Many went on to suffer ill health, with an increased rate of cancers, infertility and birth defects observed in veterans and their descendants.
He could not see the coconut tree he was leaning against or even his own hands. Men around him were crying out in terror, and while Gordon felt an overwhelming urge to flee, there was nowhere he could run to escape the giant toxic cloud.
Aircrafts would be flown through the mushroom cloud series of early atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs carried out in 1957 and 1958 at Malden Island and Christmas Island. ‘I was covered in radioactive water from the spray I was using,’ he says. ‘A week later I had carbuncles on my neck and back, which kept coming back for about six months. I still have the scars.’Gordon, now aged 82, says his health problems started some years after the final test.
Afterwards lorries took away the bodies of thousands of dead birds and fish that washed up on the shore, killed by the radiation. From these same contaminated waters, Douglas and his fellow sailors caught crayfish to barbecue on the beach. Among the things he witnessed on Christmas Island, Bryan, from Worcester, recalls three planes, which had been used to collect samples from the mushroom cloud, being dumped in the Pacific Ocean.‘When all was over, we shot the three aircraft over the bow,’ he explains. ‘They were lend-lease American aircraft and the Yanks did not want them back after being contaminated.’
‘We were issued with a radiation film badge and some very dark goggles and these were the extent of our safety equipment,’ he says. ‘When a test was taking place, we were instructed to put on long trousers, a long sleeve shirt and, wearing the goggles, sit on the football pitch with our backs to the blast.‘This was only enforced for the first two or three bombs, after that we just stayed in bed and turned away from the blast.
‘Firstly she started developing a hump on her back, then she started to put on weight and develop the face of an old lady,’ Douglas recalls. ‘And she was covered in hair – in the end we were shaving her face every day.’ His son Keith is currently battling prostate cancer and last month underwent surgery for the condition. His twin Ian was also affected by the disease.
The case ended up in the Supreme Court in 2012, where the veterans ultimately lost. The court sided with the MoD and ruled it was too long since the problems emerged.
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