Page 74 - The History of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps 1962–2021

THE HISTORY OF THE ROYAL ARMY VETERINARY CORPS 1962 – 2021
areas, North of the Johore River, could not be reached until the road had dried out. A trivial matter, perhaps, but sixty dogs and an equal number of student handlers needed a powerful lot of room in which to work, particu- larly as the unit was competing with students from the Jungle Warfare School for training areas.
In the face of these problems, 1968 was to be a promising, and a hectic year for 2 War Dogs who had a full programme of work for men and dogs. Dog handler courses abounded, matched by the number of dogs to be trained. Students come from far and wide to drink-in the wisdom the Unit had to impart. Four Burmese handlers attended the Unit for six months, with more Burmese courses later in the year. Aussie and Kiwi friends are in on the act too, not to mention several others.
The tropical rains ceased in mid-January 1968 and then the sun shone...and shone and shone! Come mid-February and we were experiencing near drought conditions; the bush and vegetation was so dry that the use of pyrotechnics for training was forbidden. Even so, every day we saw smoke somewhere on the horizon and from the air the countryside looked pretty-well scarred by blackened, burned-out areas. However, mid-March brought back our usual round of equatorial thunder- storms and daily heavy showers – so everything is again normal.22
The climate drove decisions on what was possible to achieve in a particular time-frame. It was not an entity that served the soldier well – always forcing them to consider its mood and capability. Mother nature was also in control of the diseases that came to plague the Unit’s animals who waged their own battle with the elements. The very troublesome blood disease, Tropical Pancytopaenia (TCP), which had been a major problem up to 1968 had died away. Scientific investigation had revealed that the condition was a virus transmitted by dog ticks. Then the ticks suddenly disappeared during July-August, around the same time the scientists were getting really interested in their potential.
In early August the Unit found it hard to locate any ticks, and suddenly cases became strangely rare. There were no new cases after that, only a few nuisance cases that rumbled on which meant that the Corps’ veterinary work was more of a routine nature and maintaining disease control. Twice a week, every fortnight, twenty blood samples were sent for haematological examination and once a month each dog was weighed, and then dosed against internal parasites.
Exercise PICOT
Ex PICOT was designed to test the techniques for mobilisation and operation of 10 Forward
22 The Journal of The Royal Army Veterinary Corps Volume 39 No 1 Spring 1968.
Maintenance Area (10 FMA) – in support of a Brigade in the field. Basically, 10 FMA was a Forward Ordnance Depot, with its auxiliary supporting units, i.e. Forward Post Office, Pay Office, Workshops, Casualty Clearing Station, etc. The task of the Dog Troop was to provide security within the FMA by undertaking Guard dog patrols and employing dogs in ambushes in and around the perimeter. It also included the employment of dogs outside the perimeter conducting offensive patrols in conjunction with personnel from the FMA. There was a ‘live’ enemy so, consequently, the dogs were not permitted – for the purpose of the Exercise – to be released in attack. As events turned out, this proved to be very frustrating for the handlers.
The presence of 2 War Dog Training Unit was essential as it was the parent unit and therefore responsible for mobilising, equipping and despatching the Dog Troop to Exercise areas.
At the beginning of April Ex PICOT began to pull together. The sixteen handlers, all of them RAVC dog trainers from the Tactical Dog Troop and Melton Mowbray, arrived by air from the UK. Meanwhile 5 Gurkha Dog Company earmarked the necessary dogs that, a couple of days later, were taken over by the UK-based handlers and worked on back at Ulu Tiram.
SSgt Brian Smith, who was on the similar Exercise HASTINGS the previous year, was thankfully available for PICOT and his experience proved invaluable. He was allotted the job of ‘Q’ – the person who had to do all the donkey work, and he did it well! 2 WDTU also provided the balance of the NCO requirement and three BORs from the Royal Corps of Transport (RCT) came down from Terendak to drive the Unit’s Troop vehicles. Vehicles and stores were quickly drawn-up and by mid-April the Troop was viable and ready for the road. “Our contribution to the Exercise got underway almost immediately with the despatch of Sgt ‘Bull’ Thorneycroft, and LCpls Bryan Criddle and Vic Bennett plus three dogs with the advance party,” recorded the Corps Journal. “The fourth week in April saw the main body get away to Singapore docks to join the LSL Sir Bedivere. Here the troop took charge of its own loading; the local ‘dockies’ took far too long! We were all installed long before the target time of 1500 hours when the main body of troops embarked.”
The Bedivere was a well-found ship with surprising comforts, such as bunks instead of the hammocks of the old trooping days and there was lashings of hot water for washing, a good
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