Thirty-nine years ago Ex-Royal Naval rating Brian Hunt stood with his back turned on the deck of H.M.S. Narvik, bracing himself to endure one of the world’s most awesome events - the detonation of a 60-megaton nuclear bomb.
He admits he was curious. 'But we'd been ordered to remain where we were until we head: "About face!" So we didn't look.’
Today, as the storm rages over the scheduled French test at Mururoa atoll, the 63-year-old sailor has this advice for Greenpeace volunteers threatening to dig themselves into the sand: ‘Forget it.’
For Brian Hunt is a sick man. He suffers from depression and his voice and hands shake. His daughter was born with no muscles on one side of her chest. His grandson was born with teeth missing from one side of his face; "the dental surgeon said in all his years of experience he had never seen such a case before."
The sailors mustered on to the deck off the Montebello Islands off the coast of Western Australia in 1956 obeyed when they were told to turn their backs on the blast. ‘Then we were allowed to turn around and see the mushroom cloud. We wore no protective clothing or even dark glasses. We saw the mushroom expanding, moving turbulently, just like I’ve seen water at the bottom of a spillway when floodgates have been opened. Boiling in on itself.
‘There was no noise at first. We felt a wave of heat and wind and everything lit up even though it was broad daylight. Then we heard the bang.’
Was there any choice about witnessing the explosion. ‘Either that or be put in the cells,’ says Brian, who still has "horrible dreams" about what he saw.
Within days he and his mates were sent ashore to retrieve electronic equipment from the island. ‘We were given white overalls, gloves and rubber boots for protection. I remember kneeling down and the sand got into my boots. Behind the instruments there was a timber wall 12 inches thick. The wood had turned to charcoal. I put my fist through it.
‘Nobody told us that similar tests had been carried out in 1952 and that the whole area had been contaminated before our arrival. We were never warned by doctors about genetic effects that could be expected from what we had come into contact with.’
Seven months ago Brian was put off his painting job at Penrith, New South Wales, as medically unfit. He is a stoical man, doesn't grumble; just admits he is too "scared" to have further medical tests to find out what else he may have besides bad nerves. 'It's like living with a time-bomb.'
He worries, instead, about others, and took the trouble to write to the local newspaper last week: "I am a British-born Australian who served with the Royal Navy from 1949 to 1957. On my last ship, we spent 18 months at Montebello island..where we witnessed two nuclear tests. What we didn't know was that tests had been carried out in 1952 and the area was contaminated before our arrival. I am now a member of the British Nuclear Tests Veterans Association and I know from information we have that at least 50% of nuclear veterans have died due to the effects of radiation received at the time.
'And in some cases it effected not just those who were present, but their children and their childrens' children. This is why I was so saddened to learn of the French plan for nuclear testing.
'I call on France and the rest of the world to stop this madness now before the planet is destroyed.'
Brian and his fellow victims have received no compensation from the British Government. 'There's been no mention of it. We are still fighting in England to just seek recognition of what happened to us. We don't really want large payouts; I think that's what the Government is scared of anyway.
'If you were a hypochondriac you could worry yourself to death about it.
'Hasn't the world learned anything from Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Chernobyl? It's everybody’s business. Prime Minister Keating and his men should get together and protest in the strongest possible terms. Atomic radiation doesn't go away in weeks or months. It lasts for hundreds of years. What happened to me is something you have to learn to live with for the rest of your life. Just like a nightmare.
