Page 131 - The History of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps 1962–2021

THE HISTORY OF THE ROYAL ARMY VETERINARY CORPS 1962 – 2021
CHAPTER 8
Mixed Service Organisation (MSO): 1962 – 1994: Echoing the Masters
“What is this MSO? I asked on arrival. I soon got to know because with having six hundred and forty men of almost innumerable nationalities under the responsibility of 1 ADTU, matters concerning the Mixed Service Organisation do occasionally arise. To correctly guess the nationality of the caller when the telephone rings is long odds against chance. Listening to a distant muffled telephone spoken in a foreign accent has its problems, but when you add to that the background noise of twenty tanks or armoured personnel roaring down the cobbled road past the unit, with the whole building vibrating – problems!”1
[Chiron Calling: March 1978]
The Mixed Service Organisation (MSO) was a civilian arm of the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR), originally formed as watchmen and labour units in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. The personnel were former Prisoners of War, concentration camp inmates and Forced Labourers who were left in the west- ern sectors of occupied Germany at the end of the conflict and who chose not to return to their countries of origin for political, ethnic or reli- gious reasons. These men came primarily from Yugoslavia, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and other Baltic/Slavic States which were then dominated by the Soviet Union.
In 1947 the first British units employing Poles were formally established. They were formed in Fallingbostel on the site of the POW camps in which some of the Poles had been incarcerated. 317 Unit MSO RASC was the first Polish Tank Transporter unit and it took the Diamond T’s2 and other equipment from 15 Company RASC. The first three Senior Superintendents were holders of either the Polish Victoria Cross, the Virtuti Militari (VM), or the Cross of Valour (KW). One of the men who established the honourable and dynamic reputation of the MSO was one the most courageous and decorated of the early Super- intendents – Staff Superintendent Stanislaw Ostapowicz. An Austrian trained Officer, Ostapowicz who had fought with the artillery from 1914 – 1918, later winning the VM and the KW, with two bars, in the Russian War. By 1939, he was commanding an artillery regiment with whom he served until captured by the Germans. Late in 1939, he dressed in the uniform of a dead
Corporal to avoid being taken for an Officer when he was captured by the Russians. Ostapowicz then escaped, only to be re-captured by the Germans. After the war, he set up an Officers’ Mess for his fellow Polish Officers in Fallingbostel, where behaviour was as strict as the old traditions demanded.
At the end of the Second World War, there were over two-million Poles stranded in Europe. Although Poland had been the first nation to succumb to Hitler ’s aggression, its Army remained in the field throughout the war and by 1945, it was the fourth largest Allied army, behind the USSR, USA and Great Britain. Post-war, without an independent homeland, many Poles faced a future in exile. Some emigrated but some remained in Germany, and were absorbed into military guard companies.
These men from Poland made a deep impression on everyone who ever had the privilege of serving with them. Their ethos and traditions will never be forgotten.3
The MSO was a large organisation with estimated numbers of thirty-five to fifty thousand men in its ranks over its years of formation. The MSO was organised on British Army lines i.e. uniform, law and discipline and the majority had received military training in their homeland armies. The structure of the MSO was not dissimilar to British Colonial Units, with a British Commanding Officer and Senior Non-Commissioned Officers operating over a ‘native’ Officer and NCO structure.
The MSO comprised of four principal sections: Armed Guard Service i.e., protection for army
1 Duplicated Chiron Calling Issue No 9 dated 3rd March 1978.
2 Diamond T’s were a heavy tank transporter system used during World War Two and into the 1950s.
3 www. BAOR Location.Org
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