The idea of targeting one bomb test was not new. American nuclear veterans had forced the Regan government into recognising their claims after a smart US attorney representing the family of a soldier who had died of leukaemia homed in one bomb test codenamed Smoky, conducted in the Nevada desert in August 1957.
He discovered that nine cases of leukaemia occurred among 3,224 men who participated in Smoky. This represented a significant increase over the expected incidence of 3.5 cases. The results were published, and the U.S. government was eventually forced to concede that the increase could have been due to radiation exposure.
There was an instant knock-on effect, and soon all 250,000 American nuclear veterans were included in a compensation scheme that recognised their claims if they conformed to certain medical criteria. If a pattern of ill health could be found in the Grapple Y veterans, the British government would be obliged to follow a similar path.
The veterans set about tracking down as many published accounts provided by nuclear test veterans over the years, to establish which bomb tests these individuals had attended. The beauty of this approach was it couldn’t be dismissed as biased because the men who complained had no idea of the significance of Grapple Y when they told their stories.
As far as they were concerned they were just “atomic veterans” and which explosion they witnessed was irrelevant.
To test the hypothesis, the veterans made a study of the research material carried out into birth defects in the grandchildren of nuclear veterans in 2002.
Although dismissed by the MoD, the importance of this study was that it provided vital information about the “when and where” of the tests the men witnessed. One of the first things they noted was that the majority of veterans who reported sickness in their grandchildren had been stationed on Christmas Island.
John Urquhart was asked to investigate further. He examined the data collected for the grandchildren study and discovered that indeed the majority of the complainants had been stationed on Christmas Island. But a by-product of his study stunned the veterans: 69 per cent of the Christmas Island cohort was present at Grapple Y.
This was a startling result. It was as if the grandchildren had suddenly reached out across the generations to tap their veteran grandfathers on the shoulder.
But was this just a bizarre coincidence, an aberration? Or was it proof of the pernicious nature of Grapple Y? Urquhart erred on the side of caution. He believed the survey was too small to give a definitive answer and said the only way to get a credible picture was to examine the records of all the nuclear veterans who had complained of health problems, and then establish what bomb tests they witnessed.
This was a difficult undertaking because by this time the official records of the BNTVA had been widely dispersed, and much of the material had been lost.
Fortunately, however, McGinley had retained a meticulous record of every nuclear veteran who had contacted him during his tenure as chairman of the BNTVA. These hand-written accounts, in five A4-sized journals, included details of more than 3,000 individuals, roughly a sixth of the total number of men who had attended the bomb tests.
And, crucially, the archive contained information enabling researchers to pin-point the location of the men and the bomb test(s) they were present at.
John Urquhart carried out a detailed analysis of the data contained in the “Y-files” and, together with information from published materials in newspapers and journals, produced a “master list” of 2,409 nuclear veterans who could be positively placed at one or more of the 21 nuclear bomb tests carried out by Britain in the 1950s.
The results were staggering: the response rate for men attending Grapple Y was 1,159 out of 3,722 men at Grapple Y, compared with 1,250 of the 13,206 men who attended all the other tests.
So, nearly 50 per cent of men who had made complaints had been present at Grapple Y. But there was more: cancer rates for Grapple Y men were nearly four and a half times the rest, while there were nearly nine times as many for joint cancer and fertility problems, which included miscarriages, stillbirths and birth defects. Urquhart’s study also quashes any suggestion that the results were biased. In a damning summary he concludes
The continuing secrecy of the British government about the true nature of the nuclear tests ensured that the respondents were unaware of whether one particular test was more dangerous than another, thus eliminating any bias due to self-selective response from self-reporting. The great difference in response rates for men attending the Grapple Y test compared with all the other tests strongly suggests an underlying health difference consistent with significant exposure to radioactive fallout from the Grapple Y test.
This is the truth of Christmas Island: On April 28th, 1958 a multi-megaton thermonuclear bomb was detonated off the south east coast of Christmas Island. The bomb created a radioactive thunderstorm that travelled slowly up the east coast of the island contaminating large areas. An unspecified number of men, possibly thousands, were caught in this lethal downpour, and many later paid the price in death and injury.
The authorities were aware of this, but covered it up and shamefully turned a blind eye to the suffering that inevitably ensued.
Men died slow, horrible deaths as a result. Young men, who hardly had a chance of life, died of old men’s diseases. Young wives, whose men returned home physical and psychological wrecks, suffered with them.
And when their broken babies were born they could only weep in despair at the haunted look in the midwives’ eyes, and the hopeless shake of the doctor’s head.
When Grapple Y was detonated the world was in turmoil.
Nuclear war was a real possibility and few could blame the British government for deciding to build its own nuclear deterrent.
Even the cover-up of the Grapple Y incident can be understood in the face of a world gone mad.
But there is no excuse for the continuing secrecy and cover-up that has surrounded the bomb tests. For 50 years nuclear veterans have complained, but successive governments have turned a blind eye to their suffering.
Worse they have cynically ignored compelling evidence, revealed in this book, that many were wilfully exposed to radioactive fallout.
The Ministry of Defence stands condemned for consigning those who tried to expose its wickedness to a life of sickness and penury.
But most of all it stands condemned for its callous indifference to the torment of untold numbers of children who have been sacrificed on the altar of nuclear expediency.
On 9 May, 1989, Margaret Thatcher stood up in Parliament and made the following announcement in reply to a demand by MP Jack Ashley for compensation for nuclear veterans.
As the right hon. Gentleman knows, cases were carefully looked at by a special inquiry of medical people, who did not find cause and effect. I say to the right hon. Gentleman with the greatest respect that the cause and effect that he says has been proved has not been proved, and therefore compensation is not appropriate.
Nearly a quarter of a century on this stringent criterion has at last been fulfilled. The evidence presented in this book shows clear cause and effect.
Britain’s nuclear veterans are the victims of a grave injustice. Not only have they been decimated by their participation in the bomb tests, but their offspring have been dreadfully damaged as well.
It is a cruel irony that the children and grandchildren supplied the last piece of the jigsaw that exposed the British government’s historical perfidy.
Politicians from all parties are guilty. The evidence was there for them all to see, but they chose to ignore it. They turned a blind eye to the suffering of a generation of brave men, and closed their ears to the cries of their children.