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they kept saying. “We've been invaded many times. We know how to deal with them. We just dissemble.”
Apparently they think the Germans don't catch on to that. At Ostend the whole town council was in session, and I was invited to attend and address it and so forth. But, oh, such damage. It was dreadful. That whole coast had been devastated, you know, every building down, and all the fish trade was down. They were working very hard to get the buildings re-erected, and to get some place where fish could be brought in and processed and shipped all over Belgium for food--getting the fishing industry going again.
I said to the fishermen there, “Well, how did you manage with the Germans? How were you able to keep your petrol?”
They said, “They gave us just enough petrol to go fishing, to go halfway across the Channel and back home again bringing the fish. It never occurred to them we might go all the way over and not bring back any fish and not come back.”
They escaped to England in droves. Didn't bring fish back, you see. Wasn't that stupid? They gave them just enough to go out in the Channel, and back--and never realized they would go on to England. They were very pleased with that.”
As I told you, the men who were building the fish-house were doing it by hand, laying the bricks. They had no machinery at all. The machinery had all been destroyed. They were wheeling up the bricks, and they were laying the pavement, and
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