Atomic bomb guinea pigs fight for justice 70 years on

Joe Shute hears the story of men on whom the army tested the effects of a nuclear blast, and how this could be a scandal similar in scale to the Post Office and infected blood cases

- Joe Shute

The way John Morris tells it, there are four phases to watching a nuclear bomb explode. The first is the light, so bright that when he covered his eyes with his hands they were transparent almost to the bone. Then an intense heat which scorched palm trees, melted the windscreen wipers off army trucks and left his back feeling as if it was on fire.

Next came the blast, which blew him and those around him clean off their feet. Finally, from the detonation site 20 miles away in the Pacific Ocean rose a twisting mushroom cloud like a toxic fountain melting the sky. “It was a beautiful but terrifying thing to see,” the now 87-year-old says. “It was so intense and so severe. The experience lives with you forever.”

Morris was 18 and working in a paper mill near Bolton when he was conscripted into national service in 1956. After a short training stint in Portsmouth, he was posted to Christmas Island with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps.

He presumed he was going to help construct a runway and initially couldn’t believe his luck, washing up on a paradise island with coral seas and swaying palms. But in fact, he would be unwittingly part of Britain’s Cold War nuclear testing programme in the South Pacific – the fallout from which still haunts him and his family to this day.

In total, four detonations took place during John Morris’s time on Christmas Island in an exercise codenamed Operation Grapple. Even when bombs were dropped hundreds of miles away, sea waters would still rise and flood the tiny atoll. When the fourth and final bomb was dropped, Morris was tasked with watching alongside around 1,000 other men.

The only safety protocols were that they were told to sit with their backs to the blast, handed army-issue sunglasses and instructed to use a cloth to cover their eyes. Most – including John – were dressed in shorts.