Camel Hair Art

• The United States Army established the U.S. Camel Corps, which was stationed in California in the 19th century. One may still see brick stables at the Benicia Arsenal in Benicia, California, where they serve as artists' and artisans' studio spaces. During the American Civil War, camels were used at an experimental stage, but were not used any further, as they were unpopular with the men. Some escaped and their descendants roamed the arid parts of the American West until as late as the early 20th century.
• France created a méhariste camel corps as part of the Armée d'Afrique in the Sahara from 1902, replacing regular units of Algerian spahis and tirailleurs earlier used to patrol the desert boundaries. The camel-mounted units remained in service until the end of French rule in 1962. The French transferred the French personnel to other units and disbanded the locally recruited méharistes.
• In 1916, during World War I, the British created the Imperial Camel Corps, which was a brigade-sized military formation that fought in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign. It comprised infantry mounted on camels for movement across desert. In May 1918 the Corps was reduced in strength to a single battalion and was formally disbanded in May 1919. Also during World War I, the British Army created the Egyptian Camel Transport Corps, which consisted of a group of Egyptian camel drivers and their camels. The Corps supported British war operations in the Sinai desert, Palestine and Syria by transporting supplies to the troops.
• The Somaliland Camel Corps was a unit of the British Army based in British Somaliland from the early 20th century until the 1960s.