April 2024 A to Z Challenge

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons
 

This year my blog posts for the April 2024 A to Z Challenge will be about the recipients of the Dickin Medal, which you can read about here. They are in alphabetical, not chronological order, within the different letters.

V

Veterinary

An RAVC sergeant bandaging the ear of mine-detection dog, Jasper, in Normandy, July 1944
Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

There are no DM recipients whose names begin with V . . . yet!

The valiant animals who have been honoured have often been badly injured in the course of their duty and been treated by personnel in the Royal Army Veterinary Corps. I have enormous respect for vets and the empathy and skill they demonstrate. Their patients cannot tell them ‘where it hurts’, though that is often all too obvious. Neither can they say how great is their pain ‘on a scale of 1 to 10’. They are entirely in the hands of their vets.

An RAVC officer checks an Afghan goat in a free veterinary clinic in Helmand. The veterinary outreach programme was designed to help villagers take their animals to a vet tor treatment.

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

The Army Veterinary Service was established in 1796. Before that, farriers had been responsible for equine care, and cavalry officers were expected to understand the basics of equine diseases and illnesses and appropriate medications. 

Veterinary expertise was required immediately for horses working in the French Revolutionary Wars, which were fought from 1792 until 1802. Men with medical qualifications were recruited and offered three months’ veterinary training. 

In this way, John Shipp joined the 11^th Light Dragoons in 1796, the first veterinary surgeon to be commissioned in the British Army. Five years later, there were 44 vets in the army. However, there was no veterinary corps and so vets were recruited into individual regiments under the command of their colonels.

This approach was inadequate and inefficient, resulting in poor care and the death of many horses in the Crimean War of 1854-1856. There were protests from the public at the perceived mismanagement and the Army Veterinary Department was formed as a result in 1881. It consisted only of officers.

By 1898, veterinary treatment was managed by the Army Remount Service, which supplied replacement horses and mules. This move resulted in a swift acceleration of disease, during the Boer War of 1899-1902, about which many vets had warned.  Thus, in 1903, the Army Veterinary Corps was set up, manned by non-commissioned officers and other ranks and in 1906 it merged with the Army Veterinary Department.

                             The RAVC on the Western Front, 1914-1918
                                        Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

By the end of the First World War, in 1918, almost half the veterinary surgeons in Britain were serving with the AVC. As well as treating equines, the AVC also treated camels in the Middle East. Its success was such that about 80% of the animals treated were able to return to duty. After the war, it was granted the ‘Royal’ prefix.

                                    Military dogs in training

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Today, the RAVC principally provides and trains dogs and horses, but it also cares for the Regimental mascots, which include goat(s) as well as the more usual dogs and ponies. Official mascots are given a regimental number and rank, and can be demoted as well as promoted.

Babs, probably a regimental mascot, in the grounds of 22 General Hospital, Pretoria, during the Second Boer War, 1899-1902

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

The RAVC trains approximately 170 dogs every year, which serve in the military or the police forces. It also breeds 60 horses a year.