But before this the airmen had commenced their work in the passes. When our infantry broke the enemy’s line on the Plain of Sharon, many thousands of Turks, who were on the foothills eastward of the gap our cavalry had galloped through, had endeavoured to swing round and retreat to the highlands of Samaria. But the movement was at once detected by the Australian airmen. The Turks, with their transport, were seen to be heading for a narrow defile leading up from Tul Keram to Anebta. Using their wireless, the airmen called up aerodromes where dozens of British and Australian pilots were awaiting the signal. The doomed column, extending over upwards of two miles, was deep in the pass when the first flight arrived with its bombs. Beginning on the leading troops and vehicles, the airmen, flying low, had, in a few minutes, blocked the narrow track. Pilot after pilot, flying in perfect order, dropped his bombs, and then, assisted by the observers, raked the unfortunate Turks with machine guns. Their ammunition exhausted, the airmen sped back to their aerodrome for more, and returned again to the slaughter. Some pilots made four trips on that day. While the airmen attacked the column, the 5th Light Horse Brigade came up over the hills on either side of the track, and caught the Turks with their swords as they attempted to escape. Blocked in front, the battered, distracted procession closed up and telescoped, and fires broke out among the massed and broken vehicles. Still more appalling, because of the greater magnitude of the disaster, was the fate of a column between Balata and Fermeh on its way down the range towards Beisan, on the Jordan. Flying over Samaria, you appreciate the opportunities which this retreating army offered to the airmen. The stony hills are not so rugged as in Judea, but they are still too steep to permit masses of troops to move off the narrow roads. These roads wind along beside the wadies and are flanked nearly all the way by abrupt hillsides. The Balata column contained the bulk of the enemy’s forward transport. It stretched, slow-moving and in full view from the air, over seven or eight miles of the confined track. An Australian reconnaissance pilot sighted it soon after dawn and, an hour later, dozens of British and Australian bombers and machine gunners, flying within a few hundred feet of the ground, were smashing it to splinters. Again they began at the head, and forced the helpless drivers to pile up from the rear. For hours the bombing was continued. Here the airmen worked unaided by any other arm of the service, and they had wrecked or disabled the whole of the transport before the infantry came up from the south and took the dazed survivors. The broken material afterwards collected in the pass included 90 guns, 840 four-wheeled and 76 two-wheeled horse and cattle vehicles, 50 motor-lorries and a large number of miscellaneous transport, such as water carts and travelling kitchens.