Royal Australian Army Dental Corps

Royal Australian Army Dental Corps
Cap badge of the Royal Australian Army Dental Corps
Active	1943–present
Country	Australia
Branch	Army
Type	Corps
Role	Provision of military dental services
Motto(s)	Honour the Work
Insignia
Abbreviation	RAADC

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.

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, the Australian authorities initially saw no need to provide dental services to soldiers, although a number of trained dentists volunteered for service. Largely the services of these volunteers were rejected, however, when the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force was raised for deployment against German possessions in the Pacific, 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 in the Army in that capacity.