Still moving like a shadow, he made his way down two passages then halted at a partly open door. As he peered in there was just light enough for him to see that the room was a kitchen. Slipping inside he gave a quick look round. On several long side tables there were stacks of food left ready for preparing the first meal of the day, among them ham, Leberworst and apples, evidently intended for the staff. Having crammed us pockets with a selection of these he climbed up on one of the sinks, opened the window beyond it and climbed out. A quick look round showed him that no-one was about and he made off into the semi-darkness.
Had there been the least chance of escaping from the camp he would have made the attempt. But he was already convinced that to do so would be suicidal. The whole of the vast area that it covered was enclosed by two barbed-wire and electrified fences a hundred yards apart. Thee intervening space was floodlit by arc lamps and at intervals along it there were watch towers manned by sentries armed with light machine-guns. In addition, between the two fences a number of fierce Alsatian dogs were let loose every night; so even if a prisoner could have cut his way through the inner fence and the nearest sentries had been dozing, one or more of the dogs would have given the alarm and the escaper been riddled with bullets before he could reach the outer barrier.
Each section of the camp was also fenced off from its neighbours, but these fences were not electrified so could be got through without difficulty; and Gregory's immediate object was to get as far from the hospital as possible. During the next half hour he climbed through half a dozen fences and, while between them, kept as far as possible in the shadow of the huts. But there was little danger of his being caught, for no guards patrolled the interior of the camp at night because the brightly lit, well-guarded perimeter made escapes impossible.
Having put three-quarters of a mile between himself and the hospital, he found a tool shed in which the implements used by the slave labour in that section were stored at night. Groping about in it, he made himself a place to sit down with his back comfortably propped up then eagerly devoured the food he had taken from the kitchen. Replete from this unusually substantial meal he closed his eyes and fell into a doze.
When daylight came he remained where he was, praying that the next stage in his plan would prove equally successful. Sounds of the camp stirring into life filtered through to him then, at about seven o'clock, the shuffling of feet outside. A sharp order was given and a line of wretched, ragged prisoners filed in to collect picks and shovels. Some of them looked at him with dull, lackluster eyes, but none of them spoke. A Capo, as the trusties selected as overseers were called, appeared, saw him sitting on the floor, yelled at him to get up and struck him with a whip. As he came to his feet one of the prisoners muttered, `He's not one of our gang.'
The Capo went out and fetched an S.S. man who proceeded to shout questions at Gregory. Passing a hand over his eyes to give the impression of being bemused, he told him that he did not know who he was or how he had got there, but he thought that he had been wandering about for most of the night.
As there were so many thousands of prisoners in the camp living under such appalling conditions, he felt confident that from time to time there must be cases in which the mental strain caused some of them to have blackouts and lose their memories. The result was as he had expected. The S.S. man gave him a kick, prodded him with a Sten gun, then marched him off to the camp headquarters. There, after a short wait, he was taken in to a lean, scar-faced Untersturmfьhrer and his case reported.
Apparently in a daze, he stood there staring at the floor; but he knew that the next half-hour would decide the success or failure of his plan. By this time Franz Protze would almost certainly be dead. When the hospital orderlies removed his body to throw it into one of the common burial pits they would collect his clothes and turn them in at the camp clothing depot. With such deaths taking place every few hours it was most unlikely that anyone would notice that the number on the clothes was not that under which Protze had been admitted.
Gregory's bed would be found empty. But as he had gone in as a mental case there would not be anything very surprising about his having wandered off in the night. The headquarters would be notified, but he had not been in the hospital long enough for anyone there to give an accurate description of him. Where his danger lay was in his disappearance being connected with a man being found who had lost his memory. His hope was in the vastness of the camp and that as it was understaffed no serious effort would be made to trace him. Anxiously he waited to learn how the Gestapo officer would react to the report about him.
The number on Protze's clothes was E1076 and Gregory had made very certain that the triangles they bore were green, for had they been red to take them would have been the next best thing to signing his own death warrant: The Untersturmfьhrer wrote the number down on a slip of paper and sent an orderly with it to the camp registry. Gregory was marched to a corner of the room and ordered to stand there facing the wall.
He remained there for ten anxious minutes. The orderly then returned and handed another slip of paper to his officer. After a glance at it the Untersturmfьhrer said to thee guard, `His name is Protze, and he's serving a three-year sentence.'
Gregory held his breath. If the register also contained the information that Protze had been admitted to hospital the game was up. He would be sent back there and his imposture discovered. But after a moment the officer added, `Take him back where he belongs.'
Although Gregory breathed again, he had other fences to get over. When he arrived at Section E would the officer in charge there, or one of the guards, have known E1076 well enough by sight to declare that Gregory was not the prisoner who had borne that number? He could only hope that with so many deaths and the constant influx of new prisoners the guards never bothered to look on the poor devils as individuals.
A quarter of an hour later he was temporarily reassured. The bull-necked Blockfьhrer to whom he was handed over gave him barely a glance, then said to the guard who had brought him, `Lost his memory, has he? Well, perhaps that's lucky for the poor sod. You can't miss what you don't remember, can you?'
Jerking his head towards a hut that had a large 6 painted in white on the door, he added to Gregory, `That's your hut, No. 1076. Get inside and report to the Lageraltester.'
While a prisoner among the Prominente, Gregory had picked up quite a lot about the organization of the camp outside that privileged section. Only there were S.S. guards on duty night and day. The many thousands of ordinary prisoners were supervised and disciplined by trusties, the majority of whom were habitual criminals. Under the orders of the S.S. Blockfьhrers, there were two types of these. Each hut, containing about two hundred prisoners, was in charge of a Lageraltester who tyrannized over its inmates and was responsible for their good behavior, while even tougher old lags, the Capos, ran the working parties during the day.
Maintaining the vacant stare of a half-wit, Gregory went into the hut and confronted the Lageraltester. He was a small man with a mean, vicious face. On receiving no reply to his questions he slapped Gregory hard across the mouth. With iron self-control Gregory refrained from kicking the little brute in the crutch then strangling him, and remained there standing passively with drooping head. His restraint paid off. With a contemptuous shrug, the Lageraltester pointed to a bunk that had on it a blanket roll, a mess tin and a tin cup but, unlike the majority of the others, none of the few private possessions that the prisoners were allowed to retain.