Friends in Need
THE YOUNG (IAtHCLI,C Messenger 2C FEB^U;^! '993*
The voice over the radio was tense
and urgent. The town of Hunstanton
on the English coast was flooded, it
said. Marooned people were in danger
of being swept away. Help was needed!
The men at the near-by U.S. Air
Force base leaped into action. But
when they reached the shore the waves
were so high and so clogged with
debris they could not launch their boat.
Quickly Reis Leming pumped up a
rubber raft. Pushing it ahead of him,
he waded through icy water up to his
neck. At each house he paused to let
people clamber aboard the raft. In
all he made three trips, rescuing
single-handed 27 persons. For this the
former student at Gonzaga University,
in Spokane, Wash., was honored by
Queen Elizabeth.
Volunteers of many nations joined
j in rescue work in all the countries
j stricken by the recent North Sea
floods. Thousands of U.S. troops and
engineers toiled to help repair tem
porarily the broken dikes in Holland.
American planes started a sandbag
airlift, dropping thousands of sacks.
When the dikes have been closed and
the water pumped out, the long, bitter
j fight to reclaim the land will start.
One method is to spread gypsum on
the land. This turns the salt into cal
cium chloride, a substance which dis-
I solves in rain-water. Then every rain
will help to wash the soil. But it will be
i several years before crops can be
grown again.
Huge holes like these were torn by the raging sea in Holland's dikes. The salt water
rushing in drowned people and stock and left a covering of salt on the once fertile soil.
One third of Holland's 13,000 square miles lies below sea level. The dikes in
tended to keep out the sea have taken centuries and vast sums to build.
