Page 8 - RADC Bulletin 2021

share mine while he waited to be allocated
a Married Quarter. During his short stay as my guest, he continually reminded me, that though we were both captains, he was senior to me, and what’s more a regular officer.
One evening at a social event I met up with Col Dobbie, he asked me how I was, and I said I was fed up. He then asked
me how much longer I had to serve as
an NS Officer, I said three months. In the circumstances would I be prepared to move againatshortnotice,Isaid“yes”. Whenyou go home pack your belongings tonight and report to my office tomorrow, I cannot tell you where you are going at this moment, but you are going west.
The next morning I reported to his
office to be told I was posted to the BMH Benghazi, there had been another fracas intheMiddleEast. TheParashadmoved into the Lebanon, the Sussex Regiment had been moved from Gibraltar to Benghazi as back up. The BMH Benghazi was in the midst of closing down but had to reopen
at short notice. This was August 1958.
Very early on the morning of the 9th I was rudely awakened and told to report to
the main hospital building. A plane had crashed at Benghazi Airport and we were awaiting casualties. On crashing the plane was engulfed in a fireball. A total of 47 passengers and seven crew members were aboard. Only 18 survived and only 15 of the 36 dead could be identified. The plane was a Central African Airways Vickers Viscount flying from Salisbury Rhodesia to London.
It was decided by higher authority that the dead would be buried in a mass grave. The husbandofoneoftheunidentifiedwished his wife to be identified as he wanted to
take her body back to Rhodesia to be buried there. The BOAC Undertaker decided forensic dentistry was the answer and I was saddled with the task. A request was sent for the lady’s dental records, unfortunately, the reply to the request read “there is no dentalsurgeoninthiscitywiththissurname”. By mistake the request had been sent to Salisbury. Wiltshire, instead of Salisbury, Rhodesia. Another two days went by. On opening the 21 coffins I was confronted by completely charred corpses. I could not even open their mouths. To inspect the teeth I was forced to exfoliate the mandibles,
hence mutilating the bodies. The dental records showed that the lady concerned had an unusual restoration for that era. A post crown had been fitted to her lower right first premolar. I decided to speed up the process of identification by extracting all first right lower premolars until I found the post crown. As luck would have it, the body concerned was in the nineteenth of the 21 coffins. After the body was officially identified the husband decided not to repatriate his wife’s body back toRhodesiaandgavepermissionforherto be buried in the mass grave.
I was 25 years old at the time and memories of that traumatic experience still linger on.
My National Service ended in that year October 1958.
When compiling this account I regret havingnophotographicevidenceofthat time. Any photographs I had were slides which faded with time before I was able to have them printed. Stupidly I never kept
a daily diary of the events. I have only
been able to rely on the memory of an octogenarian and some help from Google to write this article.
HISTORY
RADC Veterans Serving as National Servicemen
Mr B Sims
In 1950 an extension to the 1947 National Service Act increased the period of conscription from eighteen months to two years with the Army taking most of the recruits. When the last batch of National Servicemen were discharged in May 1963 some 1,132,872 had passed through with an annual intake of about 160,000.* As an example of numbers, in the year 1954 the RAMC took 3851, the RAPC 2956, while the RADC took just 204, those were listed as other ranks and undertook training as Dental Technicians or Dental Operating Assistants (DORA), later re-titled Dental Clerk Assistants (DCA’s).
Many who served mainly recall good times with some retaining contact with Corps Associations and in the case of former RADC National Servicemen, usually at annual Corps parades and activities and aligned social groups such as the ‘50 Group’ later renamed the Reunion Club, formed mainly by National Servicemen in 1989.
This Group/Club maintained regular contact with about seventy former Servicemen at any one time through the issue of an annual Newsletter, which
later increased to three issues a year that included over one hundred articles. These included anecdotes about life during basic training, trade training for Technicians or DORA/DCA’s and finally deployments, including foreign postings. Some of these anecdotes are now recalled.
Derek Noad (1948/1949)
Called up for National Service in February 1948 and posted to some very old barracks near the centre of Aldershot once occupied by a cavalry regiment with their horses.
On the ground floor were the original
stables but fortunately we were billeted on the floor above that still retained a weird framework on the walls for the storage of the cavalryman’s helmet and breastplate, riding boots and harnesses. Following a period of basic training, we were transferred to Buller Barracks on Duke of Connaught’s Road, near the Connaught Hospital, later to be the Headquarters and Training Establishment for the RADC. Training for Dental Technicians was carried out at the Aldershot Dental Laboratory and on occasions we were grouped into working parties to clean the old Connaught Hospital Building, once used for storage, and to clean the windows and ancillary areas. A civilian contractor was then employed to install work benches for what would become the Dental Technicians Laboratory and training facility.
In March 1949, I was posted to Egypt
to the British Military Hospital at Fayid
to a one man dental laboratory as part
of the surgical department dealing with orthodontic treatments. Then in June 1949 my final posting to BMH Nicosia, by far
the best posting, especially for a National Serviceman. Recalled as a reservist due to the Korean conflict in 1951, I spent fourteen
A soldier at the RADC Guardroom 1957
days with a Field Ambulance at Catterick, Yorkshire.
Don Best (1947/1948)
Being conscripted into National Service
in August 1947, and at the time serving an apprenticeship as a Dental Technician, I opted to join at the age of 18 to get it over with and started ‘square bashing’ with the Royal West Kent Regiment at their depot
in Maidstone. Then after six weeks I was transferred to the Army Dental Corps at McGregor Barracks in Aldershot. At this time the AD Corps was attached to the RAMC and I had to walk every day to the Training
6 RADC BULLETIN 2021