Frank Allen Ramsey - Office of Medical History - U.S. Army

Army Medical Department Profilesanimal hospital, and we had a veterinary food inspection detachment small,and a veterinary food inspection detachment large, and each of these units hadtheir sets and kits that went along with the personnel organization tables. Sowe redid all of the organization tables which authorizes the manpower in theseunits. We did away with some units, we developed some new units, wechanged the unit personnel organization structure, and then we addressed eachset and kit of equipment and obtained the sets and kits, laid them out item byitem, evaluated each piece in each set and kit, and determined which wereobsolete, which needed to be replaced, and came up with new listings. Allthese things led to new sets and kits, and new TO&Es which were finallyapproved.Q: Were you able to benefit from the Vietnam experience at this point? It’s earlyin the war at this time.A: Yes, we were getting reports back from units staging to deploy to Vietnamand other units already in Vietnam.Q: You were getting reports back, then?A: Yes, we were getting reports back that we need such and such and we don’thave it. And so we began to identify what we needed, and in revising theTO&Es, we also addressed other medical TO&Es such as the MEDCOMTO&E, and went into the organization and the staffing, the veterinary servicemanpower staffing of the MEDCOM itself.It was interesting there that at the MEDCOM we had very minimal veterinarystaffing at that time. So when we ended up with our revision, we ended up witha full time colonel as the peacetime MEDCOM veterinarian. Then in the eventof an all out mobilization, we would have a brigadier general as a MEDCOMveterinarian, for example, MEDCOM Europe, in the event of a war in anexpansion of the armed forces.48