Since the Middle Ages, kilometers of dikes have kept the North Sea at bay from the island of Walcheren in Zeeland. In the autumn of 1944, it is its own liberators who open these same dikes with bombs. For a year, the tides will flow in and out twice a day over lands that generations of Zeelanders had patiently wrested from the waves. On October 3, 1944, the Bomber Command bombs the Westkapelle dike, killing 152 civilians and creating the first breach. Four bombings in two weeks create four major breaches, submerging a large part of the island. Walcheren was strategically located at the mouth of the Scheldt, which allowed the use of the deep-water port of Antwerp. The German cannons installed on the island prevented the Allies from using the Antwerp port facilities to relieve their supply difficulties. Without Walcheren, the port was useless. On October 1, 1944, General Eisenhower authorizes the bombing of the sea dike near Westkapelle. The day before the first attack, planes drop leaflets to warn the population of an impending flood. But the German occupying forces did not allow people to leave the island. The residents therefore remain trapped on lands that are about to be flooded. On October 3, 1944, the Bomber Command attacks the sea dike near Westkapelle, dropping 1,270 tons of bombs on the dike and the village. This breaches the dike and kills 152 civilians. Many people had taken refuge in a mill, which was destroyed by a direct hit. As the Canadian engineers had predicted, this breach was not sufficient to flood the island. On October 7, 100 RAF bombers attack the Nolle dike west of Vlissingen, as well as the Ritthem dike. Four days later, 62 Lancasters drop 374 tons of bombs on the dike west of Veere, opening five breaches through which the saltwater rushes into the lowlands. Finally, on October 17, Westkapelle is bombed again to widen the existing breach, with three waves of 47 Lancasters dropping 652 bombs. The breaches in the sea dikes of the island remain open for a long time, until October 1945, exposing the island to the full impact of the tides twice a day. Leaving the breaches open for such a long time, unavoidable due to lack of means during the war, exposes them to the scouring by the tides, which widen and deepen them to the point of making their closure extremely difficult, requiring the invention of new construction techniques using caissons. The last breach is closed on October 23, 1945. The daily ebb and flow of the tides strip away as much as 50 centimeters of arable land in some places, according to post-war measurements taken on site. The fertile clay of Zeeland, saturated with salt, becomes sterile for several years. Only in the spring of 1946 do farmers resume work. Although potatoes and onions did not grow in this salt-saturated soil, winter rye and barley, among others, proved capable of surviving. The irony of history lies in a date: on February 1, 1953, when a storm breaks the fragile dikes elsewhere in Zeeland and drowns hundreds of people, Walcheren itself remains almost unscathed. Its dikes, rebuilt only seven years earlier with techniques born from the 1944 disaster, hold firm against the sea that they themselves had allowed to enter.