With straw hats on their heads, armbands on their arms, and wooden sticks in hand, they diligently searched every grass slope, forest, rice field, and house behind the levee, from the top of the levee down to four or five hundred meters into the fields.
The sun scorched during the day, and mosquitoes bit at night. Sometimes it poured rain, sometimes they were tortured by hunger and thirst. But behind them was their home, and even if they fell ill and fainted, they would get up and persist.
The piping seepage was about two hundred meters from the river levee, and cadres and the masses had surrounded the dozen or so water seepage points with sandbags, forming an area as big as a basketball court.
The sandbags, over two meters high and more than a meter wide, formed a circular large pool.
