Word: dikes
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Slow Going. In the Rhine lowlands, Crerar's troops were veterans of inundations. They hopped from island to island, from dike to dike, in their water-churning, mud-biting "Buffalo" and "Weasel" vehicles. On dry land the going was nearly as bad. The Germans had been able to concentrate. But by this week, behind fine air interference, Crerar's men had hacked out a dozen miles of grip on the Rhine. More importantly, his kilted Scots had broken into Goch, a hub of roads running into the industrial district west of the Rhine...
There were plenty of signs that food prices would continue to rise above the dike's top. Item: in Washington last week Senator John H. Bankhead, in a one-man exposition of a legislative bloc at work, blandly predicted to U.S. farmers that the Commodity Credit Corp. would continue for another year its open-purse support of agricultural prices...
...Domburg only one Dutchman was willing to go. It was the same in Oostkapelle, Westkapelle, Veere and all the other dike-side communities. Worried officials knew the marooned folk had food for two or three months. But they had little fuel for heating. Diphtheria, typhoid and influenza were spreading. And when the flood tides and angry storms of late winter and early spring struck Walcheren, what then? There might be famine. Baffled officials wondered if they should evacuate the people by force...
...Will of Man. By his labor a man imparts a portion of his life to the soil; to leave his land is thus like a touch of death. Nor does a man easily leave the soil his father and forefathers have wrested from the sea. The great basalt dike at Westkapelle had been started 500 years ago. The Germans had built pillboxes on it. Allied bombers had breached it. Commandos had poured through its gaps, in the wake of the rushing sea. Here & there, like beached sea monsters, still sprawled the rusting hulks of dead British armor...
They were already making attempts to reclaim their soil. On dry isolated spots farmers hoed sugar beets, tended their barnyard fowl. Plank walks were set on fences above the water. At one place dike workers mended the torn sea wall in the age-old manner. A score of them hauled on the ropes of a leaden pile driver, keeping time to the chant of a greybeard...