Page 144 - The History of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps 1962–2021

THE HISTORY OF THE ROYAL ARMY VETERINARY CORPS 1962 – 2021
the Unit HQ, including the Veterinary Surgery, Main Kennels and Indoor Training School were at the permanent Sham Shui Po Camp in Kowloon, an RAOC (Royal Army Ordnance Corps) depot which was always seen as an attractive site with tidy grass verges and trees bearing red blossom in season. Sham Shui Po was never an ideal place for a Dog Unit because, as was written in The Journal in 1966: “now it is surrounded by huge factory and housing blocks that would not look out of place in New York.” That semi-industrial view accompanied training too and many affectionately remember involving long trips in four-tonners and early morning exercise taking place along the gutter at the side of a basketball court.14
When Soldier Magazine featured “Look after Wuffles!” in October 1976, it was something of a tribute to Hong Kong’s Guard Dogs – and the humour of the WRAC girls who looked after them before they left home shores for the Colony:
Those snarling guard dogs patrolling behind barbed wire at military establishments in Hong Kong are just tail waggers at heart. Or so, it seems, is the view of the WRAC girls who give them their obedience training at the RAVC Training Centre in Melton Mowbray. When a dog is released from the aluminium travel kennel in which it has been flown by VC 10 to Hong Kong, the kennel is often found to hold a little note saying something like “Look after Wuffles. He’s a sweet dog really!”
There are nearly seventy guard dogs in Hong Kong, all Alsatian males. They arrive in the Colony at about 18 months old and, after a little acclimatisation and their Guard dog training, become fully fledged members of the Hong Kong Dog Company. This used to be the RMP Unit, but last month the two officers and five senior ranks of the RMP moved out and the RAVC took over. The one hundred and forty Hong Kong soldiers, mostly dog handlers, had already given up their RMP badges and resumed the Dragon Badge of their parent HKMSC. The changeover also reserved the Unit’s deployments from Sham Shui Po, Kowloon with a detachment at Sek Kong, to Sek Kong with a detachment at Sham Shui Po. Sham Shui Po camp laid in one of the world’s most densely populated areas; Sek Kong is in a rural area of the New Territories and about five miles from the border with China.
So that the dogs are not left alone because their handler is away, each has two handlers. Dog and man patrol closed areas in ammunitions depots and other military establishments and nobody else is allowed in the area. If an intruder is seen and fails to stop when called on, the dogs take a running jump at them knocking them
14 The Journal of The Royal Army Veterinary Corps Volume 37 No 1 Spring 1966.
15 Soldier Magazine article dated October 1976 Hong Kong’s Guard Dogs.
over. About 80 pounds of dog hurtling through the air at 35 miles an hour is usually enough to knock the will to resist out of anybody. The Alsatians are big dogs and need a lot of exercise, so three times a week they are taken on a five mile route march. In Hong Kong’s sticky summer, they also get a weekly swim in the sea”.15
Sek Kong
Sek Kong, known by the locals as ‘Rocky Place’, is approximately six miles, as the crow flies, from the border with Communist China. Many families of the RAVC who had served in Hong Kong in the later years were either accommodated at Dills Corner, near Fanling – in the New Territories East of Hong Kong – which was much closer to the border or Sek Kong Village situated on Route Twisk, that weaved over Tai Mo Shan or ‘Cloudy peak’, which at 957 metres above sea level is the Colony’s highest point and visible from many parts of the city.
Route Twisk was constructed in August 1950 by the Royal Engineers and completed three years later, in May 1953, as a short cut. Previously, the journey from Kowloon in the south involved detours by east or west round the mass of hills. Whichever way you travelled, the civilian roads were narrow, twisting, crowded and dangerous. In an emergency, the crazy road system would have put a brake on the Army defence effort. However, Twisk, by cutting through the hills in a straight line – as straight as the contours permitted – proved a much quicker and safer route. The journey from Tsun Wan in the south to Sek Kong at the northern end of the Twisk, covered about 7 miles against a previous 23. Twisk, by-the-way, gained its name from the initials of these two places (Tsun Wan and Sek Kong) – with the ‘i’ thrown in to make sense of it! Fortunately, Twisk was also one of the few new roads to pass through mainly uninhabited hillsides so the Royal Engineers didn’t need to divert around small communities and their burial grounds. Initially, Twisk was a purely military road and closed to almost all civilian vehicles. Sek Kong village was self-contained with its shops, a large NAAFI complex, a swimming pool, a church, a bowling alley and several clubs, as well as a school and even a cinema/theatre. It had everything required for garrison life, including a variety of activities.
The relocated Unit had the good fortune of arriving in its entirety in 1977 and becoming the very proud owners of a well-designed kennel complex in Sek Kong, which must have been
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