Military and Police Camels

What an excuse for extraordinary photos! In the Middle East, South Asia, and parts of Africa, camels have long served in terrain where a horse could not perform. In fact camels still serve a useful role in strategic army and policing commands.

Probably the most exciting and popular part of India's annual Republic Day parade is the Border Security Forces contingent. You would scarcely believe a 36-piece brass band is included in the camel brigade. True! Even Google did this:[1]

Photo: NPR

Just as incredible is the mounted military pipe band of the Pakistan Desert Rangers. The old Empire has a long echo! In daily life the riders and their steeds are in far less colourful attire, musical instruments safely stowed elsewhere we presume.

Photo: Aamir Qureshi

But wait. Not to be outdone, how about the Royal Oman Police Mounted Pipe Band!?? Purely ceremonial, the band along with its camel cavalry exists to promote cultural traditions. Sultan Qaboos clearly has respect for his educational days at Sandhurst Military Academy and subsequent service in a Scottish regiment of the British Army.

Photo: sickchirpse.com

A photo of the Saudi National Guard eludes me. Qatar has a mounted camel unit, and probably so do several more countries of the same climate and traditions.

Qatar Heritage Police. Photo: www.news.CN

Of course what you are seeing are ceremonial dress uniforms and displays. Everyday routine requires their appearance to be much more suited to their desert surroundings. While some camel units have been replaced by tanks, others have transitioned to public law and order duties with high visibility as tourist attractions.

Jordan Royal Desert Forces. Photo: Warrick Page, NY Times

Photo: camelphotos.com

Photo: BDM

Placing Egypt's mounted police in tourist areas was a smart move. A quiet job, perhaps a bit boring?

Historically, army camels have been known since ancient times, at least from Hannibal's crossing of southern Europe. They were far superior to horses as pack animals in terms of cargo weight and distance coverage. As cavalry, they were equally fast and when couched would serve their riders as gun placements or shade from an unforgiving sun.

Recently a Bactrian camel skelton was uncovered in Austria, believed to be part of the Ottoman army besieging Vienna in 1683.[2]

Photo: BBC

The British became accustomed to using camels in their historic campaigns in Africa, India, and the Middle East. Australian troops formed the first companies.

Imperial Camel Corps Brigade, First World War. Photo: Capt. Douglas G. Pearman

Here is the Imperial Camel Corps's ambulance transport, an amazing photo from http://australiancamels.com/camels-in-war/:

The United States Army imported camels to be pack animals in southwest desert areas, a previous post here. Compare the results to Australia's importation of camels in the same nineteenth century period for similar purposes: Oz now has an explosion of feral camels whereas the American southwest has none. 

US Army Camel Experiment reenactment. Photo: Texas Camel Corps

Interestingly, one Australian police force is bringing camels back for desert patrols after a sixty year hiatus.[3] New South Wales has come full circle.

Camels are familiar to United Nations troops who now serve in missions in countries with demanding equatorial terrain, for instance Sudan and Eritrea.

Photo: http://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/camels-at-war/

It seems unlikely that the stolid beasts will be completely replaced by tanks.

[1] http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/google-doodle-celebrates-indias-67th-republic-day-with-bsf-camel-contingent-296624.html.

[2] Jonathan Webb, "Intact Ottoman 'War Camel' found in Austrian cellar," BBC News, Science and Environment (http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32145248).

[3] NSW Police Force, https://www.facebook.com/nswpoliceforce/?fref=nf.

© 2016 Brenda Dougall Merriman

Racing

Camel racing is BIG in many countries, notably the Middle East. Probably the most intensive business and the highest stakes are in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Camel farms are an industry. Huge prize money is awarded to owners of the swiftest animals. A few years ago, some countries bowed to human rights concerns and stopped the practice of using small children as jockeys. Now, it's mechanical robots that ride the camels.

Lars Plougmann, Wikipedia.org

Camels and owners had to re-train to adjust to the change. The tiny, lightweight things wear jockey hats and racing colours to appear less freakish to the camels. Owners drive in their SUVs beside the track, monitoring the camels' speed and heart rates. They can move the reins and a whip with two-way radio controls to the robots' little hinged arms. Weird. I wonder how many SUV pileups they have. Camels are fast!

Luxor

 Other countries and towns around the world have adopted less intense versions of racing, with adult riders. Some have token prize money, some have annual cups. Often the races are held in conjunction with a local festival. More often than not, amateurs are welcome to try their skills from a stable of camels at hand.

Australia 2009

It's not surprising that Australia seems to have the most fun with them. Alice Springs holds the annual Lasseter's Camel Cup in July, only one of many venues in that country. I quote from their website:

"The family and fundraiser event is well known for its unpredictable and very entertaining camels as well as the brave and crazy riders. ... Racing them can prove a nightmare for riders and handlers but fantastic viewing for spectators."[1]

Alice Springs 2012

More surprising is the enthusiastic American adoption by Virginia City, Nevada for several days in September. Camels were not unknown there in the nineteenth century as pack animals. Today, experienced riders and amateurs alike participate. Last-minute coaching advice:

He does his best to talk us all out of it, telling us we can back out at anytime, that is until the chute gate opens, then you better just hang on. He warns riders of the hazards of climbing about seven feet atop the beasts of burden that weigh anywhere between 900 to 1,700 pounds. “I have some of the best camels in the country, but they’re still animals,” he told us one year. “The camels will have more control than you will, and they have an attitude of their own. We don’t need any wusses here.”[2]

Pushkar, Rajasthan

Kind of reminds me of Pushkar where our tour leader had once been bullied co-opted into the free-for-all camel race open to all comers. He tells me this news after the day's races are over. Coulda, woulda, shoulda. Seriously.

[1] "About the Cup," Lasseter's Camel Cup, http://www.camelcup.com.au/.

[2] Teri Vance, "Teri's Notebook: No joking matter, I'm in the camel race," Nevada Appeal (http://www.nevadaappeal.com/news/local/12801274-113/races-camel-friday-camels : accessed 6 September 2014).

TRACKS: The Book and the Film

Last September I had the pleasure of seeing, at the Toronto International Film Festival, the feature-length movie "Tracks" based on the book of the same name by Robyn Davidson.[1] Just having viewed the film for a second time, I appreciated the cinematography even more, if possible. Mia Wasikowska does a great job portraying Robyn Davidson, the determined woman on a true-story mad adventure across 1,700 miles of lonely, difficult terrain.

******************

A few years ago, a chance reference to the book Tracks made me itch with impatience for my very own copy to arrive. A crazy woman walking across the vast Australian outback desert? With camels as companions? Certainly captured my imagination. Even then, in 1977, the antipodean continent was beginning to experience the explosion of feral camels that thrive in the desert.

What Davidson did was learn how to train some feral camels as pack animals. The camels carried essential supplies that had to be supplemented by wild plants and game. The preparation took two years of enormous physical work. Accepting a come-lately offer from National Geographic caused her much ambivalence: she needed money for provisions but hated the notion of public exposure. She didn't want to share her personal journey while it was happening.

Obviously Davidson lived to tell the tale ― the superbly written tale. I was not prepared for the exceptional writing skill; the humour; the fits of self-examination; the immediacies of survival that transport the reader right into the grit and sweat of her days. Her four camels quickly became individual personalities.

Her first thoughts after agreeing to allow photography at certain points:

Suddenly it seemed as if this trip belonged to everybody except me. Never mind, I said. When you leave Alice Springs [to begin] it will all be over. No more loved ones to care about, no more ties, no more duties, no more people needing you to be one thing or another, no more conundrums, no more politics, just you and the desert, baby. And so I pushed it all down into the dim recesses of my mind, there to fester and grow like botulism. (105)

The journey itself took nine months from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean. Along the way her communion became near-perfect with her animal companions, the Aborigines, and the astonishingly diverse landscape. This is not to say she didn't go mad and panic at times. Or get lost. Or lose her gun. Or lose the camels, the worst fear of all in empty country. Threats to her animals from predators meant she had to use the gun. Their care and feeding was paramount through sand, rain, mud, rocks, canyons, wadis, insects, snakes, and above all a scorching sun. Avoiding the occasional curious passerby was easier than fending off the penultimate publicity she so did not want.

 What was the journey really about? The few excerpts here hint at the internal journey Davidson freely expresses and ultimately felt was successful. Her dog and her camels sustained any need for companionship as she shed the stresses of modern life. Any reader with the slightest sensitivity is drawn into her awakening existential freedom.

On eventually allowing "social custom" to fall away:

On the one hand, I didn't want to be anywhere but in this desert and on my own; on the other, I was running very low on food, my last meal before I got there being dog-biscuits liberally laced with custard powder, sugar, milk and water. And I was nervous about seeing people again. By now I was utterly deprogrammed. I walked along naked usually, clothes being not only putrid but unnecessary. My skin had been baked a deep terra-cotta brown and was the constituency of harness leather. The sun no longer penetrated it. (211-212)

On achieving her goal:

I had discovered capabilities and strengths I would not have imagined possible in those distant dream-like days before the trip. ... That to be free one needs constant and unrelenting vigilance over one's weaknesses. A vigilance which requires a moral energy most of us are incapable of manufacturing. We relax back into the moulds of habit. They are secure, they bind us and keep us contained at the expense of freedom. ... To be free is to learn, to test yourself constantly, to gamble. It is not safe. I had learnt to use my fears as stepping stones rather than stumbling blocks, and best of all I had learnt to laugh. (222)

Reference to the abysmal plight of the Aborigines was inevitable; Davidson was crossing a great deal of reservation land. Encounters with their settlements and one particular elder who voluntarily accompanied her for several days mid-trip provide some of the most vivid moments. As she struggled with the Pitjanjara language, there is more about Aboriginal linkage to their always shrinking Land and the energies left on earth by their dream-heroes. All the more poignant her: "The Aborigines do not have much time. They are dying."

Tracks is one crazy, chilling, joyful, hair-raising, inspiring story, completely full of life, courage, despair, and love.

**************

Stacking up a movie against the book it was based on is probably a fool's exercise. But we do it anyway, don't we? Both portray the story of a personal challenge, an extreme way to "find" oneself.

The film "Tracks" is gorgeous Australian landscape at its best, and Wasikowska fits the part perfectly. It gives more time and space to the NatGeo photographer than he warrants in the book. I would not have chosen the nerdy Adam Driver to play the part, but no-one asked me. Was John Cusack not available?! The "bit" parts are done by wonderful Oz character actors.

What's lacking, of course, is Davidson's rich prose and memorable insights, although her approval of the production was sought and given. We seem to get little idea of her motivation, with a couple of somewhat confusing scenes of family and friends seeing her off. Those vivid moments in the rich depth of her association with Charlie, the Aboriginal, get scant attention.

Wasikowska, co-star Driver, and director John Curran made a brief appearance on stage before the screening at the Film Festival. None of the camels showed up.

Davidson at the 2013 Adelaide Film Festival

photo: 1233 ABC Newcastle, New South Wales

Robyn Davidson is a prolific writer of further travel adventures around the globe. Her thoughts on the movie are given here. 

[1] Robyn Davidson, Tracks (1980; reprint, USA: First Vintage Books, 1995).

© 2014 Brenda Dougall Merriman. All rights reserved.