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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 classes. The classes took two weeks. There were 238 students in Class 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 class. 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 assigned 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-BÜROS SÜD-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 Grünau.

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.”