anything special. Don’t get your hopes up.” It was nice of him to have prepared us for the rat hole which was the Grand Hotel Parc. This shabby structure, built around three sides of a narrow courtyard, had an air of vanished refinement about it, but it could hardly have rated a star in Baedeker. Yet it must have had a certain cachet fifty years ago, for in the entrance hallway hung a white marble plaque. Its dim gold letters told us that Bismarck’s widow had spent her declining years “in peaceful happiness beneath this hospitable roof.” Our room was on the fourth floor. The stairs, reminiscent of a lighthouse, might have been designed for a mountain goat. We thought we had struck the ultimate in drabness at the Rue Berthier, but this was worse. The room itself was worthy of its approach. When I opened the big wardrobe I half expected a body to fall out. Two sofas masquerading as beds occupied corners by the window. The window gave onto the dingy courtyard. We silently made up our beds with Army blankets and sprinkled them lavishly with DDT powder. “Do you suppose there’s such a thing as a bathroom?” Craig asked. “I’d sooner expect to find one in an igloo,” I said. “Maybe there’s a pump or a trough somewhere out in back. Why don’t you go and see?” [Illustration: The Residenz at Würzburg. The palace of the Prince-Bishops was gutted by fire in March 1945. The magnificent ceiling by Tiepolo miraculously escaped serious damage.] [Illustration: Ruined Frankfurt. In the center, the cathedral. Only the tower and the walls of the nave remain standing. _International News Photo_]