Page 69 - The History of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps 1962–2021

THE HISTORY OF THE ROYAL ARMY VETERINARY CORPS 1962 – 2021
There my main Instructor was Staff Sgt Tony Rossell RAVC. How I revere Tony Rossell. He trained us so well because he cared deeply for us and he knew that without his extremely hard training we would not survive.
Tony went on to train many Americans for Vietnam – all trained at 2 War Dog Training Unit RAVC. He is at the time of writing still in touch with some of them and they know that, without Tony, they too would not have survived the perils of the jungle and the enemy. He put us through our paces and at the end of the course I joined the Battalion in Sarawak at a place called Bario. The rest of the tracking team were trained at Kuching under the auspices of a Captain Montgomery, Royal Marines. My coverman was the late Billy Sloss, from Oban, a splendid field soldier. To cut a long story a little shorter... I served three tours with different team members but Billy was with me all that time and saw me celebrate my 21st, 22nd and 23rd Birthday in Borneo.
There were so many incidents and contacts, but I will relate just one:
Our Colonel, Malcolm Wallace, seconded our Tracker Team to the Gurkhas as they did not have one. They had a contact with a large party of Indonesian soldiers and my dog, “Simon”, was excellent, having been trained by Tony Rossell. Anyway, Simon indicated that someone or something was up ahead of us and that indication won the day. The British Officer in command of the Gurkhas was so impressed that he kept repeating that he had ‘... not seen anything like it in all my days of soldiering.’ I believe, after that, they went on to have Combat Tracker Teams.
It was marvellous to go into action with them. After the fire-fight, they lit huge fires and broke out the rum, so different to our way of putting sentries out and ensuring that no-one tried to attack us. It worked well, very well. I remember many stories of my three years in Borneo, including how we were issued with the Armalite Rifle and my coverman was issued with a self-loading shot gun with nine balls in each cartridge – it would have cut a man in half.”
The Trackers in Vietnam:
Support and training for the handlers destined for the war in Vietnam came from the RAVC. Unfor- tunately, no doubt due to the pressures of the time and the need to just ‘get the job done’, there is little to nothing recorded by the Corps on the support that was given to the Australian Tracker team – The Diggers – deployed to Vietnam with their eleven black Labradors in 1967. But that support was given at a time of great need to a team of young men going into the unknown with their faithful Tracker dogs at their side.
Appreciation for the Trackers and the British
trainers spanned the decades.
In 2006, in recognition of the support and
training given to the United States Army Combat Tracker Teams that had served in the Vietnam War, Tony Rossell was presented with a special ‘thank you’ gift – a splendid painting entitled “Seek On”. It portrayed the US CTT with a British Labrador Retriever at the forefront of the scene. The painting was duly presented to Brigadier Andrew Warde at the RAVC Corps Reunion in 2006.
General William C Westmoreland of the United States had commented previously: “The only force that had defeated the Communist guerrillas was the UK military in the Malaya and Borneo ‘small wars’. Rather than try to use large force engagements against the enemy, the British developed special operations that adopted the guerrilla tactics and perfected them, the Combat Tracker Team was a prime example.”17
Another thankful American wrote:
The British supplied Tracker dogs, superb instruc- tion,trained track layers, instructed handlers and created bonds with their young trainees that have stood the test of time. While the casualty rate for the general war in Vietnam was 12%, the casualty rate for the Tracker Teams was much lower – and almost without exception,those casualties were due to errors in application of the team. When the teams were allowed to operate, as they had been instructed, they succeeded admirably. And that is thanks to 2 WDTU and the expert instruction that was given by the British Jungle Warfare School. The names of Tony Rossell, George Yeandle, Loganathan Packrisamy, John Higgs, Versamy, Ray Hardie and many more Instructors are honoured by all the of the veteran CTT of the Vietnam War.
The use of Tracker teams did much to strengthen the links between the handlers and the Regiments with which they were serving. After the initial team training in Borneo, the venue for the courses switched to Ulu Tiram. The first course was for a Royal Ulster Rifles (RUR) team who had the greatly valued assistance of Lieutenant Montgomery, CSgt Howe DCM and Sgt ‘Bungy’ Williams, and all of 42 Commando RM. In order to ‘fit’ the Unit to take on this training as a future commitment, an RAVC team also entered the Tracker team stakes. To give tactical guidance, Sgt Raffen of 3 Royal Australian Rifles (RAR) took command of the team.
This training took two weeks and provided much food for thought and prompted many interesting subjects for conversation and comment on the jungle warfare experience, such as: patrolling is ‘merely a gentle stroll’, ‘No need for Ibans, the
17 Chiron Calling Winter/Summer 2006/2007.
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