Page 42 - RADC Bulletin 2021

In Memory of Corporal Morris SSgt H Willis
In memory of Corporal Bernard Philip Morris. Service Number: 7538969. Army Dental Corps who died on 10 July 1945. Age 29.
It was the wastage of fit soldiers through lack of proper dental care during World War One that highlighted the need for formal organisation and proper provision. When the Army Dental Corps was formed on 4th January 1921, dentists of the RAMC were split off into a separate Army Dental Corps (AD Corps). Dental Surgeons were initially granted a Short Service Commission of six years, with the opportunity for selection to a permanent commission, whilst servicemen joined for an initial engagement of seven years and went to the Army Dental Corps School of Instruction in Aldershot to train as Dental Mechanics or Dental Clerk Orderlies.
The interwar years had been a period
of growth for the AD Corps as they firmly established their role and position within the life of the British Army. During World War Two the AD Corps expanded rapidly, both
in numbers of serving personnel and the number of Dental Centres in the UK, and
also in the variety of courses and training available including general anaesthesia, dental prosthetics, dental radiography and maxillo-facial.
World War Two also saw the development of the Mobile Dental Unit, which consisted of a caravan trailer fitted out as a surgery, equipped on the same level as a Dental Centre, and staffed by one Dental Officer and one Dental Clerk Orderly. The only difference was the lack of mains services,
so they were fitted with accumulators for lighting, primus stoves for heating and had their own water supply in fitted tanks. The Mobile Dental Units proved to be invaluable.
Many AD Corps personnel were attached to field ambulances, casualty clearing stations or general hospitals and, like their RAMC compatriots, a substantial number became prisoners-of-war as they remained with the sick and wounded. In the Far East AD Corps prisoners often demonstrated considerable improvisation and ingenuity
in providing equipment and treatment to fellow prisoners. In one camp in Singapore,
hypnosis was used for tooth extractions, a rare practice in those days.
With Cpl Morris only being 29 when he died he would have joined the AD Corps direct around 1934 (if he joined at 18 onwards). Cpl Morris died on 10 July 1945, just before the War ended. The contributions of Cpl Morris and his colleagues during this conflict gained the Dental Corps a ‘Royal’ prefix in 1946
War Grave visited by SSgt Willis, Sgt Bell and Capt Drapier.
Remembering 23894837 Sergeant Richard Michael Muldoon RADC
Maj R Dickson
Sgt Mick’ Muldoon was born in Bedlington, Northumberland in 1948. He now lies at rest in the Bedlington (Netherton Road) Cemetery.
He was the last member of the RADC to be killed by hostile action on 23 March 1973, aged 25.
Apart from his grave, which has
a Commonwealth War Grave style headstone, he is commemorated also at the Palace Barracks Memorial Garden, Holywood, County Down and on the Armed Forces Memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire.
He and three other NCOs were lured to a house on the Antrim Road in Belfast in what became known as the ‘Honeytrap Killings’
Sgt Muldoon and one other soldier died at the scene, another died later of his wounds and the fourth, although sustaining spinal and mandibular injuries,
survived the attack. This was not the first entrapment killings to have happened in Northern Ireland but the three who died were the first who were off duty at the time of their deaths.
About a week before the killings two females met and befriended the four in a Belfast public house. The two women told the soldiers, who were stationed at British Army Headquarters at Thiepval Barracks in Lisburn, that they were having a party on 23 March and the six arranged to meet up.
On 23 March the four, who were unarmed and in civilian clothes, met the two women at the Woodlands Hotel in Lisburn. Later that night, the six drove from Lisburn to a flat on the Antrim Road near the New Lodge area in Belfast, where the supposed party was taking place.
The flat had food and drink laid out inside to allay any suspicions the soldiers may
have had. Shortly after they arrived one girl said she was going out to bring more women back with her. The one soldier who survived the shooting said that about half an hour after they had arrived two masked gunmen burst into the flat, one had a Thompson submachine gun and the other was carrying a pistol. The soldiers were taken into a bedroom and ordered to lie face down on a bed as the gunmen shot them in the head one at a time.
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CENTENARY