Animals In War by Jilly Cooper

Author:Jilly Cooper [Cooper, Jilly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House UK
Published: 2010-12-23T00:00:00+00:00

It might appear that the average soldier spent more time fighting his camel than the enemy. But the poor beast can be excused his cantankerousness, when one considers how dreadfully he has suffered over the centuries, because of the ignorance of the men who forced him into battle. In the desert, the camel has the edge over the horse and the mule. He can carry heavy loads for long distances without food or water. For this task, he is equipped with a hump that acts as a kind of petrol tank and with long, sheltering eyelashes, heavy eyelids, and slit nostrils which close right up in a sandstorm. What none of the great military leaders ever appreciated was that he cannot cope with temperatures below zero.

When the Russians were campaigning in Central Asia, a force under General Skobelev set out with 12,000 splendid transport camels. The stark, horrifying truth is that he returned a few months later with only one camel. In the Afghan campaign, the British lost 30,000 camels largely because they had no idea how to look after them. Unable to cope with the snow and icy rain, camels died like flies in the harsh winters of the Crimean War. During the siege of Sebastopol, the poor camel mascot of the Royal Engineers was found frozen to death on Christmas Eve.

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