To add to the difficulties, not only did the sea encroach, turning a
fertile land into a salt marsh, but the winter rains, unusually heavy
that tragic first winter, and lacking their usual egress to the sea,
spread the flood. There were many places well back of the lines where
fields were flooded, and where roads, sadly needed, lost themselves in
unfordable wallows of mud and water.
Henri then, knowing all this--none better--had his first question to
settle, which was this: As spring advanced the flood had commenced to
recede. Time came when, in those trenches now huddled shallow behind
the railway track, one could live in a certain comfort. In the deeper
ones, the bottom of the trench appeared for the first time.
On a day previous, however, the water had commenced to come back. There
had been no rain, but little by little in a certain place yellow,
ill-smelling little streams began to flow sluggishly into the trenches.
Seeped, rather than flowed. At first the Belgian officers laid it to
that bad luck that had so persistently pursued them. Then they held a
conference in the small brick house with its maps and its pine tables
and its picture of an American harvester on the wall, which was now
headquarters.
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