380
The National Geographic Magazine
in the camp, representing 10 different na
tionalities. Only four were Americansour
selves and two Harvard juniors.
Twenty, including the Harvards, drew
bunks upstairs. We Yales and 18 others
made up our double-deckers, just like the
ones in New Haven, in the downstairs dorm.
Brielle Offers a Warm Welcome
In the dayroom the assistant mayor and a
delegation of Brielle townspeople gave us an
official welcome. His Honor delivered a
speech. We couldn't understand much of it,
of course, and neither could we manage con
versation with the Brielle folk. But coffee
and cookies in quantities went the rounds;
this language we could understand.
That evening the NBBS man gave us our
schedule.
"So the kitchen can serve breakfast in
shifts," he began, "the upstairs gets up at
5:30 a.m., downstairs at 6:30."
The Harvards groaned. The Elis grinned.
"Upstairs group, work starts at 7. Down
stairs at 8. Upstairs, finish at 4:30 p.m.
Downstairs, 5:30."
The Elis groaned. The Harvards grinned.
The first morning Charlie thought he was
back on the Groote Beer.
"Wakee! Wakee!" But it was Mr. Fink,
proprietor of the hostel, not Jerry, who woke
us. He had no trouble with us, however,
for everybody wanted to see the flood damage
and get started repairing it.
Voorne is in South Holland Province, near
the northern border of Zeeland. Mostly re
claimed land lying well below sea level, Zee-
land and North Brabant bore the brunt of
the February flood.
The 6-mile trip from the hostel to the work
area opened our eyes to the complexity of
the Dutch water engineers' problems. Like
most Americans, we had visualized Nether
lands dikes with their feet forever in the sea,
but here we found dikes guarding inland fields.
We learned there are three kinds of dikes
in Holland. Big ones standing in the sea, the
"watchers," fend off the first assaults of the
waves. If they crumble, the "sleepers" be
hind them take over. Finally come the
"dreamers," last-resort defenders of individual
farms, even fields.
Sleepers and dreamers alike had found their
slumbers rudely interrupted in February.
Near our work was a place where a sea dike
had let go. It had been rebuilt and the land
behind it pumped dry, but the grass on its
slope had not been replanted as yet. A 200-
yard patch of brown earth told us where the
water had rushed through.
"Like most watchers that failed," said our
supervisor, a government engineer, "this one
did not break in front, where it is strongly
reinforced.
"No, the water came over the top and un
dermined it from behind, where there is only
sand. Once there is a hole all the way
through, tides surging back and forth destroy
a dike in a short time."
Behind the watcher, more than one sleeper
had been overpowered. Shovels on shoulders,
we walked through once verdant wheat and
potato fields now covered with scraggly briers
and fine gray silt. A long mound of raw muck
stood 10 feet high. Half a mile away a lake
lay in the middle of a field.
"It's your job to fill the lake with the dirt
in the mound," said the engineer. "We have
some equipment to do the hauling.
"Where did the mound come from? Well,
the flood filled up the canal behind the dike
with tons of muck. We dredged the canal,
and this mound is the spoil."
"How about the lake?" somebody asked.
"The tides gouged it. What a crazy, waste
ful thing is the sea! Why couldn't it have
dredged the canal deeper and built the field
higher? Anyway, the farmer who owns this
land is luckier than some. His lake is only 10
feet deep. There are 90-foot ones on Schou
wen Duiveland."
Students Power a Railroad
The promised hauling equipment was a rail
road. We were the locomotives. The cars,
fortunately, were little, and two fellows could
push them along the level rails.
They were called kipwagens and had dump
mechanisms. Some of the boys took corners
too fast, and the kipwagens jumped the tracks.
Junk on the rails spilled them, too, especially
when they were top-heavy with students steal
ing rides (page 378).
We paired off and started shoveling muck
into kipwagens. The first day must have
shaken our supervisor's confidence in the ris
ing generation. Blisters appeared, backs
ached, rest breaks multiplied.
With only two loads moved per team, Vit-
torio pushed dank black hair out of his eyes
and shouted: "Mangiare!"
(Continued on page 389)
