r/f*'--
ff/ïë/ÏZ/A'/S
ZS ZZS# S3
WESTERN EUROPE
Helping Hearts
As if Western Europe had not already
had more than enough of weather, howl
ing blizzards swirled down on Britain last
week, while high spring tides threatened
The Netherlands and rivers overflowed in
Belgium. But man's battle with nature
was slowly being won. Everywhere, catas
trophe and the willingness to share it were
welding old allies, grown apart, into a spe
cial kind of comradeship.
"I never understood why you liked
Americans so much," wrote one Dutch
woman to a friend in the U.S. "To me.
their insistence on the story of the boy
with his finger in the dike always seemed
indicative of their lack of understanding.
I admit now I was totally wrong. Here
they were with their trucks and helicop
ters, picking up people, bringing them in,
and going right out on another mission.
What struck me was that their hearts were
in it. just as our Dutch hearts were."
Offers of aid to The Netherlands had
poured in from far away. A factory in
Italy offered homes to 300 Dutch chil
dren; 20.000 French families offered
haven to the flood victims.
In Britain, the first letter new U.S. Am
bassador Winthrop Aldrich found on his
desk was an urgent request for 10 million
sandbags to bolster Britain's fast-disap
pearing supply. Aldrich promptly tele
phoned Washington to have the bags
flown over. Before the operation could get
under way. however, promises of 17 mil
lion sandbags had been given Britain's
embassies in Europe alone. By the follow
ing morning. R.A.F. transports were wing
ing their way to pick up 5.500.000 bags al
ready stacked on airfields in Italy. France.
Switzerland, Denmark. Belgium, Norway.
Germany and Portugal. Even The Nether
lands. stripped of sandbags by her own
needs, offered all surplus space on Dutch
airliners to carry the bags Britain needed.
Airliners from other countries soon
joined the R.A.F. in flying the heavy bales
of bags to the British flood areas, where
trucks and volunteers stood ready in the
cold and snow to fill and pile them up.
More than n million bags were on hand
by the time the spring tides rose again at
week's end. Said Wing Commander Mas-
terman. who organized Operation King
Canute, as the sandbag-lift was called:
"It's been a delight. It shows the thing
works in peacetime as well as in war."
