The Assassination Option Part 3

[TWO].

Kloster Grnau Schollbrunn, Bavaria American Zone of Occupation, Germany 0330 22 December 1945 Senior Watch Chief Maksymilian Ostrowski, a tall, blond twenty-seven-year-old, who was chief supervisor of Detachment One, Company "A," 7002nd Provisional Security Organization, woke instantly when his wrist.w.a.tch vibrated.

He had been sleeping, fully clothed in dyed-black U.S. Army "fatigues" and combat boots, atop Army olive-drab woolen blankets on his bed in his room in what had once been the priory of a medieval monastery and was now a . . . what?

Ostrowski wasn't sure exactly what Kloster Grnau should be called now. It was no longer a monastery and was now occupied by Americans. He had learned that the Americans were guarding-both at Kloster Grnau and in a village, Pullach, near Munich-nearly three hundred former Wehrmacht officers and enlisted men and their families. Both the monastery and the village were under the protection of a company of heavily armed American soldiers. All of them were Negroes, and they wore the shoulder insignia of the 2nd Armored Division.

Ostrowski was no stranger to military life, and he strongly suspected that it had to do with intelligence. Just what, he didn't know. What was important to him was his belief that if he did well what he was told to do, he wouldn't be rounded up and forced to return to what he was sure was at best imprisonment and most likely an unmarked ma.s.s grave in his native Poland.

He sometimes thought he had lived two previous lives and was on the cusp of a third. The first had been growing up in Poland as the son of a cavalry officer. He had graduated from the Szkola Rycerska military academy in 1939. He just had time to earn his pilot's wings in the Polish Air Force when Germany and Russia attacked Poland. That life had ended when his father died leading a heroically stupid cavalry charge against German tanks, and he and some other young pilots for whom there were no airplanes to fly had been flown to first France and then England.

Life Two had been World War II. By the time that ended, he was Kapitan Maksymilian Ostrowski, 404th Fighter Squadron, Free Polish Air Force. The watch that had woken him by vibrating on his wrist was a souvenir of that life. Fairly late in the war, he had been at a fighter base in France, waiting for the weather to clear so they could fly in support of the beleaguered 101st Airborne Division in Bastogne.

There had been a spectacular poker game with a mixed bag-Poles, Brits, and Americans-of fellow fighter pilots. He liked Americans, and not only because he could remind them that he wasn't the first Pole to come to the Americans' aid in a war. He'd tell them Casimir Pulaski was the first. He'd tell them Pulaski had been recruited by Benjamin Franklin in Paris, went to America, saved George Was.h.i.+ngton's life, and became a general in the Continental Army before dying of wounds suffered in battle.

This tale of Polish-American cooperation had not been of much consolation to one of the American pilots, who, convinced the cards he held were better than proved to be the case, had thrown a spectacular watch into the pot.

It was a gold-cased civilian-not Air Corpsissued-Hamilton chronograph. It had an easily settable alarm function that caused it to vibrate at the selected time.

Ostrowski's four jacks and a king had taken the pot.

On the flight line at daybreak the next morning, just before they took off, the American had come to him and asked, if he could come up with three hundred dollars, would Ostrowski sell him the watch?

Ostrowski was already in love with the chronograph, so he knew why the American pilot wanted it back. Reluctantly, he agreed to sell it. The pilot said he'd have the cash for him when they came back.

He didn't come back. The American had gone in-either shot down or pilot error-just outside Bastogne.

In Life Two, Ostrowski had worn an RAF uniform with the insignia of a captain and a "Poland" patch sewn to the shoulder. As what he thought of as Life Three began, he was wearing dyed-black U.S. Army "fatigues" with shoulder patches reading Wachmann sewed to each shoulder. There was no insignia of rank, as the U.S. Army had not so far come up with rank insignia for the Provisional Security Organization.

The Provisional Security Organization was new. It had been created by the European Command for several reasons, primary among them that EUCOM had a pressing need for manpower to guard its installations-especially supply depots-against theft by the German people, and the millions of displaced persons-"DPs"-who were on the edge of starvation.

There were not enough American soldiers available for such duties. Germans could not be used, as this would have meant putting weapons in the hands of the just defeated enemy. Neither, with one significant exception, could guards be recruited from the DPs.

That exception was former members of the Free Polish Army and Air Force. When they were hastily discharged after the war, so they could be returned to Poland, many-most-of them refused to go. The officers, especially, were familiar with what had happened to the Polish officer corps in the Katyn Forest. They had no intention of placing themselves at the mercy of the Red Army. So they joined the hordes of displaced persons.

When, at the demand of the Soviets, several hundred of them had been rounded up for forcible repatriation, some broke out of the transfer compounds and more than two hundred of them committed suicide. This enraged General Eisenhower, who decreed there would be no more forcible repatriations, and ordered that former Free Polish soldiers and airmen being held be released.

Then someone in the Farben Building realized that the thousands of former Free Polish military men who refused to be repatriated were the solution to the problem of providing guards for EUCOM's supply depots.

Over the bitter objections of the State Department, which Eisenhower ignored, the Provisional Security Organization was quickly formed. Although nothing was promised but U.S. Army rations and quarters, the dyed-black fatigues and U.S. Army "combat boots," and a small salary-paid in reichsmarks, which were all but worthless-there were so many applicants for the PSO that the recruiters could be choosy.

Training of the first batch of guards-in whose ranks was former Kapitan Maksymilian Ostrowski-was conducted by the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment in a former Wehrmacht kaserne in Griesheim, near Frankfurt am Main.

It consisted primarily in instruction in the use of the U.S. Carbine, Cal. .30 and the Model 1911A1 Pistol, caliber .45 ACP with which the PSO would be armed. There were lectures concerning the limits of their authority, the wearing of the uniform, and that sort of thing. The instruction syllabus called for seventy-four hours of cla.s.ses. The cla.s.ses took two weeks. There were 238 students in Cla.s.s One-45.

Officers and non-coms were obviously going to be required for the PSO, and ranks were established, and then filled from the ranks of the students in the first cla.s.s. Ostrowski was appointed a "watch chief"-which roughly corresponded to second lieutenant-more, he thought, because he spoke English well, rather than because he had been a captain in the Free Polish Air Force.

Company "A," 7002nd Provisional Security Organization had then been loaded on U.S. Army six-by-six trucks and driven down the autobahn to Munich, and then along winding country roads to the village of Pullach.

There Ostrowski learned that the entire village had been commandeered by the U.S. Army for unspecified purposes. Army Engineers were installing a triple fence, topped by concertina barbed wire. The fence and the guard towers made the village look like a prison camp.

It was there that he had first seen the Negro troops a.s.signed to guard whatever it was that needed guarding. They all seemed to be enormous. That they were really guarding something was evident. They constantly circled the village in jeeps that carried ready-to-fire .50 caliber machine guns, and there were similar weapons in the guard towers.

The initial mission of Company "A" had nothing to do with the security of the village-which the Americans called "the compound"-but rather the protection of the Engineers' supplies-of which there were mountains-and equipment.

Company "A" was provided with U.S. Army twelve-man squad tents, a mobile mess, and went to work.

Ostrowski was not happy with his new duties-he saw himself as sergeant of the guard, which was quite a comedown from being a captain flying Spitfires and Hurricanes-but he had food to eat, clean sheets, and he thought it highly unlikely he would be rounded up for forcible repatriation.

Then, a week after they had moved to Pullach-the day he saw a GI sign painter preparing a sign that read GENERAL-BROS SD-DEUTSCHE INDUSTRIELLE ENTWICKLUNGSORGANISATION and wondered what the South German Industrial Development Organization might be-it was announced that Company "A" had been given the additional duty of guarding a monastery in Schollbrunn, in the Bavarian Alps. Promoted to senior watch chief, Ostrowski was put in charge of a sixty-man detachment, which was then trucked to Kloster Grnau.

There, he reported to the American in charge, a Mr. Cronley, who appeared to be in his early twenties, and his staff. These were two enormous black men wearing 2nd Armored Division shoulder patches. One wore the sleeve insignia of a first sergeant and the other that of a technical sergeant. There was also a plump little man who was introduced as Mr. Hessinger.

Ostrowski had thought he had solved the mystery of what was going on. Both Mr. Cronley and Mr. Hessinger were in civilian attire. That is, they were wearing U.S. Army uniforms-Cronley the standard olive-drab Ike jacket and trousers, and Hessinger the more elegant officer's green tunic and pink trousers-but carrying no insignia of rank or branch of service. Instead, sewn to their lapels were small embroidered triangles around the letters US.

They were military policemen, Ostrowski quickly decided. More specifically, they were CID, which stood for Criminal Investigation Division, and who were, so to speak, the plainclothes detectives of the Military Police Force. What was being constructed at Pullach was to be a military prison. It all fit. The three lines of fences, the guard towers, the floodlights, and as absolute proof, all those enormous Negro troops. They practically had "Prison Guard" tattooed on their foreheads.

"If you don't speak English," Mr. Cronley had begun the meeting, "I'm going to have a problem telling you what's going on here."

"I speak English, sir," Ostrowski said.

"And German, maybe?" the chubby little man asked in German.

He was, Ostrowski guessed, a German Jew who had somehow avoided the death camps and somehow become an American.

"Yes. And Russian. And of course, Polish."

"That problem out of the way, what do we call you?" Mr. Cronley asked.

"My name is Maksymilian Ostrowski, sir."

"That's an unworkable mouthful," Cronley said. "It says here you're a senior watch chief. What the h.e.l.l is that?"

"I believe it is equivalent to U.S. Army first lieutenant, sir."

Cronley had raised his right hand as a priest giving a blessing does, and announced, "Since I can p.r.o.nounce this, I christen thee Lieutenant Max. Go and sin no more."

"Jesus, Jim!" the enormous black first sergeant protested. But he was smiling.

"Any objections?" Cronley asked.

"No, sir."

"Any other officers in your organization?"

"Yes, sir. There is one who served as a tank lieutenant with the Free French."

"Okay. Then you and he will bunk and mess with us," Cronley said. "Sergeant Tedworth"-Cronley pointed to the technical sergeant-"who is Number Two to First Sergeant Dunwiddie"-Cronley pointed to the first sergeant-"who is my Number Two, will show you where your men will be quartered. I hope you brought somebody who can cook with you?"

"Yes, sir."

"You will answer to Sergeant Tedworth," Cronley went on. "You have any problems with that?"

Does he mean because I'm an officer?

"No, sir."

"Okay. Freddy, you go with Tedworth and Lieutenant Max and show them where they'll be. Then send Lieutenant Max back here. If you find someone who can translate for Tedworth . . . Abraham Lincoln speaks German, Max, but not Polish . . ."

"Abraham Lincoln"? Oh, he means Sergeant Tedworth.

". . . Hessinger speaks Russian and tells me that's close to Polish. If there are no translation problems, Freddy, you come back. If there are, stay and translate. But send Lieutenant Max back. I need to bring him up to speed on what's going on around here ten minutes ago."

Mr. Hessinger nodded.

Twenty minutes later, Hessinger and Ostrowski had come back into what Ostrowski was to learn was called the "officers' mess." Cronley and Dunwiddie were sitting at a bar drinking beer.

"No translation problems?" Cronley asked.

"Between the Poles who speak German and Tedworth's guys who do likewise, no problem," Hessinger reported.

"Do you drink beer, Max?" Cronley asked.

"Yes, sir."

"Then you better have one before I tell you how close you'll be to getting shot working here."

What did he say?

Cronley gestured to Hessinger, who went behind the bar, found bottles of Lwenbru and mugs, and handed one of each to Ostrowski.

"Tell me, Max, how you came to speak the King's English?"

"I spent the war years in England."

"Doing what?"

"I was in the Free Polish Air Force."

"Doing what?"

"Flying. Mostly Spitfires and Hurricanes."

"And then they wanted you to go back to Poland and you didn't want to go, and became a DP. Is that about it?"

"Yes, sir."

"How do you feel about Germans, Max? Straight answer, please."

"I fought a war against them, Mr. Cronley."

"In other words, you don't like them very much?"

"Yes, sir."

"And the Russians? How do feel about them?"

"I like them even less than the Germans."

"You ever hear of the Katyn Forest?"

"That's one of the reasons I didn't think it was wise for me to go home."

"What we're running here is a cla.s.sified-a highly cla.s.sified-operation. I'm not supposed to tell someone like yourself anything at all about it. But I don't see how you can do your job at all, much less well, until I tell you something about it."

"Yes, sir."

"So I'm going to tell you some things about it. Prefacing what I'm going to tell you by saying we're authorized to protect the security of this operation by any means, including the taking of life. Do you understand what I'm saying? And if you do, should I continue, or would you prefer to be sent back to Pullach? There would be no shame, or whatever, if you don't want to stay. I personally guarantee that you won't be forcibly repatriated if you choose to go back to Pullach. Think it over carefully."

My G.o.d, he's serious! What the h.e.l.l is going on here? What am I letting myself in for?

After a long moment, Ostrowski came to attention and said, "I am at your orders, sir."

"Anybody got anything to say before I start this?" Cronley asked.

No one did.

"What we're doing here is protecting a substantial number of former German officers and enlisted men from the Russians, and from those Germans and others sympathetic to the Soviet Union," Cronley said.

When there was no reply, he went on: "Eventually, just about all of them will be moved to the Pullach compound. That process is already under way. Any questions so far?"

"May I ask why you're protecting them from the Russians?"

"No. And don't ask again. And make sure your men understand that asking that sort of question is something they just are not allowed to do. If they do, that will ensure immediate and drastic punishment. You can consider that your first order. Get that done as soon as possible."

"Tedworth's probably already done that," Hessinger said.

"Even if Sergeant Tedworth has already gotten into the subject, I want the warning to come from Lieutenant Max."

"Yes, sir."

"I think I should tell you, Lieutenant," Dunwiddie said, "without getting into details, that there already have been a number of deaths . . ."