El Djem
He was sent in March 1941 to Egypt via the Cape of Good Hope to reinforce the FAU detachment in Greece, but this had been captured by the Nazis before he could join, so his unit was sent to Syria to work at the Hadfield-Spears Mobile Hospital, an Anglo-French entity attached to the Free French Forces. A stay of a month in Cairo allowed Davis to view the city's mosques (with Michael Rowntree) and produce a book on the subject (see list of works below). As the mobile hospital moved through Syria and Lebanon and then along the desert to Tunisia, and eventually to Italy and southern France, Davis visited (and wrote up in his copious notebooks) such places as Baalbek, Byblos, Damascus, Krak des Chevaliers, Beaufort, Leptis Magna and El Djem. He ran the hospital laundry. By 1944, his FAU unit had reached France, and he participated in the liberation of that country. He came home for demobilisation with the Croix de Guerre (oddly for a pacifist!) for his contribution to the Free French war effort.