Clouds of Deceit (3 page)

Campbell was told that he had been posted to Australia for ‘general duties'. Before he left, he was given a full positive vetting, so he realised that the work was, as he put it, ‘of a secret nature'. But beyond that he was kept in total ignorance. He knew nothing about Maralinga or atom bomb tests. He was given no warnings or lectures about radiation or other effects of the tests.

‘When we arrived at Maralinga', he recalled, ‘the construction work had been finished. All three Australian services were there. I was in the Maralinga village camp. I remember the permanent buildings were the mess hall, cook houses, offices and station HQ. There were also mechanical workshops and a cinema.'

Campbell was on driving duties around the camp until the tests began. By the time the first detonation was due to take place, everyone knew why they were there, but there were still no lectures on the effects of radiation. On 1 August 1956, Campbell was promoted to corporal. For all the tests except one, Campbell took part in parades on the airfield. For one of them, however, he was the driver of a Leyland 2,500-gallon fuel tanker, known as a Bowser. This is how he described the experience:

‘A Canberra aircraft which had flown through the atomic cloud landed to refuel. I drove the Bowser out to it and an aircraft handler connected the open-line fuel supply to the aircraft. I was wearing a pair of denim overalls and ordinary shoes. I had no gloves, no head cover, and while I may possibly have had a canvas face mask, like that of a surgeon, I had no eye covering.

‘I parked the Bowser between ten and fifteen feet from the aircraft while the refuelling took place. I stood at the rear of the Bowser, by the pumping controls. While I was doing this, I saw a man with a long probe, which he inserted into the sampling pod on the starboard wingtip, and pulled out the filter, which he put into a box. He was wearing the same as me. I know this, because if he had been wearing protective clothing and I wasn't, I would have wondered why. When I had finished refuelling, I drove the Bowser back to the bulk depot to refill it. After this, I went through the decontamination unit, where I showered and was then tested with a Geiger counter. I was said to be acceptably clean externally.

‘I remember that the decontamination personnel used to tease the men by holding up a fluorescent watch near the counter, making it sound off, and then insisting that the personnel went through the showers again.'

In 1968, Campbell started to suffer from pulmonary fibrosis. According to Campbell, a doctor told him that it could have been caused by exposure to radiation. He told the Royal Commission that he had arranged to have a whole body scan at Harwell, but that this had then been refused on the grounds that staff there could not give him any result which could be used in proceedings against the government.

Britain's very first atom bomb was detonated on board HMS
Plym
in the Monte Bello Islands, off the west coast of Australia, on 3 October 1952. The ship was vaporized in the blast. Graham Mabbutt, who is now a policeman in Devon, was an acting petty officer on HMS
Zeebrugge
at the time of the blast. Although Mabbutt never went ashore, he watched the explosion from the deck of his ship - and had a hair-raising experience on the journey home.

On the voyage out, however, Mabbutt and his colleagues were happily ignorant of the dangers to which they would be exposed. At the time his ship left England, the crew knew only that they were going on a top-secret mission. Once they had set sail for Australia, they were officially told that they were to witness the explosion of the first British atom bomb. During the voyage to Australia, the men were given just two short lectures, delivered by two scientists who had joined the boat at Southampton. These lectures, Mabbutt recalled, were largely devoted to an explanation of the nature of nuclear fission, rather than radiation and its health hazards. The men were told that they would wear a film badge around their waist from the time of the explosion onwards, but no one bothered to explain to them how the badge worked or how it was read.

When the ship reached the Monte Bello Islands, it was positioned between twelve and fifteen miles away from the lagoon where the bomb was to be exploded. The crew were gathered on the upper deck to witness the explosion. Soon afterwards, a helicopter from HMS
Campania
arrived with canisters of radioactive samples, which were winched down on to the
Zeebrugge
's upper deck. Scientists then carried the canisters, which were not all that bulky, down to the laboratory on board the ship. According to Mabbutt, a large number of these canisters arrived in the hours immediately after the explosion. Over the next few days, there were further drops of canisters from helicopters.

This was not the only radioactive material which was being brought on to HMS
Zeebrugge.
The Royal Marines who were stationed on the ship were going ashore in landing and assault craft to pick up samples from ‘dirty areas'; these were taken to the ship's lab for testing. When the Marines talked about their
work, Mabbutt recalled, ‘they told me they would sometimes have their radiation instruments going off the scale, because they were too close to the dirty area, and had to retreat as fast as possible'.

Only a small proportion of the radioactive samples which came aboard was actually kept for laboratory analysis. The rest had to be disposed of - overboard. ‘I was told we were going to a particularly deep part of the ocean to do this,' Mabbutt recalled. ‘The waste matter was in steel drums. I was in charge of winching the drums out of the tank space from the laboratory on to the upper deck, and then overboard. There were twenty to thirty drums in all, and to my certain knowledge six to eight of them were seeping badly. There was a problem in that the davit would not swing properly because it was too small, and the drum would catch in the scuppers. I then had to step forward and manually shove the drum clear of the ship's side. I did this because I was in charge of the operation.

‘I remember getting splashed over the arms and legs by the seeping liquids from these drums. I can clearly remember a scientist who was observing these operations saying, when he saw me being splashed, “One day you may live to regret that.” This raised a laugh among the ratings present, as it was taken to mean that it might affect my ability to have children. Some of the drums were leaking so badly that the liquid was draining into the scuppers.'

There was always a scientist present when the drums went overboard, but when he observed the leaking he simply shrugged his shoulders, according to Mabbutt. Two or three of the drums failed to sink; again the scientist shrugged his shoulders. While this operation went on, the men were bare-armed, with sleeves rolled up.

Some of the landing and assault craft were too radioactive to be brought back to England, but others did make the journey -with consequences that gave Graham Mabbutt a nasty fright. ‘When we arrived back in Plymouth, there had been a flood disaster on the east coast of England. The Royal Marines on board were requested to help at the disaster at Canvey Island. Shortly after they had agreed to do so, they were told they could not
take these remaining assault and landing craft, because they were radioactive. However, these same craft, which were secured on the upper deck and some in the tank space, were used as sleeping accommodation by many men. I myself slept in a wooden box in the tank space among the radioactive craft. The laboratory had been dismantled and winched back to the bulk-heads for the return voyage.'

Back in England, Mabbutt and the rest of the crew were set to work stripping paint off the bottom of the ship, chipping it off bit by bit. They were bare to the waist while doing this, even though, according to Mabbutt, ‘it was common knowledge that the whole of the hull of the ship was radioactive. The condenser for making fresh water from salt was radioactive, as were the bilges.' After the
Zeebrugge
had been refitted, it was used as an accommodation ship for dockyard workers. Six months after he returned to England, Mabbutt began to suffer from psoriasis - a skin disease - on the forearms. He saw a consultant, who told him it was caused by nerves. Mabbutt was unconvinced. ‘I was then a boys' instructor, with absolutely no stress at all.' The consultant did not ask if Mabbutt had attended the Monte Bello test.

Morrie Westwood was also at the first British atom bomb test. He was an able seaman in the Australian navy, serving on board HMAS
Koala.
He watched the test from his ship, at a distance of thirty-nine miles. Soon after the explosion, however, the
Koala
sailed right into the immediate blast area to salvage a barge which had sunk just before the test. Sandy Brennan, a naval diver, went down to the sea-bed to attach lines to the barge, which was then hauled on to the forecastle of the
Koala.

With the salvaged barge on deck,
Koala
tied up next to a British vessel which had a laboratory constructed on board. The diver, Brennan, went on board the British ship; while walking past the laboratory section, he started the Geiger counters ticking. He was found to be contaminated by radiation from the barge. Morrie Westwood and the rest of ship's company were then tested. They, too, turned out to be contaminated.

‘We were told to bathe - I had about six showers - until the
scientists were satisfied that we were clean enough to return to the ship, leaving all our gear behind,' Westwood recalled. ‘In my case, this was one pair of shorts and one pair of sandals, which were set in cement and dumped at sea. The barge was then hosed down and allowed to remain on deck for the duration of the journey. Dr Penney [chief scientist at the tests] came on board
Koala
and apologized to us for the incident. After a week or so, we headed for Fremantle, where the barge was offloaded and sent back to the UK. We were told not to mention the incident, but on arrival at Fremantle the wharf labourers declared the ship black.'

In 1957, while still in the navy, Westwood was admitted to a naval hospital with a stomach illness, the cause of which, he says, he was never told. After leaving the navy in 1958, he developed psoriasis. The condition was eased by various ointments, but it has never healed.

Clifford Henderson was posted to the Maralinga test site in 1957 as a cook; he was a corporal in the RAF catering branch. When he arrived at Maralinga, a Captain Brown of the Australian Army Catering Corps offered to take him on a tour of the sites where bombs had been detonated. They drove through a manned checkpoint to a bomb crater. As they stood on the edge and looked down into it, Captain Brown told Henderson: ‘We'll go no further - it's still hot.' Then he added: ‘We've got to keep an eye open. Those abos
[sic]
like camping in these craters.'

Shortly after that, Henderson saw a family of aborigines at the police post at Maralinga. There were three of them - a man, woman and child - and they were wearing garments like loin-cloths. They were carrying spears and billy-cans. ‘They were in the company of a number of security personnel, who seemed quite busy with them,' Henderson told the Royal Commission.

Gordon Wilson, who is now a school caretaker in Hull, found aborigines in the ‘yellow area' - the most dangerous of the three restricted zones at Maralinga - on several occasions. Wilson arrived at Maralinga in 1957, a year after he had joined the Royal Engineers as a regular soldier. ‘There were no briefings at
all on what we were doing and what was going on, although people in the camp told us what the nature of the work was,' he recalled. ‘After we had been there about a week, we were taken nearer to the forward area and stayed in a tent encampment at Roadside [the name given to one of the temporary camps]. Although we were relatively near the forward area, there were no definite instructions or warnings about any hazards, or about the effects of radioactivity in general. I believe we were about five miles from ground zero.'

Wilson stayed at the Roadside camp for all three blasts he witnessed. ‘At some stage,' he recalled, ‘we went into what we called the yellow areas to repair and erect some signs on the track. Some of them were danger signs, some were just location signs. We also had to make a large number of things in our workshops, the exact function of which we were unaware of. The only special equipment we had was a radiation film badge, which was replaced at intervals. The winds would change around and a fair amount of dust was blown about in the yellow area. After we had been in the yellow area, we had to take showers. We worked quite near the craters, in that we could see them, but never went right up to one.'

There was little restriction on the men's movement. Every Sunday or rest day, bored with the lack of entertainment or recreation at the camp, Wilson and a couple of friends used to take a Land Rover out of the official pool and go for a spin. They often went dingo shooting, using a rifle which an Australian soldier had given them.

On one occasion, Wilson and his friends came across three aborigines about three miles away from the Roadside camp. ‘One of them could speak in a way that was more or less comprehensible to us,' Wilson recalled. ‘He told us they were moving around the area. He talked to us about the blinding lights of the explosions, by which we assumed he meant the flash. It was very difficult to understand all he was saying. On this occasion, I gave one of the three a shirt which I had in the back of the Land Rover. We saw them a number of times after that. They would come looking for the Land Rover and we would sometimes give them presents. The one who could speak English best showed us
how to set dingo traps.' When Gordon Wilson told his story to the Australian Royal Commission in 1985, he was asked why he hadn't reported it at the time: the aborigines were, after all, in a prohibited area. ‘Let's face it,' he replied, ‘it was their country.'

Wilson himself was only once turned back on his outings into the prohibited area; an English security man told Wilson that he had come too far and that he must turn back. The rest of the time, however, he roamed the range unhindered. ‘We used to climb the observation towers by ourselves. There were a lot of tracks going off away from the main track, which ended up in the bush, and we used to go down these. On the occasion on which we were stopped, we had gone too far towards the forward area. We broke through the bush and saw that everything was levelled off. It was very quiet and eerie, and there was no vegetation. I feel sure that if we had wanted to we could have found our way to the craters, which were in a straight line from the observation towers.'