Who are the British nuclear test veterans? Drawing on life story recordings, this article explores how and why these interviewees signed up to take part in test operations in the 1950s and 1960s.
Photo © Ken Sims, used with permission.
‘British nuclear test veteran’ refers to military and civilian participants of British nuclear test operations in Australia and the Pacific, including army, air force, naval and scientific personnel. The test operations are usually dated from the first British nuclear test in 1952 to an American-led test series in 1962, but also encompass clean-up operations as late as 1967. The operations are a major yet neglected chapter in post-war British history, involving 22,000 British servicemen and the largest tri-service operation since D-Day.
The extracts featured in this article are taken from interviews recorded between August 2023 and July 2024 for the project ‘An Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans’. These extracts help us to understand and define the term ‘British nuclear test veteran’. Who were the young men who participated in test operations and what were their social backgrounds? Why have certain veterans been excluded from official definitions of the term ‘nuclear test veteran’? What about the role of non-British servicemen in test operations, particularly from other ethnic backgrounds?
Taking place more than 70 years after the first British bomb test, these recordings document the testimonies of veterans who were in their late teens when they first witnessed nuclear detonations. These veterans, now in their late eighties and early nineties, are the survivors of this history.
Since these veterans were born before the outbreak of the Second World War, their earliest memories are often dominated by the conflict, particularly if they grew up in urban areas. Richard Bonas, who later served as a Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineer in Operation Grapple, a test series in the Pacific, recalls a moment from his childhood on the outskirts of London.
Richard Bonas recalls a childhood memory from the Second World War, describing an 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]
Richard Bonas holding his Nuclear Test Medal. Photo © Chris Hill.
Memories of childhood during wartime are not all this frightening. Neil Rose, who joined the Royal Engineers and later served at the Maralinga test site in South Australia, describes how his family hosted German Prisoners of War (PoW) on their farm. One of the PoWs painted a portrait of his mother, which hung from the wall of his living room during our interview.
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]
A portrait of Neil Rose's mother, painted on plywood by W Rahm, a German Prisoner of War. Photo © Chris Hill. Photo by Chris Hill
Most interviews in this collection are with National Servicemen or ‘regulars’, since most of the older, officer class of test veterans had passed away by the time the interviews were conducted. Young working-class men in post-war Britain faced a choice between National Service, a compulsory deployment of up to two years, or regular service, which promised a full-time career on better pay. Brian Tomlinson, who served at Maralinga, opted for the latter, which seemed far more attractive than a lifetime of sign painting at home.
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]
Brian Tomlinson at his family home with his wife, Meredith, a former nurse who Brian met whilst based at Catterick Garrison in North Yorkshire. Photo © Chris Hill. Photo © Chris Hill.
For men who preferred to opt for National Service, their life trajectory tended to be determined by recruitment needs rather than choice. One Welsh veteran, John Oates, described in his interview how he and his friends tried to avoid recruitment for Christmas Island, the Pacific atoll where Britain tested atomic and hydrogen bombs during Operation Grapple in the late 1950s. Yet it was to no avail: a recruiting officer signed up Oates and his friends to go to Christmas Island without their permission.
Derek Woolf, who grew up with his mother, a single parent, in Southend-on-Sea, stressed in his interview how little control young men had over their futures. In his case, a decision made on his behalf had repercussions for the rest of his life, since his service as an Royal Air Force (RAF) medic was the starting point of a long and illustrious career in healthcare.
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]
Doctors, medics and the sisters, Mary and Billie Burgess, who were the only two British women stationed on Christmas Island, where they worked for the Women's Voluntary Service. © Brian Lester. Photo © Brian Lester, used with permission.
From the moment that young working-class men signed up, their individual ambitions and wishes were clearly of no concern: they were disposable manpower in the quest for a British bomb. Ken McGinley, founder of the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association in 1983, suggested that there was a sinister side to recruitment for nuclear tests. In this clip he recalls the disproportionate number of young men being recruited from his hometown of Johnstone.
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]
Ken McGinley with a coconut on Christmas Island. Photo © Alan Rimmer, used with permission. Photo © Alan Rimmer, used with permission.
Alan Dowson, who grew up in a back-to-back house in Middlesbrough, recalled a burning sense of injustice upon meeting middle-class, university-educated officers. His experience on Christmas Island ultimately spurred him on to develop a lifelong interest in education, which included attaining a PhD and organising adult education courses.
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]
Alan Dowson in National Service uniform. Photo © Alan Dowson, used with permission. Photo © Alan Dowson, used with permission.
We have heard from English, Scottish and Welsh veterans, but no Northern Irish veterans were interviewed as part of the project. The National Service Act of 1948 did not apply to Northern Ireland, even though men from Northern Ireland were recruited to the nuclear testing programme. Black and Asian British residents seem to have been overlooked for National Service in test operations, despite their eligibility under the 1948 legislation.
Beyond the UK, the test operations involved around 16,000 servicemen from Australia, 900 from Canada, 300 from Fiji and 550 from New Zealand. ‘Gilbertese’ or I-Kiribati labourers on coconut plantations in the Pacific supported British armed forces on Christmas Island, despite being civilians rather than servicemen. Frank Bools, a Royal Engineer, remembers the time he spent with the Fijians with particular fondness.
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]
Frank Bools on Christmas Island. Photo © Frank Bools, used with permission. Photo © Frank Bools, used with permission.
In his interview Bools also recalled the only man of Asian descent to have participated in the test operations: Shiu Anand Singh, a champion weightlifter from Fiji. Singh identified as a ‘Girmitiya’, a name which relates to the indentured labour contracts by which Indian families were brought over to Fiji on British ships from the late 19th century. The Indo-Fijian community comprises today around 38 percent of the Fijian population.
Nuclear test veterans also served in other conflicts in this period, including in Aden, Cyprus, Kenya, Korea and Malaya. Richard Bonas, who served in Malaya after witnessing bombs on Christmas Island, was a veteran of chemical as well as nuclear test operations. He describes volunteering for service at Porton Down, the chemical weapons centre based near Salisbury in Wiltshire.
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]
A chamber at Porton Down. Bonas would likely have been exposed to sarin in a room not dissimilar to this one. Photo © Thomas Keegan, used with permission. Photo © Thomas Keegan, used with permission.
In his recording, squadron leader Pete Peters revealed the inadequacy of official definitions of ‘British nuclear test veterans’. Pete played a leading role in Operation Bagpipes, for which he had to fly into mushroom clouds to collect samples of radioactive debris during an American test series in the Pacific. This series included Castle Bravo. At 15 megatons, this was one of the most powerful bombs ever tested. Despite Pete’s service, his initial application for the ‘Nuclear Test Medal’ was rejected, as he had not participated in a ‘British’ test. Pete reminisces about the fate of his squadron in the following clip.
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]
Peters gathered high-altitude samples from Castle Bravo, which at 15 megatons is the largest nuclear weapon ever tested by the USA. Photo: United States Department of Energy, public domain. Photo © BNTVA Museum, used with permission.
Seeing nuclear detonations made the young men of post-war Britain part of a unique club. It exacerbated concerns about their health, particularly though the perceived risks of radiation exposure from the bombs. How veterans have dealt with ‘exposure worry’ is a key theme of their personal and collective history. An interview with Ken Sims, a civilian worker at Maralinga, highlights just how casual precautions against radiation could be.
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]
Ken Sims (front row, second from the left) poses with his comrades on the bonnet of a Holden SJ sedan. Photo © Ken Sims, used with permission. Photo © Ken Sims, used with permission.
While not a problem for Sims, the majority of interviewees linked ‘exposure worry’ with feelings of betrayal. Many veterans suspect that they were deliberately put at risk as part of a grand experiment to understand the effects of nuclear blasts and radioactivity. While such suspicions are contested, the history of certain veterans suggests that they are not unfounded. During Operation Buffalo, an ‘Indoctrinee Force’ was positioned in the forward area of two detonations, where members were tasked with providing an eyewitness account of the fallout in order to help the UK prepare for the prospect of nuclear war. In Operation Mosaic, the crew of HMS Diana were ordered to sail through two radioactive plumes.
Identifying as a ‘British nuclear test veteran’ has been a way of saying: ‘I have seen something most people would not believe’, or ‘my life has been touched and imperilled by a sublime force’. The term is important for understanding how veterans make sense of their unique experiences. It has proven just as important for how outsiders make sense of these experiences as well, including journalists, doctors and policymakers.
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.
Header image: Ken Sims (front row, second from the left) poses with his comrades on the bonnet of a Holden SJ sedan. Photo © Ken Sims, used with permission.
