ISMAILIA, March 15, 1952 Khamsin! The great wind swept clouds of sand across the deserts on to Suez today, blocking the canal with tearaway ships, searing the paint off cars, and pinning British troops in their camps.

The young National Servicemen around Ismailia went to bed last night under a waning moon in a cool, starry sky.

They woke this morning to a scene like a London pea-souper with a brilliant arc light shining through making a fog of flaming gold whose particles of flying sand peppered the face like fine shot from a sporting gun. It was hotter outside than in. Going out was like opening the door of an oven. Sand swirled in a haze over Moascar garrison, while the sun in a cloudless sky beat its heat through the filter.

SILENT
The supple palm trees bowed low in the path of the Khamsin, this strangely silent wind that comes from the south.

On the roads, visibility was down to a few yards. A green car driven down the Port Said road by an officer had its windscreen pock-marked by the flying sand, and paint and chromium was skimmed off.

Huge drifts of sand blocked the road between Moascar and Fayid. British soldiers, who at this time of the year think nostalgically of clearing snow away from their path back home, are going out with bulldozers to make a way through.

Tugs were tonight trying to free the British merchantman City of Bedford (7,431 tons), blown aground by the Khamsin. Seven other ships either went aground or slewed across the canal. – Daily Express, Saturday March 15, 1952