Photo By Lt. Col. Kristin Porter | Sgt. Makayla Gassett provides security while Staff Sgt. Michael Wright, both with the...... read more read more
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The 445th Medical Detachment (Veterinary Services), based in Independence, Missouri, is used to a unique mission set of safeguarding food supplies, supporting military working dogs, and ensuring animal health by running vet treatment facilities. But at WAREX, a two-week field exercise designed to replicate the stress, friction and unpredictability of modern conflict, the unit focused on sharpening basic soldiering skills and practicing how to operate tactically under austere conditions.
“This exercise is about practicing our soldiering skills, growing our resilience under stress and duress,” said Lt. Col. Ellen Ratcliff, Commander of the 445th MDVS. “We don’t have dogs out here, and we’re not inspecting food. We’re pushing ourselves in conditions that test readiness in a different way.”
Equipping for the fight
Transitioning from day-to-day veterinary work to field maneuvers requires planning months in advance. For a detachment the size of the 445th, the most persistent challenge isn’t tactics, it’s logistics.
“The biggest challenge for these kinds of exercises, for a detachment of our size, is coming prepared with all the right equipment,” Ratcliff explained. “Months and months ahead of time, you start figuring out where you’ll get this piece of equipment or that piece of equipment to make sure you can be mission capable when you get here.”
Vehicles, shade cloths and low-profile concealment gear are the kinds of items that determine whether a camp is tactical and sustainable in the woods.
To prepare the soldiers themselves, the unit used recent battle assemblies to sleep in cots and tents and rehearse convoy operations. Those “white space” training windows during WAREX, periods when the formal exercise schedule frees up time, became valuable opportunities to bring the whole detachment to the same baseline of soldiering skills.
“These uninterrupted periods with your Army Reserve unit are absolute gold because you don’t get them often,” Ratcliff said. “When you have everybody’s undivided attention, you maximize the opportunity of good training.”
Blending functional training with tactical reality
Sgt. 1st Class Anthony Waite, the 445th detachment sergeant, described a deliberate approach: build individual and small-unit proficiency first, then layer in the large-scale picture. In addition to situational training exercise (STX) lanes that reinforce navigation, noise/light discipline and convoy operations, the detachment coordinated with active-duty counterparts so its veterinary specialists could still practice relevant military occupational specialty (MOS) tasks. During the exercise, some 68-series medical personnel (the detachment’s Veterinary Food Inspection Specialists and Animal Care Specialists) were temporarily attached to an active-duty vet clinic and to food-inspection teams.
“It’s great working with active-duty counterparts… a valuable skill in and of itself,” Waite said. “Our personnel get to see a different side of their MOS that they wouldn’t get on a typical drill weekend.”
That contrast matters: inspections and routine surgeries performed stateside or on base differ from what teams see downrange. “Routine surgeries, dental cleanings and six-month physicals for military working dogs…those aren’t things they do a ton of in deployed environments,” Ratcliff noted.
Conversely, downrange 68-series inspections skew heavily toward operational rations inspections and different priorities than a commissary or local Pizza Hut inspection in garrison, added Waite.
Relearning agility for large-scale combat operations
Ratcliff framed the unit’s evolution as a pivot in mindset. Where veterinary services historically fall into sustainment operations with a stable footprint, LSCO will require agility, quick moves, dispersed teams, and the ability to hide and operate tactically.
“As a veterinarian, the biggest pivot is thinking about how to get 50 soldiers to pack up quickly, move to a different spot, set up a tactical camp, hide everything and then do our jobs on that footprint,” she said. “That’s a completely different frame of mind.”
The unit’s focus at WAREX was to recreate skills that may have been lost as missions and doctrine evolved, including rebuilding a capacity to collaborate with headquarters, understand the battlefield geometry, and adapt where small teams will be pushed forward while larger elements remain back.
The intangible returns: cohesion and career impact
Beyond equipment lists and checkboxes, WAREX delivered something harder to measure: cohesion, confidence and motivation. Ratcliff recalled how a previous WAREX as a young officer transformed her own career.
“When I was a captain, a WAREX changed my military career. I learned how to be a good soldier… the cohesion I felt with my team made me want to continue to be a part of this,” she said. “Sitting around, sweating together, problem-solving together, seeing each other win and occasionally lose… that is irreplaceable.”
That ethos is central to why Army Reserve soldiers commit time away from civilian lives and careers. “If we’re going to take everybody’s time, pull them out of their lives and tell them they have to come on this mission, this mission needs to be valuable to them as humans and as soldiers,” Ratcliff said. “If they come here, have a good experience and feel cared for by their leaders, do things they don't get to do on drill weekend, and they thrive living in these conditions, then that is empowering as a soldier in a way that helps their career indefinitely.”
Training for the future, one exercise at a time
The 445th’s WAREX rotation showed how specialty units can expand their operational playbook without abandoning their technical expertise. By alternating focused soldiering drills with MOS-specific attachments to active-duty counterparts, they constructed a holistic readiness model: operationally relevant, tactically aware and rooted in the human bonds that sustain units under stress.
“This is about getting the most out of our time together,” Ratcliff said. “Busy, meaningful tasks make soldiers highly motivated. And that motivation helps them thrive, in these conditions and beyond.”
WAREX might not resemble the detachment’s usual work, but the lessons learned about mobility, concealment, interoperability, and esprit de corps will shape how the 445th MDVS shows up for future missions.
| Date Taken: | 09.18.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 09.23.2025 16:27 |
| Story ID: | 548950 |
| Location: | FORT DIX, NEW JERSEY, US |
| Web Views: | 95 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Building Soldiering Skills: How a Veterinary Detachment Trains for Large-Scale Combat, by LTC Kristin Porter, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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