The Royal Australian Army Dental Corps (RAADC) is a corps within the Australian Army. It was formed on 23 April 1943 during World War II as the Australian Army Dental Corps, before being granted the 'Royal' prefix in 1948. Prior to its formation dentists were part of the Australian Army Medical Corps. The role of the RAADC is to provide dental care to army personnel in order to minimise the requirement for the evacuation of dental casualties, to conserve manpower and to reduce the burden of casualty evacuation. In the post-war years, the corps has provided personnel to deployments in Japan, Korea and Vietnam. It has also contributed to peace-keeping operations in Somalia, Rwanda, Bougainville and East Timor.
History
World War I
Although it was officially formed in 1943, the corps has its genesis in an earlier formation that was raised for service during World War I as part of the Australian Army Medical Corps. Prior to the war some efforts had been made to try to raise a dental service in the Australian military as part of the institution of universal military service as a result of lessons learned during the Sudan Expedition and the Boer War, however, these attempts had not come to fruition. Upon the outbreak of the war in 1914, there was no provision for establishment or organisation of dental services in the British Order of Battle, upon which Australia based its own Order of Battle at the time. Therefore, despite advice from dentists and requests from formation commanders at the outset of the war, the army thought there was no need for dental services, nor even for the supply of dental medicines or equipment. However, even though the Australian authorities initially saw no need to provide dental services to soldiers, a number of trained dentists volunteered for service and provided dental services on their own initiative.
In the official absence of interest from the Army, many dentists and dental technicians volunteered as medical orderlies or even as infantrymen, in order to serve their country. Largely the services of dental volunteers were also rejected when the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force was raised for deployment against German possessions in the Pacific. However, the senior Australian medical officer, Lieutenant Colonel (later Major General) Neville Howse, approved the attachment of John Henderson, a fourth year dental student, to deploy with them. Henderson later transferred to the infantry and was killed at Pozières in 1916, while serving as a captain in the 13th Battalion. He nevertheless has the distinction of being the first dentist to serve officially in the Army in that capacity.
Later, as the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) was raised, a dental officer was recruited and situated in each military district with the remit of providing advice to senior medical personnel. They were not to carry out dental procedures, however, and as a result civilian dentists offered free services to soldiers while undertaking training in Australia. Upon the AIF's arrival in Egypt in 1915, General William Throsby Bridges argued the case for dentists to be attached to the army in the field, stating that it would reduce the instances of soldiers having to be evacuated from the field as 'dental casualties'. While some progress towards mitigating this was taken in January 1915 when the Australian Army Medical Corps (Dental) Reserve was approved, appointments were slow and consequently the AIF troops that deployed to Gallipoli did so without dental support. Dental health became a serious problem for the Australian army on the Gallipoli Peninsula, contributing as early as June 1915 to a significant number of medical evacuations from the front lines. By July 1915, over 600 soldiers from the 1st Division alone had been evacuated as dental casualties.