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It took the young airman half an hour to fight his way to the first cottage. Eleven people clambered off the roof on to the raft, and Leming pushed them back to safety. Without waiting for thanks, he started back again. On the second trip he rescued seven. The third time he was gone for more than an hour, and when he finally returned with nine more, he was moving very slowly. "Help me. My legs . . . Help me," the people on dry land heard him mutter. His exposure suit was badly ripped when they dragged him out. Another five minutes in the icy water might well have proved fatal, said a doctor. But Reis Leming was not bothered. Next day, once again he was back helping the rescuers. One fact made the job more difficult: Reis Leming cannot swim a stroke.
* In Belgium, where the flood waters spread over 40,000 acres and took a toll of 14 lives, 22-year-old King Baudouin, less royally gifted with a sense of fitness, raised another storm by leaving his country in mid-disaster to sojourn with his father, deposed King Leopold II, on the balmy French Riviera.