MOBILE DENTAL UNIT

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 4, 16 January 1942, Page 6

MOBILE DENTAL UNIT

(N.Z.FJ.F. Official News Service) j CAIRO, Nov. 24. Queued up outside* the tented, dug-in dental hospital of a New Zealand mobiLe dental unit deep in the Western Desert was an ambling file of soldiery and airmen from all parts of the British Empire. Not far distant was the roar of the Mediterranean as it pounded the shores of E^ypt. They came from near and far, from all parts of the desert, for the fame of this dental unit had spread and soon its location was well known amoiiig the troops. So then, it was not surprising that I should have run across this little desert drama. I watched them file past. There were soldiers and airmen from New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, Mauritius—there were Maoris and, to add a splash more colour to a gathering already colourful, there were several Libyans. " My Libyan gentlemen are excellent patients," a dental officer who had made it his especial, jotb to look after the Libyans told me. Four dental chairs, with l'oot-operated drills and all essential equipment and four well known New Zealand dentists soon patched up the dental defects. Broken sets were repaired with hand-operated lathes, soldiers who had lost their sets were soon fitted with new ones. With all the gravity in the world, those who had lost their teeth told suspicious stories of how they lost them for, above all, thej r were out to avoid an entry in red in their pay books. The Army charges the careless soldiers for loss of breakages. Great work is being carried out by this dental unit. Their dental hospital is well-established, but in addition sub-sections travel out to brigades and carry out any dental work neeessarj' among the battalions. A section consists of a truck, a driver, a dental officer, a dental mechanic, and an orderly. Any mechanical work, any fillings and any extractions ca.n be undertaken in the very heart of the desert, but surgical work is out of the question.

Surgical work should be unnecessary, for all trocips should be. dentally fit before they join line battalions. Chief work of the mobile dental unit is maintenance and urgent extractions with painless. If it became necessary to carry out an urgent surgical dental operation, a medical officer could be co-opted lo give a general anaesthetic.

New Zealand's mobile surgical unit is reputed to be the oldest one of its kind in the British Army. It was formed half-way through the last Avar. So. paradoxically, the youngest Dominion has the oldest Army Dental Corps. It is, perhaps, regrettable that such a unit should be necessary among the New Zealand troops, but its existence is in keeping With New Zealand's notorious reputation for poor teeth.

Each sub-unit in the New Zealand division has its unit comedians, and the comedians of the Mobile Dental are known to all and sundrv as "The Twci Dwarfs. They are twins —only little chaps but they are doing a man's job of work. Each is in charge of a three-ton truck, and they handle them like Seagrave or a Parry Thomas.

Then I met an A.S.C. sergeant who is attached to Mobile Dental in charge of transport. He is one of those Heaven-sent men you find in the Armj r . He can make anything. His latest contribution is a steel guitar made from an old bully-beef box, four lengths of thin wire, the end of a tobacco tin and a few nails. It's a real Heath Robinson affair, but, believe it or not, it makes music.

T*hat night 1 had a long yarn to the dental officers in their dug-out-mess- Hun planes roared overhead and while they raced across the stariit sky a dental officer prepared a supper of sausages, green peas and eggs. Things are pretty good in the Western Desert —some t i mes.