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.
“It is far easier for the proverbial camel to pass through the needle’s eye, hump and all, than for an erstwhile colonial administration to give sound and honest counsel of a political nature to its liberated territory.”
—Kwame Nkrumah (1900–1972)
“Ce corps qui s’appelait et qui s’appelle encore le saint empire romain n’était en aucune manière ni saint, ni romain, ni empire. This agglomeration which called itself and still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)