We had not long to wait for an opportunity of seeing how our passports should read. I will say no more. Even at this distance of time, immeasurably magnified by the intervening events, there still may lurk the long arm in German law, and we need not doubt that there are still too many souls in Germany attracted by the thought: _Wie soll ich Detective werden?_ (How shall I become a detective?) to make it altogether safe for those concerned if I were to be more explicit in print. Suffice it to say that our tools were of tender years, cheaply bought, and therefore on both accounts the less deserving of retribution[13]. I had sold my field service ration boots for 45 marks, through the agency of Ortweiler. I had therefore collected about 75 marks, and this was, of course, ample for my requirements. I was all the time anxiously on the look-out for civilian clothes. I had got a pair of old blue trousers from Captain Clarke of the Merchant Marine. I had an old pair of ration “Tommy” boots which on comparison with the home-grown article might just “do.” I had shirt, collar, and tie. I wanted hat, coat, and, in view of the lateness of the season, some sort of overcoat. [Footnote 13: This chapter was written over a year ago and times have changed. We borrowed the passport off a glazier’s boy who used to come into the camp. And we sold our boots to one of the camp canteen officials who was distinctly venal.] By great good luck the hat, or, as it happened, cap, materialised. A new naval suit with cap had arrived for a merchant skipper who had gone to Aachen for a medical board with the hope of exchange. As soon as we had heard he had been passed and gone over the border, G. and I promptly closed for the suit, of which we had secured the refusal, with his _chargé d’affaires_. Shorn of its buttons the suit made a smart civilian costume for Gilbert, and shorn of its badge the cap became merely of the naval type of headgear so common amongst German boys or men of the working-class. I had always decided I would shape my rôle according to the clothes which I could find, and I now decided that I should travel 4th class, as some sort of mechanic. For a coat I had to fall back upon a brand new English coat sent out from home and confiscated by and restolen from the Germans. I made it as shabby as I could in the short time at my disposal but even so it was far too smart to pass for my class of “character” except at night. I therefore decided that if travelling by day I would wear over my coat a very old dark blue naval raincoat which had been given me. I was thus equipped. I might possibly have done better if I had waited, but the completion of my arrangements had to synchronise, as far as possible, with that of the others. I had also been able to copy a fairly good map of northern Schleswig, showing roads and railways, and, by great good luck and at the eleventh hour, I secured what I believe was the last compass but one in the whole camp.