Poetry: On the Death of a Camel

Story of a young soldier in the days of old, and his reliance on a beast that saves his life, giving its own in the process.

The British Camel Corps in the late 1800's in Sudan.

(KHARTOUM, Sudan) - Our decision to begin running poetry in a news context at Salem-News.com is already being met by surprising success. This piece reminds me of something Rudyard Kipling wrote that has been published here in the past called "The Young British Soldier".

It takes us back to another time when western forces were doing things very similar to what they are doing today; in terms of occupying far off foreign lands in places like the MidEast and Africa.

Salem-News.com is the only western news agency covering the brewing war in Sudan, which follows a sham election sponsored and supported by the U.S. government, in support of a genocidal dictator, Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir.

Our source on the ground sent in the only photographs of the protests in Al Fasher, Sudan, this week, that have left many dead and many more seriously and critically injured.

Sudan is too overlooked, too easily dismissed by networks that lack the creative means to locate the real story in a dangerous land. It is a sad perspective but our African Affairs Correspondent Alysha Atma is broadening her range of contacts and finding a nation eager to get the word out to the world about how desperate their needs are.

But this is a creative piece about a young soldier in the days of old, and his reliance on a beast that spared his life while giving its own in the process. There are many similar stories throughout military history, but the feeling of that desperate reliance on a steed, which in this case is the noble ship of the desert, is rare.

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On the Death of a Camel

Sheba ran me hard that day,
her slapping hooves in rhythmic thud.

My blood had caught her breath
and stirred her heart to save us both.

I could never love a creature more,
for what she did to keep us safe.

She knew each dune and wadi,
shifting and snaking to avoid the hunt.

I slumped across her sloping back,
legs dragging hard against her flank,
she did not care, her blood was up
in silence through the awful night.

My grip gave out in a waxing light,
the grainy desert floor hit hard.

Sheba stopped with gutteral grunts,
legs shaking as she tried to turn.

I then could see the wounds she bore,
far worse than anything on me.

She was really dead, at that time,
slowly turning and crashing down into my darkness.

Awake I watched the moonlight flit across her crumpled withers.

Deepest pain within me knew she had saved my life with hers . . .

by
Private Albert Gordon,
Khartoum, Sudan, 1884

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Salem-News.com has a wide variety of contributing writers, but the most common thread may be issues related to veterans, and specifically, issues related to the Marine Corps. David Bedworth was the tenth former Marine to join the Salem-News.com writing team, and we are happy to welcome this former Lieutenant Colonel to our ranks. A disabling encounter with prostate and brain cancer have put David in a situation where he cannot work and has limited abilities as a result of treatment. However, brain surgery seems to have stimulated a long dormant creative surge in literature, music and poetry.

Dave is monitoring a number of ill veterans and family members who were exposed to contaminants at the Marine Corps Base at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. This is a subject that Salem-News.com has paid serious attention to for years, that we are increasing our coverage of at this point. Dave's joining our team will amplify our ability to pay more attention to Camp Lejeune, since our writers have concentrated primarily on exposing the contamination at MCAS El Toro, and we could not be more happy about it. You can write to Dave Bedworth at: bedworth53@gmail.com