Page 114 - The History of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps 1962–2021

THE HISTORY OF THE ROYAL ARMY VETERINARY CORPS 1962 – 2021
In an issue of Soldier Magazine in 1988, Graham Smith penned, A Pharmacy for Animals, in which drew all these aspects together in what was, essentially, a homage to the RAVC in Aldershot. He wrote:
From within the quiet confines of Aldershot’s oldest military buildings, drugs and other medical equipment worth £48,000 were administered worldwide last year (1987) on behalf of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps to ensure many a wet nose, sleek coat, bright and beady eye.
‘The building, dating back to 1880, is the home of the twelve strong RAVC Support Group which has just changed its name from the RAVC Laboratory and Stores and administers the medical needs of dogs, horses, regimental mascots and the like, whether on police patrol or public duties anywhere in the world from Bicester to Belize, from Horseguards to Hong Kong and from Germany to Gibraltar.
The staff, eight of them military, are headed by a triple-hatted OC, Major Andrea McMillan who is also Administrative, Veterinary and Remount Officer for the Southern Region which stretches from Bicester to Culdrose. She is also OC of the local RAVC museum. Major McMillan is married to Major John McMillan, a nursing officer at the nearby Cambridge Military Hospital in Aldershot.
From its red-brick base steeped in a century of veterinary research, the RAVC Group has five main tasks – laboratory support of Veterinary Officers worldwide; supply of materiel and drugs to animal holding units; support in the Southern sector; provision of specialist dogs; and technical support of dog holding units within the sector.
It was from within those same walls that a medical substance called Mallein was produced for use in the control of an insidious disease called Glanders which had smitten horses returning from the Boer War.
The RAVC Support Group offers routine health care and clinics for MOD animals, support to Service organ- isations and limited veterinary care for Servicemen’s pets. Veterinary Officers for the Household Cavalry and The King’s Troop RHA come under the Group’s admin- istration support.
The Southern Sector has six Units with four hundred and forty-nine horses, forty-eight units with two hundred and one dogs, two regimental mascots (Pegasus the Parachute Regiment pony and Conner the Irish Guards’ Irish Wolfhound) and a clutch of Saddle Clubs. Dogs’ records are held on computer. They include the animals’ medical history and service number. The RAVC Support Group also has on its strength a Senior Dog Handler, two dog handlers versed in the art of “sniffer
32 Soldier Magazine dated January 1988. 33 Soldier Magazine dated 16th June 1986.
dog” training and two WRAC kennel maids. Housed in the same building is the RAVC HQ Directorate of Army Remount Service and RAVC (South) TA HQ’.32
There’s no better way to add to such an account than with a selection of ‘dog tales’ from the 1980s. In the June 1986 issue of Soldier Magazine, Graham Smith shared the story Zephyr Answers An ‘SOS’ (Save Our Sophie).
A dog is not only man’s best friend. He can just as easily be such a chum to another canine.
This is the tale of two dogs. A dog and a bitch, actually, Zephyr the black German Shepherd and Army Protection dog and Sophie the Dobermann family pet. Yet the two never met.
The distant bond between them was to be a compara- tively short one. For Sophie, nine-years-old, was struck down after encountering some laid rat poison near her Farnham, Surrey home. Her bright-eyed, active life was ebbing away.
Local vet David Ashworth ruled out pleurisy on the suddenly sick Dobermann but did diagnose some type of virulent poisoning, probably rat poison. The family, naturally, was distraught.
An SOS – Save our Sophie – call went out to the Army and its Royal Army Veterinary Corps Laboratories and Stores at nearby Aldershot. One possible life-saving remedy remained in the offing for the stricken Sophie. A blood transfusion to the seemingly doomed Dobermann. Zephyr, one of four dogs at the Aldershot RAVC Labs and Stores section, was chosen to give some of his blood. In all, three-quarters-of-a-pint.
It was extracted from two shaven areas of his front legs. The four-year-old did not even flinch. He is, after all, a protection dog. One nomenclature as ‘Security (Arm True)’.
Vet Ashworth, and blood bag with revitalising agent in it, hurtled back down the Aldershot by-pass system to link up with the fretting family in Farnham. But sadly, Sophie died.
Captain Andrea Gallard, RAVC, and the Labora- tories’ Veterinary Officer, said: “The blood transfusion was not unusual. It’s fairly routine procedure.” Captain Gallard explained: “Zephyr is really a protection dog and trained in his role of security to go for the arm. A guard dog... bites.”33
From 1989 there is the story of Sammi joins the Jamaicans. This story’s Aldershot link is through the dog trainer WO1 Jon Davies RAVC who returned to the UK after a month-long working visit to Jamaica where he was instructing Jamaican Defence Force (JDF) dogs and handlers. The JDF inherited a permanent reminder of Davies’s visit
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