Camels in logistics and Haet's Egyptian camel corps!

During a campaign the overland transport system, sometimes even the waterway transport, if the river leads in the wrong direction relied on animal power.

The camel, expecting the water buffalo, was the favorite animal, because of its freight capacity.

İn comparison it was even faster and better suitable for the climate.

A load capacity of a camel is app. 250 kg and special skins from leather were produced for this purpose.

During the centuries the arabic camels were crossed with Bactrian ones from Central Asia for creating hybrids which were more resistant to the Anatolian and Balkan climates.

The camel figures are from Haet’s “Egyptian camel corps” set.

The set was released in 2008.

İt contents 12 figures with 4 poses and 12 camels with 3 poses.

The plastic is a fairly soft one.

You can use them for the Anglo-egyptian army, but also for the Ottoman one.

Baygirs for different periods!

Here more baygirs from Airfix "german mountain troops" and Haet's "numidian cavalry" for the trail wagons from different periods:

Numidian horses combined with Gauls (Revell set)

When we talk about the "army" of a pre-modern time, we have to consider not only the soldiers and each sortof guns, but also the pack and war animals!

Actually regarding "food" issue, the animals have priority. The daily demand of an animal is twice as high as an soldier, which means the amount of fodder transport and storage on major depots was an essential issue.

As an example, the Ottoman army required for the Baghdad campaign of 1638-39 more than 77.000 camels only for carrying grain.

A horse from "Airfix" combined with an "Esci" barbarian!

The logistics of armies at war!

As we announced it before, this years main theme in our hobby will be "Middle Ages" (combined with Fantasy!)

At the moment I am graduating MA in Ottoman history and my term papers theme is

"Food for the ottoman army in a campaign!"

So you can imagine why we have choosen this theme!

By pre-modern armies the whole organisation of logistics was based on transport over vast distances and pack animals were the key element.

One of them was the "horse".

There were two kinds of it.

One, as we all know, "warhorse" and the other, so-called "baygir" ("beygir" in turkish) as pack animal.

The "horse" was actually not a typical pack animal, more "warhorse".

But I addded two pack - horses to our wagon trail.


Yes, maybe some of you recognised that the horse is from the legendary set of Airfix, which isn't (maybe couldn't because of the lost molds!?) reproduced since many decades:

German mountain troops!

The other "baygir" is from Esci italian mountain troops:

All the figures can be chanced depending which army will be provisioned!