[…] in the vehicle parks in and around town there were German army trucks, sedans, Volkswagens, and more, while scattered through town and in the garages attached to the hillside homes were luxury automobiles. Sergeant Hale got a Mercedes fire engine, complete with bell, siren, and flashing blue lights. Sergeant Talbert got one of Hitler’s staff cars, with bulletproof doors and windows. Sergeant Carson got Hermann Goering’s car, “the most beautiful car I have ever seen. We were like kids jumping up and down. We were Kings of the Road. We found Captain Speirs. He immediately took over the wheel and off we went, through Berchtesgaden, though the mountain roads, through the country with its picture-book farms.”
As more brass poured into Berchtesgaden on May 7 and 8, it was more difficult for a captain to hold on to a Mercedes. Speirs got orders to turn it over to regiment. Carson and Bill Howell were hanging around the car when Speirs delivered the sad message.
Carson asked Howell if he thought those windows really were bulletproof. Howell wondered too. So they paced off ten yards from the left rear window, aimed their M-1s and fired. The window shattered into a thousand pieces. They gathered up the broken glass and walked away just as a captain from regiment came to pick up the car.
Before Talbert turned over his Mercedes, he too did some experimenting. He was able to report to Winters that the windows were bulletproof, but that if you used armor-piercing ammo, it would get the job done. Winters thanked him for his research, agreeing that one never knew when this kind of information would come in handy.
The men tried another experiment. They drained the water from the radiator of the Mercedes, to see if it could run without it. With a third luxury car, they decided that before turning it in they would see if it could survive a 30-meter crash, so they pushed it over a cliff.
So the brass got luxury automobiles without windows or water, or wrecks (Talbert’s Mercedes burned out the engine trying to climb the road to the Eagle’s Nest). The men ended up with trucks, motorcycles, Volkswagens, scout cars, and the like, which were good enough, and anyway the fuel came as free as the vehicle. The Americans would just fill up and drive off.
Source:
Ambrose, Stephen Edward. “Drinking Hitler’s Champagne.” Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2004. 269-70. Print.
Further Reading:
Staff Sergeant Floyd M. Talbert
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (or Goering)
Lieutenant Colonel Ronald C. Speirs
Major Richard Davis "Dick" Winters
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