Life After the Big Bang

Taken from Colin Wood's Autobiography - Every day living is a bonus

The 28th of April is the anniversary of Grapple Y on Christmas Island in 1958. We asked veterans for their recollections of their time on the island, and Colin Wood provided us with his autobiography, which contains a chapter referencing his time on Christmas Island for Grapple Z. These are his words:

I was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 12 May 1928, a day which coincided with a Royal Coronation in Westminster some years earlier. My father, Oliver Wood and my mother, Mary (known as May) Wood were both born in Edinburgh, in Colinton and Balerno respectively, on the outskirts of Edinburgh.

In terms of schooling, I first attended Craiglockhart school, near Shandon. In the early days, I would travel by train, but then later, by tram, which was slightly more convenient.

When it was time to pass on from Junior to Secondary education, some six children, including myself, were thought clever enough to be awarded bursaries to private schools in Edinburgh. As my bursary was a free award, my parents chose to send me to the Royal High School, at the eastern end of Princes Street, sitting just below the Calton Hill, looking out towards Arthur's Seat and the Scott Monument in Princes Street.

When I reached the age of sixteen, I sat my Scottish Higher examination. I did reasonably well, but at the same time, I had applied seerately for a B6 clerical post at the Foreign Office - subsequently renamed The Foreign and Commonwealth Office - in London. Imagine my surprise, when I was called for an interview and was accepted!

I joined the Foreign Office on 28 March 1955, shortly before I turned seventeen. It was an auspicious time for a 'rookie' coming south from Scotland.

During my two years in the Foreign Office, my social life was fairly busy. I met a young lady from Durham and we became engaged. Life was good, but unfortunately, as happened to all young men of my age, I was eligible to undergo two years of National Service. This occurred in March 1957, when I was called up to the Royal Air Force. I joined the ranks at RAF Cardington, underwent eight weeks of square bashing at Bridgnorth, and then did some training at Hereford before being posted to Medmehem, near Marlow, as my permanent posting. But things changed quite suddenly one day when, after eleven months' service, I was ordered to the Orderly Room at Medmenham to be told I was on PWR.

At that time, I had no idea what PWR meant, except that I was considered for an overseas posting. I remember questioning this on the basis that I had already completed almost half of my two-year stint in the RAF. But so it was, and by the Spring of 1958, I was in an RAF Hastings aircraft from Lyneham, heading to Christmas Island in the Pacific for the atomic tests. The flight in itself was exciting, though slow, and we transited Kfalavik (Iceland), Newfoundland, Omaha (Nebraska), Travis (California) and finally Hickam (Honolulu), before touching down on Christmas Island. In itself, this excitement and experience of trance was excellent training for my subsequent years in the Diplomatic Service.

Before I reflect on my life on the Island, I had one distinct disappointment when, like many other Servicemen, I received what was called "the Dear John" letter from my fiancée, calling off the engagement, on the basis that she had met someone else, another Scot. She subsequently married her new partner, and I wished them both every happiness then and for the future. But it was a blow when you are thousands of miles seperating each other!

I was privileged, if that is the word, to serve part of my Royal Air Force career as a National Serviceman during the atomic testing programme in August/September 1958 on Christmas Island in the Pacific. In all, I witnessed four nuclear tests, of which two were hydrogen and two atom, under code name Operation Grapple Z. I think I must be one of the relatively few people on this planet today to have witnessed nuclear testing first hand, and unlike Hiroshima and Nagasaki, have lived to tell the tale.

My memory of the various explosions is still vivid in my mind. If I were an artist, the colours and features of the mushroom cloud billowing up from the bomb's explosions - in mid-air from hydrogen bombs, but for atom bombs, these were fixed to special high-rise barrage balloons. These could not be adequately described, they were simply beautiful and breathtaking. If, on the other hand, I were a pacifist, the cloud represented the most ugly and horrible atrocity imaginable committed by mankind. The hydrogen bombs were dropped by Vickers Valiant bombers with detonation 40,000 feet before a blinding flash of light and noise at 8,500 feet.

How did all this come about? I had already served almost one year of the two-year National Service requirement when I was shortlisted on the Preliminary Warning Roll (PWR) for an overseas assignment. I remember saying at the time that I was a National Serviceman and there was insufficient time to send me anywhere! It was not to be.

On arrival at Christmas Island, we were welcomed by earlier arrivals to the Island with the calls of "Go home, moon men, Christmas Island for the Christmas Islanders". Subsequently, we of course became the residents so we could shout the same greeting to any latecomers.

We lived in tents, which were quite often visited at night by land crabs, so you had to be careful where you put your feet when getting up in the mornings. Crab claws can be pretty nasty!

Facilities on the Island were fairly basic for the 7000 Servicemen, plus two ladies from the Women's Voluntary Service (WVS) who looked younger and more beautiful each day during my five months and two days on the island. However, I do remember several nights lying on the sandy beach looking up at the night stars with the barracudas searching for their dinner as the waves crashed up against the coral reef whilst Handel's Messiah blared out its triumphal message across the Island's Tannoy system.

Meals seem to be regulated on the basis of corned beef, pineapple and fruit one day and then turkey and ice cream the following day. This was pretty much the standard daily menu for my entire stay on the island. And to this day, I still love my corned beef! The servicemen often amused themselves by painting coconut outer shells and posting them to relatives in the UK. I believe the FCO Post room were rather worried for security reasons by the arrival of the painted coconut shells which I had sent!

For work, I was posted to the Decontamination Flight as an office clerk. I was very fortunate in this respect because, unlike my colleagues, I did not have to go through the Decontamination Chamber after the aircraft returned from sampling the radiation particles which the pilots had collected by flying through the nuclear cloud.

My colleagues, fully kitted out in white anti-radiation suits, had, as part of their job, to climb on the aircraft, literally scrape off and scrub the radiation from the wings of each aircraft on return to base. When my colleagues were finished, they each then had to check through the Decontamination Chamber to wash away and reduce any radiation count on their bodies to within an acceptable level. Sometimes, this was not possible to achieve and they had to remain, fully suited - very hot and uncomfortable - until their blooded skin recovered sufficiently for further scrubbing at a later date and an acceptable count showing on the Geiger register.

The most vivid memory of all must be, of course, the actual explosions, the hydrogen bombs in particular. It always struck me as totally incongruous that whilst we awaited the countdown to each of the four explosions, Eartha Kitt, the famous black soul singer, would be loudly transmitted across the Tannoy system singing "Under the bridges of Paris with me" as the Vickers Valiant bombers flew and circled overhead before dropping their weapons at the agreed dropping points, so high in the skies.

Dressed in our white anti-radiation suits, we were instructed to kneel down on the sand several miles away from the bomb sites, FACING DOWN OPPOSITE THE EXPLOSIONS AND WITH OUR EYES FIRMLY CLOSED AND PRESSED UP AGAINST THE SAND. Imagine therefore, the blinding flash of light seen through closed eyes facing away from the explosions and the thunderous blast of noise. I can still recall and visualise that flash and noise today, some 65 years later! The outcome of these nuclear tests could be seen later on the island: birds roasted alive literally in flight, fish blown out of the sea completely grilled, and the land crabs burned to a cinder. This is, in my view, where the pacifist wins hands down over the artist over the justification for nuclear testing.

After the testing was over, I was one of several Servicemen who were flown to Fiji for a ten-day break. We transited Apia in Western Samoa before continuing to Nandi and Suva in Fiji. We were invited to Fiji to taste the national drink, i.e. kava. To me, it was horrible and tasted like dried chalk. During our visit to Suva, we met some New Zealand pilots and were invited onto one of the very few Sunderland aircraft still flying. We flew towards New Caledonia for six hours before returning to base. This was really memorable, and we were very fortunate to meet these welcoming NZ pilots.

I departed Christmas Island in mid-December 1958, arriving at Southampton on 6 January 1959. We sailed on a returning emigrant ship from New Zealand, the MV Captain Cook. The vessel had a Glaswegian crew and we were welcomed aboard with cries of "Hi Jimmy, are you alright?", "Did the radiation get to you?" A touch of Scotland in the middle of the Pacific Ocean! The six weeks on the vessel took us through the Panama Canal and the Dutch West Indies before reaching Blighty!

Altogether an unforgettable experience, not one to be recommended, but useful for my eventual FCO career.

Colin Wood

LABRATS Comments

Colin underwent a heart bypass in 1996 in St Thomas's Hospital, London. He had been encountering severe chest pains in Nairobi, Kenya.

He is now fully retired and lives with Helen and family in Peterborough, where they moved to in 2020.

On February 19th 2024, Colin received his Nuclear Test Veteran medal at Peterborough Town Hall, presented by Peterborough's Mayor.

Colin with other Nuclear Veterans at the ceremony

If anyone would like to read his full autobiography, please email info@labrats.international.