Page 220 - The History of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps 1962–2021

THE HISTORY OF THE ROYAL ARMY VETERINARY CORPS 1962 – 2021
School located on a former military airfield in Bihac, northern Bosnia, for in-country training and Certification. The first operational search was conducted by Corporal Andrew Sinclair and EDD “Barney” on 23rd November 2000. Barney and the other dogs operated on a ‘send away’ principle conducting routine searches, searching helicopter landing areas, as required, in the company of the IRT in Šipovo. An EDD training field containing Anti-Personnel and Anti-Tank mines was set up there in June 2001 so the dogs could carry out maintenance training. Before the teams could work the area the mines were left for three-months to ‘seed’ or bed-in giving the dogs the most realistic experience when they really hit the ground.
The IRT was comprised of a Bomb Disposal Officer and three handlers – Nos 2, 3, and 4. As previously mentioned, each dog handler was responsible for two dogs on a rota system of 24-hour standby for two-weeks. A handler was stationed at each of the following locations: Šipovo, Banja Luka and Mrkonjic Grad. On numerous occasions the handler and dog were winched down into a suspected mined zone by helicopter (often a Bell CH-146 Griffon from the Canadian Air Force) from a height of approximately 30 metres. This was after the accompanying BDO had accessed the area ahead of releasing the team to do their work.
The EDD teams continued to support IRT and RE operations in Bosnia until the withdrawal of NATO.
In 2002 LCpl Pauline Smith RAVC, and EDD “Harry”, left Op PALATINE in Bosnia and flew to Afghanistan in support of Operation FINGAL.10
Two EDD teams were also trained and integrated into 33 Engineer Regiment (EOD) for deployment to Iraq, supporting Operation TELIC a year later in 2003. The EDD teams never deployed as the assigned RE Troop’s BDO, tragically, SSgt Simon Cullingworth RE and Sapper Luke Allsopp, were killed in an ambush in Southern Iraq before the EDD team’s deployment.
In the same year, the RAVC received a request to train members of the United States of America’s Army Engineers, 94th Engineer Detachment. Initially, this involved three US Army personnel receiving training at the DAC, and, in return
RAVC advisors assisted in establishing a training school at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. The Corps connection continues with a former member of the RAVC, Andy Sinclair, who, since 2006, has been the project lead for the Mine Detection dog handlers’ course at the Counter Explosives Hazard Center at Fort Leonard Wood.
Staff Sergeant Chris Hawthorne RE, was the first BDO to utilize an assigned EDD team in an Operational role. He recalls: “We, the Royal Engineers, were not convinced after the first demo of the capability. With comments of, ‘the dogs’ back legs are outside the area the nose is sniffing’, and ‘The handler is stood up, that’s way too dangerous. What about tripwires? That’s one sure way to find them’. And then, ‘The dog is only as good as the handler ’. Of course, all concerns about the abilities, not only of the EDDs, but the handlers themselves, were completely unfounded.”
SSgt Hawthorne continued: “Once fully integrated with the teams, EOD had complete faith in both handler and EDD. We set training scenarios that involved loud bangs, noise, heat, food, and even team members’ blood spread all over the training ground to see if the handler and EDDs would or could work through the distractions placed to trip them up. All the RAVC handlers and EDDs completed the tasks with the utmost professionalism, working through all we could throw at them – literally!”
The development of the Explosive Detection dog was a resounding success – proof being the training concept that was ‘exported’ to the USA, as per other training conducted by the RAVC in the Malaya Emergency (1948 – 1960) and later the Indonesian Confrontation, which ran from 17th August 1964 to 11th August 1966. Similar RAVC concepts prepared US handlers for the war in Vietnam.
Consolidation:
It was HQ BRITFOR that proposed a MWD Minor Unit be manned, in the main, by Army Reservists, with a small team of HQ staff based on the format of the existing RAVC Dog Unit. The presence of RAVC staff within this new Unit was seen as vital in order to ensure the continuation of the training process and that standards were monitored.
The introduction of the MWD Minor Unit
10 Following the attacks of ‘9/11’ and the collapse of the Taliban – led regime in Afghanistan, British conventional forces, as part of the coalition, entered Afghanistan in 2001 under Op VERITAS. The initial intervention centres a stability operation in and around the capital, Kabul (Op FINGAL)) and a counter terrorism task force (Op JACANA). Op HERRICK was the operation codename under which all operations in Afghanistan have been conducted since 2002. [1] The NATO, initially British led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
[2] A 1700 strong 3 Cdo Bde based force as part of the US led Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), which ended in mid 2002.
[3] Historically this was the fourth occasions British Forces had intervened in Afghanistan. The three other occasions were the first Anglo- Afghan war – (also known as ‘Auckland’s Folly’ 1839 – 42), the Second Anglo Afghan war 1978-80, and the Third Anglo Afghan war of 1919.
[4] British Army Review Special Report Learning from Conflict – Afghanistan 2015 – Vol. 4.1.
212