[2] The Egyptian commander Ratib Pasha intended to remain within the safety of the Gura fortress, but his American chief of staff Loring Pasha—the former Confederate Brig. Gen.

Following Britain's complete occupation of Egypt and the rising of the Mahdi in the Sudan, the Egyptian fort at Gura was among those detailed in the 1884 tripartite Hewett Treaty.

The treaty, signed at Adwa and ratified by Queen Victoria, obliged Ethiopia to oversee the evacuation of exposed Egyptian garrisons in Eritrea and the southern Sudan through the port of Massawa in exchange for the garrisons' supplies of arms and ammunition, recognition of their sovereignty over the Bogos lands—essentially, the highlands of modern Eritrea, which the Ethiopians organized as Hamasien—and other concessions.

Once Ethiopia had made good on its part of the bargain, however, Britain's concern over France's rapid expansion of its colony in the Bay of Tadjoura (today's Djibouti) led it to openly support Italy's bloodless occupation of Massawa and establishment of Italian Eritrea in the former Egyptian lands.

[1] The Battle of Adwa ending the First Italo-Ethiopian War kept it from annexing the entirety of Ethiopia but it continued to hold Gura and other towns in the former Egyptian highlands.

Furthermore, it was established a huge airbase maintained by 2,000 American employees of Johnson, Drake & Piper, along with an equal number of hired or conscripted Italians and Eritreans.

[1][6] The facility—operated by employees of Douglas Aircraft—received damaged RAF aircraft which were sailed down the Red Sea to Massawa and transported overland, and repaired them for return to the North African front under their own power.

The American facility boasted a nine-hole golf course with the following rules:[7] At war's end, Eritrea was incorporated into Haile Selassie's restored Ethiopia.

As a Cold War ally of the United States, however, Imperial Ethiopia was able to host American reconnaissance aircraft at the site during the onset of violent Eritrean separatism.