Army Monuments Officers work in a military capacity to identify and preserve cultural treasures around the world that are threatened by conflict, just like the Monuments Men of World War II who recovered millions of artifacts looted by the Nazis
The Smithsonian Cultural Recovery Initiative hosts a disaster training exercise for army reservists at the National Museum of the United States Army on August 10, 2022, in Fort Belvoir, VA, United States.Image: Maansi Srivastava/The Washington Post via Getty Images
FORT BELVOIR, Va. —The Army Reserve officers worked with brisk efficiency.
For much of the afternoon, they had meticulously documented and carefully packed cultural treasures from the Smithsonia museum in Pinelandia — a country that could soon be under siege. Their mission — to evacuate important items from the museum — was going well.
But then an aloof, lunch-preoccupied security guard accidentally put his foot through a precious painting propped against a table.
The room went silent. Then the museum’s collection manager had a conniption. The officers had a problem.
“A failure of our forces to secure the artifacts while we were handling them,” Capt. Blake Ruehrwein, 40, of Rehoboth, Massachusetts, said afterward.
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