WIDOW Jean Brogan was glad to be sitting down when she opened the cheap plastic box that had arrived through the post.
“No one even came to present it or hear Tony’s story. No one offered us any help or support over the years. It’s shameful.”Within a year he was in the Australian outback as part of the test series, termed Operation Buffalo. In a letter Tony wrote to the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association in 1983, he detailed the exposure and pain he had been left in. He wrote: “I remember after one explosion, there was a big windstorm and there was red dust on and in everything. Even the spuds we cooked were full of it, but it was still served up.
Tony started to get sick shortly after their wedding. His doctors could find nothing wrong and Tony, who was bound to protect sensitive information under the Official Secrets Act, refused to tell GPs what he had been through in Australia.“I used to beg Tony to tell the doctors all his ailments were from the nuclear testing, but he was sworn to a secret and he kept it.
“Next, the terrible head pains. I would wake at night, terrific pressure in my head and blood would gush from my nose and mouth, but once again, no answer. “When I got there, he’d tried to take his own life. The pain he was in every single day is utterly unimaginable. He’d wake up in the middle of the night and he would have blood pouring out of his face.
“Overnight, my skin will go from being fine to not — and then they can get really sore and take a while to heal.“The thought my cancer might have been caused because they wouldn’t give him any protection or let him retreat back with the other men is sickening.