British nuclear test veterans

Richard Bonas recalls a childhood memory from the Second World War, describing a​n​ air raid shelter shared with a neighbour and the terror experienced during an air raid. Since his childhood home was on the outskirts of London, he remembers the air raids being both regular and violent. His father, who worked as an auxiliary fireman, died not long after the war. Bonas went on to join the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME) as a ‘fitter’s mate’. In 1958, he was sent to Christmas Island, and recounts walking around ground zero of a Grapple Z test shortly after an atomic bomb had been detonated.

This is a short extract from an in-depth interview. Richard Bonas was recorded for the Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans project in 2024. The interviewer was Christopher R Hill. This project was run in partnership with National Life Stories and the full interview can be accessed at the British Library.

Some of my earliest memories are, where we were living we shared an air raid shelter at the bottom of the garden with a lady, Mrs Dooley, next door, middle-aged lady. And Mrs Dooley, the raid was on, the air raid siren had gone, and it was early, it was nighttime, and we were… Mrs Dooley had gone to the air raid shelter, in the dark, the sky was on fire it looked, could have been 1941 when, you know – ’40, ’41 – during the Blitz, it must have been during the Blitz. And she’d gone, Mrs Dooley had gone to the air raid shelter, then suddenly remembered her deed box, and rushed back up the narrow garden path to get her deed box, bumped into my mother and me, knocked me flying – my mother was carrying me, I had a sister, two years older than me - and we went flying. And I remember laying on the ground, looking up at the guttering – it was very low guttering, because I’ve been past the building since in the 1960s, and, where we used to live, Pooley Green, Surrey – and I remember looking up at the guttering and the fire in the sky and screaming and screaming and screaming with terror. I remember Mrs Dooley’s face coming out of the darkness; short, dumpy woman with short grey hair, bumping into my mother. Because my mother moaned about that, because she fell over and scraped her leg, she moaned about that for ages afterwards, I can remember her afterwards saying, ‘Bloody stupid Mrs Dooley, look what she’s done to my leg’, this, that and the other, and I was absolutely terrified. I remember looking up and the sky looked like it was on fire.

[ends at 0:02:04]

This painting of Neil Rose’s mother, created by a German Prisoner of War who stayed with their family at Woodhampton, now hangs on the wall of his living room. Rose tells the story behind the painting. On his father’s side, Rose’s family has a proud heritage of military service. Rose carried on this tradition, training as a mechanic and serving in Maralinga during Operation Antler, where he assessed target response equipment that had been exposed to the blast of a nuclear detonation.

This is a short extract from an in-depth interview. Neil Rose was recorded for the Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans project in 2024. The interviewer was Christopher R Hill. This project was run in partnership with National Life Stories and the full interview can be accessed at the British Library.

The photograph there, or the painting there, of my mother, now, I told you we had Germans come to stay with us at Woodhampton, one of them was an artist and he did that picture for my mother’s Christmas present. And it’s the gospel truth, that was painted on plywood, and plywood, on the back of it, it’s got all stains of oil and stuff, it’s really rough, but he had to find it on the farm, something to paint on, sanded it and whatever he did, and then he painted that.

That’s remarkable quality, given that’s on plywood.

He signed it, and it’s my mother to a tee and something I’m immensely proud of.

[ends at 0:00:51]

Brian Tomlinson describes his first job as a sign painter, where the strong fumes from thinners and paints made him feel sick and unable to eat. He hints at the irony of these circumstances, since his service as a royal engineer would later expose him to other toxic contaminants at Operation Antler, a nuclear test series at Maralinga, South Australia. Tomlinson’s testimony demonstrates why signing up as a regular to the armed forces would have been so attractive for someone from his background, particularly considering the noxious work he would have been doing as a civilian.

This is a short extract from an in-depth interview. Brian Tomlinson was recorded for the Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans project in 2024. The interviewer was Christopher R Hill. This project was run in partnership with National Life Stories and the full interview can be accessed at the British Library.

I couldn’t eat.

And that was your first job, wasn’t it, the signage?

First job. And I used to, as soon as I walked in in the morning, and you could smell the fumes from the thinners and the paints and all that sort of thing, at the end of the day I’d feel really, really sick. And my mother said, you’ve got to eat. And I said, I can’t eat. And I could taste, I could taste the, like paraffin and thinners and all that that we used to use. And that’s what made me join the forces really, I said I’ve got to get out and do something sensible and not just stick in this place. I couldn’t… because I said to my dad, I said, how on earth did you manage to stay in this place all these years? He said, because of you lot.

Ah.

I said, I can’t do that. And that’s what made me join, really, to get out and be in the open air, outside, and learn something. Which I did, I learned a hell of a lot when I was in the Engineers. And I was quite, quite proud of that.

[ends at 0:01:03]

Derek was a regular airman in the Royal Airforce. He was posted as a medic to Christmas Island and Cyprus. Yet it was never his plan to become a medic, as he had initially sought to train as an electrician. Woolf’s experience provides an insight into the lack of choice available to servicemen. His training as a medic, whilst against his wishes, ended up shaping the rest of his life. On Christmas Island, his service proved invaluable. In one instance, he even prevented a fellow serviceman from taking his own life by saving him from swimming off the perilous reef that surrounds the atoll.

This is a short extract from an in-depth interview. Derek Woolf was recorded for the Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans project in 2024. The interviewer was Christopher R Hill. This project was run in partnership with National Life Stories and the full interview can be accessed at the British Library.

I was stood in the line when a corporal with a clipboard came along, appointing us to our various sections, and he said to me, ‘Electrical mechanic air’. And I protested and said, no, I signed on for four years for ground. He said, no, if you wanted to do ground you should have stood where he’s standing, you’re air. The result of this, I obviously put in a redress of grievance and felt I’d been treated badly, was wheeled in front of the Wing Commander training who told me I was a troublemaker and I could do anything I liked in the Air Force but be an electrician, what did I want to do? I remembered that at the recruit training I’d done a route march across Cannock Chase, had blisters on my heels, I then reported sick, was given the treatment slip by the Medical Officer and sent to the treatment room where a young leading aircraftsman medic sat while all the recruits scrambled getting their own treatment, and then presented their treatment chits to him, who he signed them and then waved them away and went back to his Reader’s Digest. And I thought, that’ll do me for four years. They’ll give me a pen and a Reader’s Digest and I’m happy. It wasn’t to work out like that.

No. [laughs]

[ends at 0:01:16]

Ken McGinley grew up in Johnstone, Renfrewshire, Scotland. In this clip he reflects on the scale of recruitment in his hometown for National Service on Christmas Island. McGinley, who carried out his service in the Royal Engineers, later began to suspect that these recruitment figures were disproportionate. After writing an article about the subject for the Sunday Post, he was called before the Scottish government in Holyrood to give evidence. McGinley was the founding chair of the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association.

This is a short extract from an in-depth interview. Ken McGinley was recorded for the Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans project in 2024. The interviewer was Christopher R Hill. This project was run in partnership with National Life Stories and the full interview can be accessed at the British Library.

The thing about living in Johnstone, everybody knew each other. This is the amazing thing. And, you know, it’s like, we were talking about, you know, Celtic football team, about when they won the European Cup, they all lived within twenty mile of each other. When I went to Christmas Island and did research and all my, looking through all my records and one thing and another, I discovered there were twenty or twenty-one lads that were born in Johnstone. Six of us went to the same class, five of us worked for the same company, and yet there was only less than twenty people worked for that company, went to Christmas Island. And I did the article when I read this research and I couldnae believe it, you know, Tony Crampsey, Pat Haggerty, Frank Murney, Jim McGlynn, John Ferns. You know, I looked at them all and I says, my God, big Jim McBride, we all went to church together too, and things like that, you know, and met each other every day down the street, and we all lived within a square mile of each other. I was saying, so what the hell’s going on here. So I’m looking at that and I’m saying, right, so I did a story in The Sunday Post and it was so effective that the Scottish government took it up.

[ends at 0:01:37]

In November 1956, during the Suez Crisis, Alan Dowson was signed up for National Service in the RAF. Here he was assigned one of the lowest ranks. Observing officers, who were often less capable in life skills despite higher education and rank, sparked Dowson’s interest in class and societal hierarchy. This experience instilled in him a lifelong passion for education. Dowson later attained a doctorate and ran adult education courses in Peterborough, where he also served as a Labour mayor.

This is a short extract from an in-depth interview. Alan Dowson was recorded for the Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans project in 2024. The interviewer was Christopher R Hill. This project was run in partnership with National Life Stories and the full interview can be accessed at the British Library.

November 1956. At the same as we attacked Egypt, it was the Suez Crisis on at that time, but I had no thoughts about aspirations or that. And in the Air Force they have twenty grades and my educational levels were not very high, and I think grade one is a pilot and grade twenty is a dustbin emptier on the camp. I was grade nineteen, so I was a waiter and cleaning of kitchen utensils and being in the officers’ mess to polish officers’ shoes. And that I think started to stir my thoughts about hierarchy in society. Here I was doing the bodgy jobs for people who were same age as me, but they’d been to university or to grammar school, and they were officers, and many of them, they were paper qualified but they were quite dim as how life, what about life and looking after yourself. And I thought, well, I can do better than them.

[ends at 0:01:39]

Frank Bools was a Royal Engineer who witnessed five nuclear detonations on Christmas Island in 1958, which included Grapple Y, Britain’s largest nuclear explosion. In his interview, he describes how he and his peers had to improvise to build the infrastructure with scarce materials on Christmas Island. In the clip, Bools mentions the role of ‘Gilbertese’ or I-Kiribati labourers in helping to construct an amphitheatre out of bitumen barrels. He expresses his admiration for the Fijian soldiers, who also contributed to the building of the base on Christmas Island. Their stature, strength and camaraderie left a positive impression on him that remains to this day.

This is a short extract from an in-depth interview. Frank Bools was recorded for the Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans project in 2024. The interviewer was Christopher R Hill. This project was run in partnership with National Life Stories and the full interview can be accessed at the British Library.

I can remember the Sergeant Major was given the task of building the new camp cinema, and he built an amphitheatre out of empty bitumen barrels filled with coral sand. And he had twelve Gilbertese men, because they could earn more working for us than they could, you know, otherwise, otherwise they were just working on the copper. The Fijis, on the other hand, were attached to 12 Squadron, they were part of our Squadron. So I was with them every day. They were the most wonderful people I’ve ever seen. They were, we used to call them the ‘Fi-Giants’, because they were all enormous. There were two guys called Benny. Little Benny was six foot four.

[interviewer laughs]

Big Benny was seven foot something. He was… they were giants!

[ends at 0:01:11]

Richard Bonas recalls volunteering for a physiological course at Porton Down, a biochemical warfare establishment in Wiltshire. He was unaware of precisely what the course entailed. Shortly after arriving at Porton Down, however, he and other volunteers were subjected to a series of chemical weapons experiments, which included the use of mustard gas. In the clip, Bonas describes the effects of inhaling the nerve agent sarin gas. The experience proved to be a turning point, as it gave him a sensitivity to light that tormented him whilst on Christmas Island, where he spiralled into depression. Bonas’s experiences at Porton Down and Christmas Island both reveal a troubling set of medical and military assumptions about the soldier’s body and consent.

This is a short extract from an in-depth interview. Richard Bonas was recorded for the Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans project in 2024. The interviewer was Christopher R Hill. This project was run in partnership with National Life Stories and the full interview can be accessed at the British Library.

Prior to that, in 1957, I volunteered for Porton Down. It came up on orders when I was at Bicester, volunteers wanted to go to Porton Down for a physiological course. I asked this sergeant, what’s all this about? Didn’t know what physiological meant. So he said, oh, you’re out in the fields, you know, gas capes and all that. I thought, that’s a bit of a change from working in the workshop, I’ll volunteer for that. Well, I got to Porton Down, it was, it was wonderful. It would have been like an officers’ mess, I suppose. Not that I’d know what an officers’ mess was like. And we soon found out, they put us in the gas chambers and they pumped in sarin gas, and there was a big window where the doctors were standing with their white coats and their notes, and I just went, I took a breath of this, I went down, bang. I couldn’t breathe, I was choking, I couldn’t breathe. I thought I was dying, I was nineteen. The Lieutenant Colonel knelt down, put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘This will pass’. Eventually it did. I know my eyes were so – everyone’s – it dilated the pupils, or the pupils got bigger, and anyway, eventually, I know I was playing cards for money and losing and thought it was funny. I never gambled in the army, never gambled anyway. And it so affected our eyes you couldn’t stand bright lights. And, you know, you weren’t allowed to smoke in there, but afterwards, I was I think there for about a week or ten days, they did all sorts of things with us, gave us injections, mustard gas, the gas here.

A scar?

A scar, the round scar. Anyway, I think they… yeah, it is, and you’ll see it now. There, on each arm. And other things they did. And you’d strike a match, you couldn’t even stand the brightness of a match, and you’d, you know, and you’d, you know, like pff pff pff, try and light your fag. [sighs] And it was then, when I used to lay down at night – uh! I couldn’t breathe. And on Christmas Island, that got really, really worse. So I laid down on my back – oh! They call it sleep apnoea now, don’t they?

Yeah.

But I didn’t know that then. I kept reporting sick. Oh, it’s him again, Bonas again. Two codeine and duty. I asked to see a psychiatrist. We haven’t got one on the island.

[ends at 0:03:11]

Pete Peters was a Royal Air Force squadron leader who later went on to work in ‘psyops’ and military intelligence. His interview differs somewhat from others in this collection, since Peters did not take part in one of the strictly ‘British’ test operations in Australia or the Pacific. By contrast, he played a vital role in the reconnaissance of American and Russian nuclear tests. In this clip, he talks about the fate of his fellow comrades in Operation Bagpipes, where British pilots took samples from American nuclear tests in Operation Castle. One of these tests was Castle Bravo, one of the most powerful nuclear weapons ever tested.

The prevalence of cancers among Peters’s comrades provides an indication of the risk involved in these cloud-sampling missions. This interview marked a first step in changing the eligibility criteria so that veterans like Peters can receive a Nuclear Test Medal from the UK government.

This is a short extract from an in-depth interview. Pete Peters was recorded for the Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans project in 2023. The interviewer was Christopher R Hill. This project was run in partnership with National Life Stories and the full interview can be accessed at the British Library.

And of course the aircraft themselves were festooned with filters, on the wingtips, under the fuselage, one on top of the fuselage, and so on and so forth. So they were much modified for the job. And we were, for going through this sort of thing, the air conditioning system was modified so that we were safeguarded, or so it said, but since then all those who took part in this exercise died early, or died after they’d all left the service, in their later life, etc., all of them from cancer. I got cancer, I was lucky in that my wife, bless her soul, picked it up early, wouldn’t listen to me that it was something else, and insisted that the doctor has me into hospital, whipped my cancer out, which is why I’m still here. But yeah, everybody else died of cancer.

[ends at 0:01:06]

Ken Sims occupies a unique position within this collection of interviews, as a non-scientist civilian worker at Aldermaston Weapons Research Establishment. He became a nuclear test veteran due to his involvement in minor trials in Maralinga in the early 1960s. The minor trials, of which there were around 550, are renowned for having produced more radioactive waste than all the atmospheric tests combined. In this clip, Sims describes the casual attitude he took to man-made radiation at the time, reflecting on the process of ‘scrubbing up’ after being exposed to radioactive materials.

This is a short extract from an in-depth interview. Ken Sims was recorded for the Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans project in 2024. The interviewer was Christopher R Hill. This project was run in partnership with National Life Stories and the full interview can be accessed at the British Library.

Oh, I’ll tell you a funny little joke if I may. We, well, tents [?], we were working away and every time you left the workshop you had to scrub up, obviously you’d scrub your arms and all the bits of you, and there’s four of us and I was driving the Land Rover. ‘Come on Ken, we’ll go to lunch.’ ‘Okay.’ They scrubbed up, hands in the Geiger counter, sat in the Land Rover. I scrubbed up, there was two Geiger counters, I went up to the other one, never give it a thought, put my hands in it. Beep beep beep. Bloody hell. Scrubbed up, scrubbed up. Hands in again. Beep beep beep. ‘Come on Ken, we’ll be late for lunch.’ ‘I'm coming’, I said, ‘I’m not clean yet’. ‘Okay, try again.’ So I’m scrubbing up, I’m trying to… hands in the Geiger counter, beep beep beep. The bloody thing’s still wrong, try the other one. Tried the other one, the other one was out of action. Yeah. Yeah. [laughs]

Right. So in the end you got fed up, decided I’ll use the other one, and walked through.

[ends at 0:01:03]

Dr Chris Hill is an Associate Professor in History at the University of South Wales. His research interests span the fields of environmental history, imperial history, and science and technology studies. His recent research, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), has explored the role of imperialism across the cycle of nuclear development in Britain, from uranium extraction in Namibia and South Africa to nuclear weapons tests in Australia and the Pacific. Chris is Principal Investigator for the Office for Veterans’ Affairs funded project: ‘An Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans’. His next book, Radiant Empire: Namibian Uranium and Nuclear Britain, is contracted to Stanford University Press.