One of the more unusual of London’s WWI memorials is that to the Imperial Camel Corps in Victoria Embankment Gardens, just along from Embankment tube station, by the Thames.
Raised in December 1916 the Camel Corps was, as one might guess, established for desert warfare. The first men to join the Corps were Australian troops who had recently returned from the horrors of the Gallipoli campaign; they were quickly joined by troops from Britain, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore and India.
The Corps fought in many of the Middle East campaigns and at one time numbered 4,150 men and 4,800 camels. Thanks to the camels the soldiers could travel long distances across remote desert terrain, carrying machine guns, mountain artillery and medical support. 346 troops from the Imperial Camel Corps lost their lives during WWI.
The small memorial was sculpted by Major Cecil Brown who had himself served with the Corps; it was unveiled in July 1921 in the presence of the Prime Ministers of Australia and New Zealand.
From: WWI 100: London’s Memorials … The Imperial Camel Corps
One of the members of the Corps was the Scottish artist James McBey, also the designer of the ship depicted on bottles of Cutty Sark whisky. He did a number of dramatic etchings of his time in the desert, which leap from the screen of one typing JAMES + MCBEY + CAMEL into Google Images.
Thanks! Some of those sketches are rather lovely.