The camel warriors

As bizarre as it sounds, there were New Zealanders who rode camels into war.
The First World War had its own camel company, called cameliers, who operated in the Sinai Desert.
Technically they were part of the horse mounted 2nd New Zealand Machine Gun squadron.
We all know that animals were used in war, horses, dogs and pigeons especially.
But the story of the cameliers is less well known. But it makes sense. Camels do better in a desert environment than horses. At full strength there were 3880 camels in use.
In August 1916, No 15 (New Zealand) Company, Imperial Camel Corps, was formed from men originally intended as reinforcements for the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade.
Once they had received their training - it’s not like riding a horse - the New Zealand cameliers joined the 1st and 2nd battalions at El Mazaar oasis in the Sinai desert.
They joined other imperial camel corps into a single brigade with three camel battalions.
A mere four days later they took part in the Battle of Magdhaba.
They also began long range patrols, protecting the vital strategic asset of the railway and water pipeline.
Once the enemy withdrew from the area the rest of the camel companies were taken off those duties and formed into the Imperial Camel Corps Brigade's fourth ('Anzac') battalion in May 1917.
For the rest of 1917, the New Zealand, Australian and British cameliers fought against the Ottoman Turks, first in Palestine proper, and then from early 1918 in the Jordan Valley.
Despite being brought in for long range patrol the camiliers found themselves in full scale battle.
During the Battle for Hill 2029 the cameliers managed to capture the hill but it brought retribution from the Ottoman Turks who targeted it with heavy artillery fire. Quickly on the heels of this artillery bombardment came a series of ground assaults by Ottoman infantry determined to retake the hilltop.
The 4th Camel Battalion repelled them, holding on until they were told to withdraw.
The action cost the cameliers three of its six officers. Two of them, 2nd lieutenants Charles Thorby and Victor Adolph, were killed in action during the battle; the third, Lieutenant Arthur Crawford, died of his wounds in hospital two months later.
During their whole service, the New Zealand cameliers lost 41 men.
The cameliers were disbanded in 1918.
At the end Colonel T. E. Lawrence – better known as Lawrence of Arabia – convinced the commander of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, Lieutenant-General Edmund Allenby, that the camels would be put to better use by the Arab Army.
One of the British cameliers said while they had often cursed the animals they had become attached to their ugly ungainly mounts.
Ronald Francis MacKenzie was born in Wellington in 1889 to James and Annie - he went to Egypt in 1916 with the New Zealand Mounted Rifles and transferred to the cameliers and served in both Egypt and Palestine.
He died in Tauranga on December 25, 1952 and is buried in the Thames Memorial Park.​