Between Heaven and Hell

by Alan Rimmer

  “The specialist asked me questions and he became very interested when I mentioned Christmas Island. He said bright, flashing lights could have caused my problem. He told me of the nuclear veterans association and advised me to contact them. I felt I would be better advised seeking another specialist, which I did. To my surprise he also advised me to contact the association, so I did.

  “I spoke to the British Nuclear Tests Veterans’ Association and I told them I was extremely sceptical. They suggested I should contact one or two of my old comrades from Christmas Island. I was impressed by the fact they did not try to force opinions on me, so I decided to do a bit of detective work.

  “After many weeks I located one old chum from Christmas Island who was still serving with the RAF. He had travelled with me to the island. We shared a tent, worked together and travelled back together.

  “When I telephoned, he was not at home, so I introduced myself to his wife whom I’d never met. Without divulging any of my problems I enquired after my old comrade. ‘How’s he getting on these days?’ I asked.

  “‘Very well indeed,’ came the reply.

  “‘It’s years since I last saw him. Is he still fairly fit?’

  “‘Oh yes, he’s OK…except for the fact he’s been experiencing eye trouble since he was 40.’

  “‘Really? In what way?’

  “‘Cataracts. First one eye, then the other. He is waiting for another operation now.’

  “‘Good grief,’ I said. ’I am sorry. Is everyone else OK?’

  “‘Yes, we have two sons both of whom are healthy,’ she said. ‘Have you any children?’

  “‘Three,’ I replied. ‘The eldest one unfortunately was malformed at birth, but after a traumatic youth she really has turned out to be a super lass and I am extremely proud of her. She has adjusted very well.’

  “‘How strange,’ came the reply. ‘Our first child was deformed and died soon after birth.’

  “Her reply hit me like a bombshell. After 27 years of many painful and miserable experiences with Julie, the penny finally dropped. It was just too much of a coincidence; the atomic bomb had to be responsible for her suffering.

  “I felt myself becoming very angry. I thought of all the fine, healthy, strong young men who were sent out to the bomb tests. Those fit, trusting young men. Young men who were never given a choice. They trusted their government. They trusted their superiors. They trusted the scientists. And most of us trusted in God.

  “The reward? A long, lingering, wasting death for many. Leaving wives with children. Many of those children have died. Many of those children are deformed. I was appalled and sickened. There was no doubt in my mind. The atomic bomb was responsible and we had been conned and lied to for 30 years.”

  Many more came forward from every corner of the country with similar heart-wrenching stories.

  In the tiny village of Llanymddyfri, near Swansea, Mrs Margaret Basey, had never doubted the insidious effects of the bomb tests. She spoke after she put her ‘baby son’ to bed. Her ‘baby’ was Stephen and he was a fully grown man aged 22 years.

  He had been born with crippling physical malformations and was severely mentally handicapped. Stephen was unable to perform the simplest of tasks, and needed constant care and attention But with a devotion only a mother can give, Mrs Basey was coping as best she could.

  Stephen was born four years after her husband, March Buttivant Basey, who served in the Royal Navy returned from Christmas Island where he witnessed two nuclear tests. He died of multiple myeloma, a bone disease, in 1975 and Mrs Basey had been left to care for their son alone.

  As in the case of John MacLeod, the authorities wanted to step in. Mrs Basey said: “When Stephen was born they wanted to take him away from us. They said he would be better off in an institution, but we chased them. I told them if anyone was going to look after him, it was me. They weren’t very happy, though.

  “I hated those people. My poor late husband had been such a healthy man; strong as an ox and he was so gentle and kind. But he’d changed when he came back from those tests. Disease coursed through his veins and his spirit was broken. They didn’t care.

  “He hardly ever talked about the bomb tests, but I knew they’d changed him. He’d become moody and irritable, completely unlike the man I knew before. He seemed to be crumbling inside and I was very worried about him. When I became pregnant, I thought it would change things. I thought we could go back to the way we were before. But then Stephen was born, and March just got worse.

  “I tried to talk to him about why Stephen was the way he was, but March didn’t want to discuss it. I spoke to the doctors telling them there had never been any illnesses in either of our families, but they just shrugged their shoulders and said it was one of those things.

  “When March got the cancer he lost the will to live, really. The cancer was the last straw. It was a nasty cancer and he suffered a lot. I did my best for him, but the spirit had gone. The only time he spoke about it was just before he died. He told me his sickness was the result of the bomb tests and he also believed our son’s condition was caused by the same thing.

  “He was totally convinced about it. He told me not to believe anything the doctors said and to fight for all the help I could get. He said he knew he was dying and that he was sorry for everything, and then he died.”

  “I’ve never forgotten what he said. There’s just me and Stephen now and he is our son. I don’t mind looking after him. He goes to a special school during the day, but he always comes home to me in the evening. He is just a big baby really, and I know he would be heart-broken if he was parted from me. I admit we could use some help, but Stephen gets all the love he needs at home. He wouldn’t get that in care.”

  Sid Harris a hotel owner from Blackpool cries bitter tears; he cries tears for the boy who wasn’t able to. His only son Trevor couldn’t cry because disease affected the ducts in his eyes, making it impossible for him to shed a tear. When the pain got too bad, all he could do was rock back and forth while he cried inside.

  Trevor died at the tender age of 12. Mr Harris, who witnessed three nuclear explosions during service with the RAF on Christmas Island, said: “Trevor was born with an extremely rare disease, a form of cancer that affects the bone and the blood. It’s so unusual there were apparently only 12 cases in the world. It caused my son’s bones to literally crumble to dust, and I had to watch him while he suffered. There was nothing anyone could do.

  “I don’t think Trevor had a pain-free day in his short life. It really was a terrible disease and he was always in pain. The more I saw him the more angry I became because no-one could tell me why he was suffering so much. Everyone wants to blame someone or something for this sort of thing. But I must admit I went along with the doctors who said it was probably just pure chance. I’m not so sure now.

  Former army motor mechanic Ken McCormack lived with death and disease in his family since witnessing Britain’s first A-bomb at Monte Bello in 1952.

  He recalled: “I always blamed the bomb, but no-one would believe me. I have always been convinced it ruined my health and that of my family. I have never been so sure of anything in my life. I have suffered a series of heart attacks, but the loss of our eldest son Peter hit me hardest of all. He was born soon after I returned to Britain and contracted a rare form of kidney cancer to which he eventually succumbed at the age of 28.”

  Mr McCormack was so convinced the bomb caused his son’s cancer that tried to get the words ‘radiation induced cancer’ on his death certificate. Of course the doctors wouldn’t comply.

  He recalled: “They said they were unable to do that because they did not know what caused Peter’s cancer. The nearest they could get was that it was an act of God. But I am sure it was because of my radiation exposure. I know I was contaminated because of the nature of my work.

  “I was stationed about seven miles from the explosion and part of my job was to measure radiation levels in samples recovered from the shore n
ear the test site. The instruments I was handling were highly radioactive, the Geiger counters went off the scale, but the only protection I had was a pair of gloves. I was never told about possible dangers. Like the rest of the men I just did as I was told.”

  His wife Muriel lost two other children through stillbirths. “They never let me see those babies because they were so badly deformed,” she said. “They never even told us what sex they were. There is something very wrong with this family, yet neither Ken nor I have had any history of bad health in either side. It is as though we have been cursed; I find it hard to understand what has happened to us.”

  Denise Grove was born with no muscles down the left side of her body. It was a mystifying illness which baffled the best medical brains in Harley Street and consultants in the world famous Great Ormond Street hospital. “The doctors didn’t want to touch me,” said Denise. “They had no idea what was wrong with me and didn’t want to do anything for fear of making things worse.”

  But as she grew, it became clear something would have to be done. “There were no muscles in my neck, my left arm, or leg. I was all lop-sided. I just flopped all over the place.”

  Finally a surgeon was found at the Orsett hospital in Essex who was willing to take on Denise. “I think he regarded me as a bit of a challenge. He was a wonderful man and he became a good friend. All I can remember of my childhood is being in hospital, that’s all I ever knew. The surgeon tried everything he could think of. He would try one operation, and if it didn’t work he’d try another. Then it would be back to the drawing board.”

  In the first 10 years of her life, Denise had six major operations and more than a dozen minor procedures. She was cut open, stitched up, then cut open all over again. Gradually Denise was rebuilt. Muscles were grafted into her neck so she could hold her head up, and her left arm was strengthened. False ligaments were put in her leg which stretched with her as she grew.

  She suffered agonies on the way and had to wear big red surgical boots and a plastic brace which she had to wear day and night. Her childhood was a nightmare of taunting children and cruel stares. As she entered her teens, the doctors said they’d done all they could and that only exercise would now help her recovery.

  “I never had any boyfriends,” she said. “I lacked the confidence. I worked out a technique where I walked beside my girlfriends and got in the same step as them, so people wouldn’t notice my limp. I was often in despair about the cruel things that had happened to me. I used to cry out and I kept wondering why I was born like this. It’s been awful going through the years with people asking, ‘What’s the matter with you?’ and my having to say, I don’t know.

  A lot of people thought I had polio or some other disease. Some people used to shy away from me because they thought it might be contagious! In the end I used to invent things like I was run over by a car, or had had a heavy fall. Anything to stop the questions.”

  Denise’s dad Fred Barker, a former Sapper in the Army told her he had been stationed on Christmas Island when a hydrogen bomb was tested. Denise, his first child, was born less than two years after he returned.

  “Dad said he’d always blamed himself for the way I was, but I told him not to worry. It’s the Government that should pay for putting so many men in harm’s way in the first place. It couldn’t possibly be his fault. He was only following orders. I don’t know what the future holds for me. I am still a very slow walker and I get very tired, and I am still very weak down my left side. I always have to think about how I walk and have to tell myself to move my left leg in front of my right. I am scared I will end up in a wheelchair.”

  Mrs Valerie Billing, from Ripon North Yorkshire, was still recovering from the shock of being told her baby daughter Claire had been born with a deformed leg, when the doctor asked her if she had ever been exposed to radiation.

  She recalled: “I expected to be asked what sort of pills I had taken, things like that. But I wasn’t even sure what radiation exposure meant. How could I, a housewife from Ripon, be exposed to radiation? The doctor said they were considering every possibility because they had absolutely no idea why Claire was born that way. He said radiation exposure was just one of many possibilities. I told him in no uncertain terms that I’d never had so much as an X-ray.”

  Mrs Billing may not have been exposed to radiation…but her husband Robert had. He was present at three H-bomb explosions on Christmas Island in 1957-58. It was his job to drive an Army land rover taking scientists out to the test sites to collect samples.

  He said: “The scientists were covered head to toe in white protective suits and gas masks. All I had on was a pair of shorts and a bush hat to keep the sun off. I must have been contaminated and it looks as though I have passed something on to Claire. There can be no other possible explanation. I think it’s very significant that one of the doctors asked my wife if she had been exposed to radiation. Of course she hadn’t…but I certainly had.”

  Gerald Gollop from Wiltshire was serving with the RAF on Christmas Island when he witnessed two explosions. “One of them nearly took the island apart,” he recalled. Mr Gollop’s health was fine…but his wife had to be sterilised after given birth to two badly deformed babies soon after Mr Gollop returned. The first child, a girl, born in 1960, was so badly deformed, the doctors wouldn’t let the couple see her. The child lived for just five hours. Their second child, born six years later, was also deformed, but stillborn “We went through hell,” said Mr Gollop. “I always thought there might be a connection with Christmas Island, but the doctors just said it was an act of God.”

  Young Paul Noble was nicknamed the “matchstick boy” due to a strange illness that made his bones so brittle they would break at the slightest knock. The young man by the time he was 19 years old had broken his legs more than 200 times and suffered innumerable broken arms and collar bones. His mother Margaret said: “We first noticed the disease when Paul began to toddle. As soon as he bumped into something, or just fell over, he would break a bone. He was permanently in plaster throughout his childhood. He had so many he didn’t even seem to mind the pain. Paul can’t do strenuous exercise apart from swimming. The muscles in his legs are completely wasted.”

  Doctors offered no explanation for Paul’s condition other than, ‘It’s one of those things’, and they didn’t seem to make a connection when his dad John, a former Army Sapper, told them he had been out to Christmas Island where he witnessed five nuclear explosions. Mr Douglas of Leslie, Fife, said: “I always had a gut instinct about Paul; I always thought there was a connection with the bomb tests. But who was I to argue with the doctors? They just wouldn’t listen.”

  The case histories piled up. The story had turned into an oddyssey of epic proportions and one that was growing by the day. In just a week thirty-two of those families independently told of the most appalling problems with their offspring. Between them they had a total of 57 children who had either died, been born deformed or suffered other crippling diseases and illnesses.

  On the face of it, it was overwhelming evidence that something was seriously wrong with the children of the men who took part in nuclear bomb tests. Their stories resonated with truth.

  These were decent, ordinary people with no particular axe to grind or political point to make. They were deeply patriotic and loathed to criticise the services they once so proudly represented.

  But they were resentful of the indifference of the Ministry of Defence and the Government to their health problems which they were convinced had been caused through witnessing nuclear bomb tests.

  They were also angry at the posturing of ministers whose only experience of atomic bombs had been gleaned from the newsreels. They felt they had been fobbed off, talked down to and treated like troublesome children.

  Most felt no surprise that other servicemen’s children had been affected. For they had long harboured the suspicion that the atomic bomb was finally reaping its grim harvest.

  The story hit the newspapers and the
re was uproar. Scores more veterans told of problems with their children. But the official guardians responsible for the nation’s health were not impressed.

  The Cancer Research Institute and the Medical Research Council both agreed that radiation-induced genetic disorders were entirely possible. Laboratory experiments on mice and fruit flies had proved that conclusively.

  But most experts dismissed the reports as ‘alarmist’ and were quick to point out that, two per cent of new-born babies suffered some form of genetic disorder. An article in the prestigious New Scientist magazine dismissed the reports as ‘biased’ because the men had ‘selected themselves’ by volunteering information about problems in their children.

  Professor Joseph Rotblat recognised a familiar pattern in the expert’s responses. In an interview he warned about the ‘established scientific caucus’ who were more concerned about protecting their government-funded grants than delving into the tricky waters of radiation-induced genetic effects. “It’s all about money,” he said. “You are not going to get anyone to endorse this. They’ll use Neel and Schull.”

  Neel and Schull were two scientists commissioned by the US Government to study the effects on children born after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After a lengthy five-year investigation no evidence of genetic disorders was found in the offspring of survivors.

  Despite these official assurances, few people were persuaded. The strictly formal Japanese community shunned survivors of the bomb as being “unclean.” Marriage was often impossible; many families left the city to start a new life elsewhere. Those that did escape eradicated all evidence they had lived in Hiroshima.

  A 1965 survey of atomic bomb survivors asked couples if they had experienced “adverse discrimination” in marriage. Of those in the unmarried 35-39 age group, 21.4 per cent reported discrimination. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that few reported incidents of damage to their offspring.