The Atomic Age

BY SUSIE BONIFACE

British scientists exploded nuclear bombs in the South Pacific in the 1950s. Today, 153,000 of the servicemen’s descendants cursed by birth defects, miscarriages and cancer are still battling for compensation. Illness finally caught up with one veteran after more than four decades.

For years, Jack Fowler thought he had “got away with it” while Army pals who served at his side were stricken by illness.

When his wife suffered five miscarriages he put it down to fate.

A daughter was born three months early, a son had two sets of teeth and all three of his children were sterile.
Jack had served at Christmas Island during some of the biggest and dirtiest hydrogen bomb explosions and he knew of comrades suffering cancers and birth defects in their children.

But he never thought it affected his family – just that they were unlucky.

Read more: Nuclear test veterans are victims of genetic curse

Jack would only accept the grim reality when he was diagnosed with a rare cancer some 45 years after he was posted to the South Pacific.

And his widow Ann now realises decades of tears are down to Jack’s exposure to the nuclear tests.

Ann said: “His response was always ‘thank goodness I got away with it’. It wasn’t until he was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive cancer that we began to realise he hadn’t.”

British scientists exploded nuclear bombs in the South Pacific in the 1950s. Today, 153,000 of the servicemen’s descendants cursed by birth defects, miscarriages and cancer are still battling for compensation. Illness finally caught up with one veteran after more than four decades

For years, Jack Fowler thought he had “got away with it” while Army pals who served at his side were stricken by illness.

When his wife suffered five miscarriages he put it down to fate.

A daughter was born three months early, a son had two sets of teeth and all three of his children were sterile.

SWNSJack Fowler, who was at Christmas Island during the biggest nuclear bomb testsJack Fowler, who was at Christmas Island during the biggest nuclear bomb tests.

Jack had served at Christmas Island during some of the biggest and dirtiest hydrogen bomb explosions and he knew of comrades suffering cancers and birth defects in their children.

But he never thought it affected his family – just that they were unlucky.

Read more: Nuclear test veterans are victims of genetic curse

Jack would only accept the grim reality when he was diagnosed with a rare cancer some 45 years after he was posted to the South Pacific.

And his widow Ann now realises decades of tears are down to Jack’s exposure to the nuclear tests.

Ann said: “His response was always ‘thank goodness I got away with it’. It wasn’t until he was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive cancer that we began to realise he hadn’t.”

SWNSJack Fowler’s photo of a nuclear explosion at Christmas IslandJack Fowler’s photo of a nuclear explosion at Christmas Island
Jack was a 22-year-old sapper in the Royal Engineers when he was sent to Christmas Island in 1958. He built roads, camps and water plants for thousands of troops working on Britain’s Cold War race to build the H-bomb.

He returned home after a year, and three years later married Ann. Then the miscarriages began.

Ann, who lives near Falmouth, Cornwall, had five failed pregnancies, including twins at five months. She said: “A doctor at the military hospital said I was fine so it must be something about Jack. He asked where Jack served, but nothing was made of it.”

In 1964 Ann gave birth three months early. Daughter Jane weighed 2lb 10oz and grew up healthily. But she was unable to have children and adopted two youngsters.

In 1965 Ann had son James, who also turned out to be sterile, while third child Justin was born in 1968.
He has also been unable to have children of his own and when his adult teeth started coming through at the age of six he turned out to have two sets in both jaws. Ann said: “Justin joined the forces and a military dentist asked if he’d been to Christmas Island. He said no, but his dad had.

“The dentist offered to take all the extra teeth out but Justin couldn’t face it. Some have come through and some are sitting under his other teeth, still in the jaw.”

Jack himself appeared to be unscathed by his nuclear exposure. But in 2003, after a career which led him to become a parachute chief instructor, senior NCO and to serve with the British Army across the world, he fell ill.

Ann said: “He was peeing blood. The doctor said it was an extremely rare kind of cancer in the bile duct called cholangiocarcinoma and that it was very rarely seen in white men. One day, while having chemotherapy, Jack turned to me and said, ‘This is down to Christmas Island… we were standing there when the mushroom cloud was above us. There’s nowhere else I could have got this from.’

“That was the first time he’d talked about it and the first time we realised maybe it was the root of everything.”Jack died within 16 months, at the age of 65, after telling his widow to fight for a war pension in his name.

It was rejected on the basis he was a smoker, even though he would have just one cheroot at Christmas and his cancer is not linked to tobacco.

Even his consultant stated the cancer “may well have been related to time spent on Christmas Island” and the tumour was “relatively rare for Caucasians living in the UK”. Ann, 76, thought there was nothing more to be done until she read the Sunday Mirror and realised families were still fighting for recognition. She said: “I want to join the campaign. We’ll do whatever we can, help any research.
[…]
Ann is very much NOT alone. Studies show the wives of nuclear test veterans have three times the normal rate of miscarriage and their children have 10 times the usual rate of birth defects.

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