Page 218 - The History of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps 1962–2021

THE HISTORY OF THE ROYAL ARMY VETERINARY CORPS 1962 – 2021
accommodation. It was a design already used by the Scandinavians – their kennels were specifically constructed at a cost of around ninety thousand Euros and had an outside run, aircon and heating like the kennels used later in Afghanistan which were procured under an Urgent Operational Requirement (UOR).
Changes to ensure the comfort of the dogs accompanied, once again, an urgent requirement to maintain a full quota of handlers and to keep the dog teams one-step ahead of the capability needs in an evolving Bosnia.
The Sennelager Unit and the Defence Animal Centre (DAC) continued to provide RAVC handlers for six-month tours of Bosnia, and both Units continued to train regimental handlers to support the ongoing commitments. As part of this drive, in July 2000, the Corps achieved a ground breaking achievement in deploying the first husband and wife team – LCpls Duncan Campbell and Julie Campbell – simultaneously on an Operational tour.
Op HARVEST was a routine tasking where AES dog teams worked successfully alongside both infantry and RE Units to search for illegal weapons and munitions concealed or left over from warring factions. The day-to-day tasking consisted of low-risk type search Operations in a variety of areas mainly dwelling houses and out-buildings adjacent to properties. During the summer tour of 2001 Cpl Cheryle Garratt and LCpl Dan Gibson, supporting British Forces during Op HARVEST, recovered an average of thirty to forty AK 47s and sixty to seventy pistols every month with countless quantities of ammunition and ancillary items. Their services were heavily in demand from user units and more teams could easily have been employed. Although few route and area searches were completed in 2001, Protection dogs were proving valuable in Glamoc, Šipovo, and Mrkonjic and Grad Banja Luka and were used during the transition of troops at Split to protect vehicles and equipment entering from Croatia. They were also the best deterrent against locals attempting to enter the camps.
This was a time of massively increased finds for the RAVC’s AES dogs. According to Task Reports, the main tasks of AES dogs within both Op PALATINE and Op OCULUS were house searches and area searches for hides and weapon caches which yielded great success. Vast amounts of weaponry left over from the hostilities allowed the AES teams to run-up a record number of finds on a regular basis. The dogs’ reward of a tennis ball was pretty much an every day celebration.
Explosive Detection Dog:
The AES dogs were not the only ones being kept busy. Bosnia saw the re-introduction of the Mine Detection Dog (MDD) developed specifically to support the rescue of casualties in mined areas – where there’s a need for immediate, life-saving First Aid. One of the comparisons that highlighted the importance of this capability was the speed with which they could get to a casualty or vehicle that may have been involved in a mine strike or stranded in a minefield. A Royal Engineer Sapper could take eight-hours to check a 2 metre x 50 metre pathway – the dogs would do the job in 20 – 30 minutes. It meant that they could be used where metal detectors had difficulty and they could be trained on all types of mines deployed by all the warring factions in Bosnia and Kosovo.
The request was received by the DAC in May 1999 and the Mine Detection project commenced in June 1999 with dogs trained and handled by the RAVC being fully operational by October 2000. But there was one public relations point that had to be addressed early on. Recognising that the public may not accept the British Army using canines to detect landmines, moving forward, the teams were termed Explosive Detection Dogs (EDD).
The EDD was the Corp’s response to an UOR from the Royal Engineers to support operations in the Balkans. It revived an old working integration of the Engineers and MWDs that had eroded over recent years due to the reduction in search operations in Northern Ireland. It was to support landmine and Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) clearance for the British Military’s Incident Response Team (IRT). The IRT’s primary role being to rescue personnel trapped in known or potentially mined areas, otherwise known as High-Risk Areas (HRA).
The project focused on dog teams capable of searching a 3 metre x 50 metre path (safe lane), searching for the presence of any landmines or UXO with a near perfect 100% detection capability, using “mark and avoid”. The handlers had to be capable of marking the “safe lane” searched so that EOD, medical and recovery teams could use it to rescue and recover personnel and equipment.
As the project developed and integration into the Royal Engineer teams progressed, the tasks were extended to include:
Lower risk route prove: A route through an area previously mined but then cleared. In areas where locals inform the EOD the area is clear, but EOD has no formal knowledge or information to confirm or deny.
Search of an Area: An area formally occupied by
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