Page 39 - RADC Bulletin 2021

CENTENARY
Paying Our Respects
Maj (Retd) N Gibbs
One of the Royal Army Dental Corps centenary projects in 2021 was to lay poppy crosses at some of the 100 graves and memorials of former Army Dental Corps and Royal Army Dental Corps who paid
the ultimate sacrifice in the course of their Army service. With limited international travel due to COVID it was decided to focus on the UK, especially as some sites abroad are in dangerous locations such as Palestine and Iraq.
Any AD Corps or RADC individual, serving or retired, regular or reservist, could place a cross either as an individual or as a group.
It was fantastic to see such a spread of colleagues volunteer to support the project. Many colleagues went above and beyond the scope of the project from laser engraving the crosses to tidying up the graves of our former colleagues. Due to social distancing and minimal travel due to the COVID pandemic few Poppy Crosses were placed in the first half of the year. From June 2021 with restrictions being relaxed more of the Poppy Crosses began to be laid.
During the First World War, the Imperial War Graves Commission was set up to ensure all individuals who died in service to the British Empire during World War One were commemorated equally, regardless of rank or status. As the Army Dental Corps (AD Corps) was formed after the war in 1921 no AD Corps graves exist from this period. Many dentists did volunteer or were conscripted during the First World War and they are commemorated on a plaque in the
BDA headquarters. The author has visited some of the sites and which instigated his interest in trying to understand the Corps history through those who sadly died in service to their country. For those interested a recent BDJ article covers this in detail1.
Having only just completed the work
to commemorate the fallen from World
War One in 1938, a year later the Second War started and the Imperial War Graves Commission recommenced their role. In 1960, the Imperial War Graves Commission changed its name to Commonwealth War Grave Commission (CWGC), this was to reflect the independence gained by many former colonies. 99 dental personnel died during or soon after World War 2 and they are the focus of this project. The deaths were spread throughout the Second World War and up to 2 years after it. If the body could not be retrieved or identified then that individual has a name on a memorial. Some, but not all, of the graves between the granting of the Royal prefix in 1946 and the cut off date for CWGC recognition on 31 December 1947 have the RADC insignia on them.
Due to the global nature of the Second World War there are grave sites in all the main British Theatres of war in Europe, Africa and Asia. The majority are buried, or commemorated, in the UK, most likely due to being evacuated back to South East England after being injured in Europe.
Particularly harrowing are the events surrounding the fall of territories in South
East Asia, such as Hong Kong and Singapore, to the Japanese. Prisoners of War were often transported in the military ships, with no protective markings and suffered conditions of unimaginable squalor. Additionally, these ships were regularly torpedoed by allied submarines.
For the individuals laid to rest in the UK, some are buried near the medical sites where they died while others made it home before they died. Some of the graves are the “Standard” CWGC headstones while others are personal gravestones. More than half the sites have been visited already. The vast majority of the remaining sites have had volunteers come forward to lay the crosses, just 6 sites still require volunteers.
It is often hard to find out much about those who are commemorated due to a lack of available information, a massive contrast to our information overload today. Some information has been found out about a
few of our former colleagues and these are included elsewhere in the RADC Bulletin.
Sergeant Michael Muldoon is also included in the project as he was murdered by the IRA. A separate article in the bulletin covers this.
1 The first dentists were sent to the Western Front during the First World War. F. S.S. Gray. British Dental Journal (2017), 10.1038/sj.bdj.2017.503
Graves visited by WO2 N Leon, Lt Col L Valler, SSgt R Cooper, Cheryl Bissaker, Jackie Garnett, Dave Evans, Malcolm Hamilton, Joe Charleson, SSgt Gotora, Jane Lowe, Angie Mackie, Sian Chelton, Col (Retd) Q Anderson, Claire Bates, Darren Hutchinson, Chris Collinson, Sheila O’Brien, Maj R Usmani, Sgt D Jones, Fiona Welborn, Gareth Robinson, Sean Greaves,
Maj S Armstrong and Katie Squire.
RADC BULLETIN 2021 37