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Updated: June 4, 2025
My diary, unusually voluminous for the day of June 3rd, shows that I was greatly impressed by the occurrences of that day and had taken the trouble to write down my impressions at length. The following extract is a word for word copy from my diary: June 3rd. Awakened at 2.15 a.m. by agitated firing of anti-aircraft guns. Heard planes overhead and big guns going.
Motor-mounted anti-aircraft weapons, however, have not proved an unqualified success. The fact that the vehicles are condemned to the high roads, or at least to comparatively smooth and level ground, constitutes a severe handicap.
At first it only came from one propeller, but others arrived and the sound multiplied and increased in volume, and at the same time it rose and fell in irregular gusts and regular pulsations. Anti-aircraft firing burst out suddenly and for a few minutes there was a blending of whining, whistling, rushing sounds overhead punctuated by faint reports.
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.
It is well to remember that even Archibald's offspring obey the laws of gravity, and shells from an anti-aircraft gun, burst they never so high, descend sooner or later in the shape of jagged fragments somewhere. And if the somewhere is your face, upturned to see the fun . . . !
By this time machine guns began to spatter their deadly contents among the darting planes, while further back the anti-aircraft guns gave forth searching roars as to what they might should a plane be hit. It was enough so far as it went. Now for the gas-bags, the sausages; for these observation balloons were the real object of all this nocturnal pother.
Down on the deck the boys inspected the smart-looking four-inch guns with which they later were to become better acquainted, and the trim little anti-aircraft guns to be used in case of attack by Zeppelins or aeroplanes. "Keep your eyes and ears wide open all the time; remember what you are told and you'll soon catch on," Witt told them.
It is ridiculous to suppose that the Germans would not be able to concentrate an equally large number of aircraft, to be supported also by anti-aircraft guns on the decks of destroyers and by the coast defenses. We have not yet won the supremacy of the air, and it must inevitably be misleading to base any proposition on the assumption that we are masters of that element.
The sun, rising out of the Adriatic, turns into ellipsoids of silver the aluminum-colored observation balloons which form the city's first line of aerial defense. As the sun climbs higher it brings into bold relief the lean barrels of the anti-aircraft guns, which, from the roofs of the buildings to the seaward, sweep the eastern sky.
The "Archies," or anti-aircraft guns of the Germans, were trying to reach the French planes, and, in addition to the bullets, "woolly bears" and "flaming onions" were sent up toward them. These are two types of bursting shells, the first so named because when it explodes it does so with a cloud of black smoke and a flaming center.
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