‘There was a flash, I could see my bones’
The motto of the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association (BNTVA) is “still fighting an invisible enemy”. The group represents the thousands of British servicemen involved in the UK’s nuclear bomb testing programme in the 1950s, and the motto is a sad reference to the fact that many veterans, including many in Kent, have suffered, and are still suffering, severe ill-heath as a result of being exposed to radiation.
Terry Quinlan is one such. He has related to us in a previous Memories article how, as a young National Serviceman, he was posted to Christmas Island with the Royal Army Service Corps. He was there when the bomb known as Grapple X was detonated off the southern tip of the atoll, just 23 miles from Mr Quinlan’s base.
The blast was equivalent to 1.8 megatons of TNT - or 120 times more powerful than the Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima during the Second World War.
Mr Quinlan and his comrades had been issued with no protective clothing. Indeed in the blistering tropical heat, most were wearing nothing but shorts. As a precaution, they had been told to sit on the beach with their backs to the blast with their eyes closed and their fists covering their eyes. Mr Quinlan described a tremendous flash of light like an X-ray and a scorching heat on his back. He said: “I could see the bones in my hands.” Shortly after came the blast wave which knocked them forward in the sand, felled coconut trees in a nearby plantation and brought down their tents.
After a few brief minutes of horror, the servicemen were allowed to stand and watch as the mushroom cloud rose in the sky.
Mr Quinlan went on to endure four more nuclear blasts. A few years later, at
24, he suffered a cancerous growth in his side. Since then he has had heart problems. Mr Quinlan, from Baywell,
Leybourne, later joined the BNTVA’s campaign for servicemen involved in the nuclear testing programme to be awarded a campaign medal. After years of lobbying, and with a General Election looming, they seemed to be finally getting somewhere, when in July last year,
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson announced he would set up an Advisory Military Sub Committee to look into the matter. A response, promised by November, has now been put back to early next month. Meanwhile, it seems the only ones interested in the plight of the test veterans is the Japanese. They of course know a thing or two about the effects of radiation.
Last week, a camera crew from Nippon Television Network Corporation met Mr Quinlan in Maidstone to interview him for a film called: “X Years After The Irradiation.”
The Tokyo company is planning a TV show in April and full-length theatrical release in January next year. Mr Quinlan said: “They were particularly interested in what happened to the fish around Christmas Island. The answer is that they all died. The shore was littered with dead fish and birds after the blast.
“They also wanted to know how I felt about nuclear weapons. That’s a difficult one. I wouldn’t wish a nuclear explosion on anybody. It would be better if the whole world would give them up.”