Any nuclear test survivors on here?
 

It appears you are to be finally being recognised and issued with a medal.
Having a friend that was there during the testing, I do hope he gets it, but they should all get compensation too!

Late and cheap, albeit deserved.

And the Officer's' LS&GC is still time barred. My 30 years, and my wife's 25, are unworthy of recognition. Forgive me if I don't give a sh*t about this belated posturing.

Incoming expected. Feel free.

My Mum's next door neighbor. But he hasn't got long to go, partly thanks to the tests.

I might apply for a posthumous medal for my Dad who flew through a mushroom cloud in 1958. He died in 2009 aged 77, so not really old but for his generation........ He had an unusual cancer, but also smoked a pipe for 60 odd years ...... His pilot on that trip was at his funeral and apparently fit and well.

Don't know what to glean from all of that. Also, although when alive he had immense sympathy for those who had no choice but to be there (and should be recognised and compensated) he took the view that he and his fellow aircrew were all volunteers and didn't feel he had the right to any special treatment.

rgds

I wonder whether the time spent ‘sniffing’ on 27 Sqn contributed to my BiL’s brain tumour.

About time too.

The testing done in Australia by the UK was pretty shabby all round.

On being a "test" survivor, does being overhead Chernobyl in the flight levels, 30 minutes after it blew up count? Rather hope it didn't.

My Uncle Norman
:"Shield your eyes and face away" Long dead of cancer..........

I read an article many moons ago, I think in Flypast or Aeroplane Monthly that when the aircraft landed and the aircraft were decontaminated, most crews got out before the decontamination was done except one where the Captain insisted everyone stayed on board and fried in the heat until the aircraft was decontaminated, years later his crew thanked him as they were all still fit and healthy while a lot of the other crews had passed on.

Read in todays Express that it is likely that the medal might not be issued for Armistice Day.
It seem that the delay is due to the King not yet having approved the design.
My father won't get his but I was hoping to get it for him by Armistice Day.

Residents downwind of the NTS are.

Maybe they should issue medals to all the Sellafield residents who were dusted by the Windscale accident.

A NEW MEDAL????
Sums it all up.

Re 27 Sqn, I suspect we have been forgotten

I've just finished reading Frank Walker's Maralinga I have an interest because I was a young boy living in Victoria in the 50s when these tests were going on. Despite weather forecasts showing unfavourable winds, and against the advice of the meteorologists some tests were carried out and dumped a lot of radioactive material on Eastern Australia. I also participated in the free school milk program at school so would say that I have had a fair old dose. After Victoria we moved to Amberley in the 60s, our married quarter right across the street from the decontamination pad. Where the water from that went, God knows but my late brother (cancer) spent a lot of time fishing in the local creek. We even visited the radioactive Lincoln which had flown several times through a mushroom cloud and was abandoned in the middle of the base. The book describes the disgraceful lies and coverups which happened and my blood is still boiling. We were all used as guinea pigs and dead children were having bones removed for Strontium 90 testing. This wasn't confined to British tests either and during visits to the Marshall Islands I would often see locals with large growths on them. Some of the tests at Bikini were carried out against met advice. Most of all I feel for the men who were exposed to the explosions , were sent to ground zero straight after and who wore no protective clothing at all. The administrators of the whole business well clear and out of danger. Shame on all who were responsible, a medal is no comfort. It should be called the being intentionally put in mortal danger and lied to medal

If you want to get really angry I can recommend Atomic Thunder by Elizabeth Tynan - former journalist, now an academic. She references Frank Walker's book among others.

Deltahotel, there is no point in getting really angry, it's done. I'm still kicking in my 70s and there is no way to prove my eventual death is related to this business. This awful affair should be widely publicised as a lesson in what your respective governments, British, Australian and American are prepared to do to their own people. I wasn't old enough to be involved as a serviceman then but if I was and they offered me a medal for being a tethered goat I would tell them with press present to stick it right up their arses.

I used to volunteer at the VA hospital in SF. There I attended to a guy about my age who was in for chemotherapy.

He told me he was a member of the unit we've all seen in trenches in front of the nuke blast in the desert. He told me that all the movies of the different tests were the same unit, the same bunch of guys. Knowing how grunts were back then I said, I bet you guys were bugging your sergeant to get closer for the next one. He lit up and laughed and told me I was exactly right, but they wouldn't let them get any closer no matter how much they pleaded.

Then we talked about the possible connection to his cancer - he said he could never be sure.

At the time of the tests lived 300 miles SE of Maralinga, 80 years and still going strong, pity about the Aborigines who were close to the site, combing the scrub to find them all was deemed too difficult.

I have just read this book. I can't recommend it at all. Whilst she covers the facts and the Royal Commission she writes badly, almost incomprehensibly, jumping from topic to topic and backwards and forwards in time making it all difficult to follow. A shame really, this episode deserves better treatment.