The Imperial Camel Corps (ICC) was a camel-mounted infantry brigade, raised in January 1916, by the British Empire, for service in the Middle East, during the First World War.
From a small beginning the brigade eventually comprised four battalions, one battalion each from Great Britain and New Zealand and two battalions from Australia. Support troops included a mountain artillery battery, a machine gun squadron, Royal Engineers, a field ambulance, and an administrative train.
The ICC became part of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) and fought in several battles and engagements, in the Senussi Campaign, the Sinai and Palestine Campaign and in the Arab Revolt. The brigade suffered significant casualties, and 246 men were killed. British deaths totalled 106, with another forty-one from New Zealand, eighty-four from Australia and nine from India. The ICC was disbanded after the end of the war in May 1919.
Read more about Imperial Camel Corps: Aftermath, Order of Battle
Famous quotes containing the words imperial, camel and/or corps:
“Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore.”
—Apocrypha. Ecclesiasticus, 44:14.
The line “their name liveth for evermore” was chosen by Rudyard Kipling on behalf of the Imperial War Graves Commission as an epitaph to be used in Commonwealth War Cemeteries. Kipling had himself lost a son in the fighting.
“There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)