Were camels used by the US army?                                             

They were and for a very good reason. I will explain.

Both the German soldiers and the American soldiers in North Africa during the Second World War rode on camels because the camels are better suited for crossing the sand in deserts than horses are. As many as  50,000 camels were used in World War II despite the widespread motorization of cavalry forces.  The German army used camel trains to carry gasoline to their tanks stranded beyond over-extended supply lines in southern Russia.

Did you know that camels were also used by the US army in the United States and in Mexico? It was during the 19^th century that the camel, of all creatures, became a part of the fabled story of the deserts of the American Southwest.  The animal’s history in the United States, however, began far earlier, in 1701, when a wealthy sea captain named Crowninshield brought a male and female camel to Salem, Massachusetts, where he exhibited them as curiosities.  Later,   other camels were imported for exhibition over the next century and a half. They were seen in zoos and even circuses.

A U. S. Army explorer of the American West, Major George H. Crossman, recommended to Congress in 1836 that the Army should experiment with the use of camels since the chief desert problem for the traditional military animals was lack of water and forage (food).  Camels could go longer without water than horses or mules.

In the late 1840s, a group of junior army officers engaged in protecting the United States’ southwestern frontier – a terrain seriously deficient in the grass and water needed by cavalry horses and pack mules – began to think seriously about camels.  One officer, Major Henry Wayne, was particularly enthusiastic about the concept.  A West Point graduate, he investigated the subject of camels, including the different breeds and their economic usefulness in arid climates that are in the southwest United States and in the deserts in northern Mexico.

Wayne learned that there are two distinct species: the one-humped, or Arabian camel, Camelus dromedarius, known popularly as the “ship of the desert” and used primarily as a saddle animal; and the two-humped, or Bactrian, Camelus bactrianus, a heavier, slower-moving beast of burden. Incidentally, the camel’s hump is filled with fat, not water The median life expectancy of a camel is 17.8 years

Over time, the major became convinced that climatic conditions in western Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and southern California corresponded to the mean temperatures within the parallels of latitude between The US and Africa that defined what he referred to as “Camel Land.”  In their natural environment, camels moved faster, carried more freight, and required less water and forage than horses or mules.  Wayne eventually made a formal recommendation to the War Department that the importation of camels be undertaken in order to test the feasibility of a camel cavalry.        

In comparatively cool temperatures, the camel obtains sufficient moisture for survival from food plants, frequently becoming independent of drinking water for months at a time.  When it does drink after a prolonged dry spell, it can take in as much as 25 gallons of water within a few minutes.

It is as a pack animal that the camel truly excels.  A strong mule can tote up to 300 pounds.  A packhorse can carry somewhat less.  But a dromedary camel easily hauls 600 pounds over a 30-mile distance in a day, while a Bactrian camel can carry up to 1,000 pounds.  It is virtually impossible to overload a camel. 

I speak as an authority. I rode on the back of a camel in the Egyptian desert years ago when I was heavier than I am now. If in a camel's considered opinion, the load strapped to it is excessive; it simply will not rise.  Neither cursing nor beatings will budge an overloaded camel. The camel I was sitting on rose so fast, it almost catapulted me into the air.

Wayne’s idea reached Jefferson Davis, a U. S. Senator from Mississippi, who was then chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs and who later would become President of the Confederate States of America.  Davis liked the idea.  He was aware that the French had used camels with marked success in Egypt during the Napoleonic campaigns.

The idea for importing camels was eagerly endorsed by Edward Fitzgerald Beale, a young U. S.  Navy lieutenant.  In 1850, while surveying Death Valley, the officer thought of the hardy animals, then virtually unknown in the Western Hemisphere.  Beale and Davis agreed that camels could conceivably help develop the recently acquired southwestern territories.  Camels were swift and strong and could penetrate regions into which burros, horses and even mules could not go without ample supplies of water.  Davis imagined American soldiers astride dromedaries chasing hostile Indians off trails that crossed emigrant routes.  He envisioned camels carrying small artillery cannon on their humps, advancing Old Glory (US flag) farther into the west and south.

After Congress appropriated money for the camel project, Major Wayne and Lieutenant David D. Porter were sent to the eastern Mediterranean in a Navy ship, the Supply, to buy the first camels.  An experienced horse trader, Wayne spent considerable time investigating camel lore and studying the offerings in the camel markets of Egypt.  It was time well spent.  All but one of the 33 animals he bought at an average of $250 apiece survived the tough, three-month ocean voyage to Indianola, Texas.  Two colts were born on the trip.  

The ship dropped anchor in the Bay of Matagorda eight miles from Indianola on the afternoon of April 29, 1856.  The camels were in the care of native drivers, grouped together by the Americans under the generic name “Arabs,” regardless of their ethnic mix.  Wearing red blankets, the animals were transported to the wharf at Powder Point, three miles from Indianola.  Touching solid earth after their long confinement, the camels reared, kicked, cried out and broke halters, while the inhabitants of Indianola and Powder Point happily concluded that a free circus had come to town.

When the drivers, in their colorful red coats and blue pants, rode into Houston, signaling their approach by the jingling of large bells suspended from the camels’ necks, they created quite a sensation.  People watched entranced as the obedient beasts kneeled and rose on command.  A Texas newspaper poet wrote eloquently in celebration of the exotic visitors in columns of the Indianola Bulletin, while a Miss Mary A. Shirkey of Victoria, Texas, knitted a rather smelly pair of socks for President Franklin Pierce, under whose administration this experiment had taken place, from the coat of a government camel.  For this courtesy, she received appropriate thanks, and Major Wayne thought that perhaps camel hair would be a spin-off from the experiment that might have economic value. It eventually did.

In the late 1850s, camels were used to survey a route for a wagon road from Fort Defiance in Arizona to the Colorado River.  The Santa Fe Railroad and U. S. Highway 66 subsequently followed this route.  Lieutenant Beale of the U. S. Army hired “Greek George,” an Oriental driver, as one of his assistants, and sometime later lent him to John Butterfield.

Butterfield was originally a New York stagecoach driver, and years later, he was founder of the American Express Company. Butterfield contracted with the government in 1858 to carry mail between the Missouri River and San Francisco.  Uncle Sam’s camels, with “Greek George” in command, were used in building parts of the road later known as the Butterfield Route.  Thus, some of the historical trails across southwestern desert country are to the camels’ credit, in a realization (however partial) of Jefferson Davis’ dreams.

From 1858 to 1860, Jefferson Davis’ successor as Secretary of War, J. B. Floyd, repeatedly urged Congress to appropriate funds with which to purchase 1000 more camels.  But the Civil War soon ignited, and the camel idea was largely forgotten.  The very fact that Jefferson Davis, a Confederate, was the camels’ chief sponsor prejudiced many Union officers and men against the proposal which was then  doomed forever.

In the 1890s, passengers on a Southern Pacific trains reported seeing gaunt camels pacing the sands of Arizona Territory. The Southern Pacific train ran over one of the animals that was crossing the tracks. .

In 1901, in western Arizona, a In October 1891, camels, began suddenly appearing from the desert, which then caused a cattle stampede outside Harrisburg, Arizona.  Men stood around, amazed, not knowing what to do, when Harry Wharton, one of the original camel-teamsters, approached one of the camels and stroked it across the knees.  The camel readily knelt.  Harry then shot the animal dead.  That night, two Mexicans stripped the carcass and sold the meat to an unsuspecting butcher.

I saw a camel in the San Diego Zoo in 1953, I don’t know if there are any more camels in zoos any longer. You can’t see camels in circuses anymore since the last circus in North America closed down in 2017.        

I hope you enjoyed this article.