For the most part these flying columns drew blank. Rarely did the Turks and their Bedouin allies come out and fight, but confined themselves to sniping and harassing our cavalry-patrols at night. Every day these would return to camp bearing the body of a comrade, killed without seeing the hand that killed him; and once, saddest of all, two riderless horses, famished and almost mad with thirst, dashed up to the watering-troughs in camp. Their riders were never found.
We had to wait long weeks before our chance came. (Even then it came only just in time, for we left Ayun Musa for good the following day.)
It was rather a curious affair. The solution to the whole question lay in our being able to get the guns to the top of a certain hill commanding the Raha Pass. If this could be accomplished things would be very warm indeed for the people in the Pass.
It took twenty-six horses to pull the gun to the top of that hill! The rest was easy; almost too easy. The Turks had no heavy artillery, so we sat about in the open smoking and watching our guns shell them out of their holes into the arms of the Indian infantry, who went forward with a pleased smile to receive them.
But the urgent need in those days of the army in the East was aircraft; fast, modern machines, that is. There was a lamentable lack of anything that could go near the Fokker or Taube; the men were willing, but the machines were woefully weak. Almost with impunity the Turks came over and bombed the camps in the area; the one at El Shatt always received particular attention, possibly on account of its proximity to Suez, more probably because it was the largest and most strongly-fortified camp in the vicinity. Suez itself was attacked many times, as might have been expected, both on account of its immense oil-tanks and its position as the southern entrance to the Canal. Curiously enough, Turkish aircraft never troubled us much at Ayun Musa, though of course there was the usual "wind-up."
As a start we were ordered to convert our eighteen pounders into anti-aircraft guns. This meant digging pits with a weird kind of platform in the middle; this was for the reception of the gun-wheels alone. The trail was thus left free, which enabled the gun to be tilted sufficiently for high-angle fire. We never did fire at any aircraft from these pits; they looked very nice, however.