Ray Carbery was born in Douglas on the Isle of Man in 1937. He joined the Royal Engineers and left for Christmas Island in 1958 on HMT Dunera. He was only told later that he would be part of Operation Grapple, the UK’s nuclear test programme. While on the island, Carbery worked as a refrigeration technician as well as taking on other jobs. He witnessed five bomb tests. He returned to the island with his wife Mary in 2018, and they have sent toys, clothes and other supplies to the islanders over many years. Carbery and the other nuclear test veterans residing on the Isle of Man were awarded financial assistance from the Isle of Man government in 2008.
Interview extracts
Description
Born on the Isle of Man, Ray Carbery joined the Army before leaving for Christmas Island in 1958 on HMT Dunera. He witnessed five bomb tests.In this clip he describes the toilets on Christmas Island, which were made of oil drums. In other interviews veterans recall being burnt by the metal lids. In his interview, Frank Bools describes how the initial sanitation system leaked because engineers had used coral as a building material, forgetting that it is porous. Providing effective sanitation for 1000s of troops proved difficult on a coral reef atoll.
This is a short extract from an in-depth interview. Ray Carbery was recorded for the Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans project in 2024. The interviewer was Jonathan Hogg. This project was run in partnership with National Life Stories and the full interview can be accessed at the British Library.
Transcript
The toilets to the- Mickey, that I’ve just said, from Shropshire, he didn’t smoke but he used to borrow a cigarette off me to go to the toilet, because of all the flies, blowing the smoke out, it did work. The toilets were just oil drums, and you sat on them, they were dug deep so that there was room for it to come out. And that couldn’t have been doing us any good. They were on the ship, and then your tents that you’re living in are only about fifty yards away, you know, that couldn’t have done us any good. And some rotten people used to put land crabs in there, so when you sat down there you didn’t see them and they’d, chk chk.
[ends at 0:00:55]
