Between Heaven and Hell

by Alan Rimmer

  THE LONG DEATH

  Ken Charney was just one of many nuclear veterans hit by illness and early death in the aftermath of their participation in nuclear bomb tests.

  All over the country men were dying from radiogenic sicknesses as they drifted back from Australia and the Pacific. They went home to their towns and villages and were conveniently forgotten by the armed forces who were only too glad to see them disappear into obscurity.

  The medics never consciously made the connection. Doctors professed bewilderment and the NHS refused to discuss the possibility.

  The men’s families knew, of course. Deep down, they knew. They could see it in the eyes of their loved ones. But when they complained, or tried to get a pension, or tried to bring it to the attention of the wider world, they were ignored, sometimes even vilified.

  The Government scoffed at their claims ruling they received no more radiation than they would in a chest X-ray. They forgot to mention that X-rays only expose tissue to radiation very briefly.

  A miniscule particle of plutonium that may have been picked up from contaminated soil or water and lodged in the body constantly radiates into the surrounding tissue.

  Atomic veterans suffer ‘a long death.’ Like some nightmarish parasite it eats away at them from the inside until all that is left is an empty husk. You can’t taste it or smell it, but it is there. You cannot put it on the news and show its devastating effects.

  It rises like a seeping gas and suffocates like a slowly rising tide of effluent. And the ‘long death’ takes no account of rank or position.

  These forgotten warriors of the cold war know that their deaths will never be perceived as heroic, even though their battlefield was every bit as dangerous as their colleagues fighting in more conventional wars.

  Most know they have a date with death that will never be celebrated in the annals of war. And most have endured it knowing all the time that they have been betrayed by their government.

  Some decided not to wait for the creeping death and took their own lives. Others found life was not worth living after their brush with The Bomb.

  Glen Stewart, the Shackleton pilot who graphically described in a TV documentary how the explosion set off a chain of thunderstorms over Christmas Island did not die of disease; the bomb found another way to kill him. His body was discovered by a man walking his dog at West Sands Beach, St Andrews, Fife, near the town's famous Old Course golf course. A hose was attached to the exhaust pipe.

  Relatives are convinced Stewart was hounded to an early grave by senior Establishment figures after he was involved in a hair-raising near miss at Heathrow Airport.

  As a senior pilot with British Airways, his Jumbo was approaching the airport following a long flight from Bahrain. It had been a nightmare trip with several cabin crew members and his co-pilot going down with food poisoning. Visibility was poor and out of the murk, the runway lights rose to meet Stewart’s 747. Suddenly the autopilot indicated the aircraft had deviated from the approach.

  Stewart realised the lights were not runway lights at all, but road lights belonging to a carriageway running alongside the airport. He was just a hundred feet from landing on the A4, but with consummate skill Stewart took over the controls from the auto pilot and lifted the Jumbo clear. The giant aircraft missed a hotel by just 12 feet, setting off all the alarms in the car park. It was an escape that made headlines, but for all the wrong reasons as far as Captain Stewart was concerned.

  A civil aviation board of inquiry blamed him and took his precious pilots licence away. Also, in an unprecedented move, the government decided to prosecute. A jury, despite clear evidence to the contrary, found him guilty of negligence. He was fined £2,000, and never flew again.

  It was a crushing blow from which he never recovered. The decision to prosecute, he always maintained, had been taken by people who had started their careers in the RAF and were now in the upper echelons of the Civil Aviation Authority. Giving the TV interview about his experiences at Christmas Island was perceived as a betrayal of his country; it also broke ‘omerta’, the code of silence ingrained in most senior RAF officers. Stewart always believed ‘they’ had taken their revenge

  Flt Lt Eric Denson, the man who flew through the mushroom cloud created by Grapple Y, came to a tormented and ignoble end in a woodland clearing, his wrists slashed with a knife.

  He never recovered from the massive radiation dose he received as he grappled with the controls of his Canberra aircraft. Denson struggled for 18 years to rid himself of an overwhelming feeling that his mind was being attacked by a “dark cloud” before he could take it no longer.

  The RAF and the Ministry of Defence ignored his torment and refused to give his widow a war pension. There was no traditional ‘fly past’ at his funeral. They tried to bury Denson’s reputation along with his body, but they reckoned without his formidable wife, Shirley.

  SHIRLEY’S STORY

  At about the same time as the newly-knighted Sir William Penney was tucking into his Sole Monte Bello and basking in his new-found fame as father of the British A-bomb, young Shirley Gubbins, had her eye on a very special man.

  Just 18 years old, blonde with a trim figure honed by frequent exercise and horse riding, Shirley was enjoying the attentions of a small army of suitors.

  She had accompanied her brother Brian, a young Royal Air Force flying cadet, to one of the lavish balls regularly held at Cranwell, the famous pilot training school on the Lincolnshire coast. It was Shirley’s first real ‘outing’ as a young debutant, and her father, a well-to-do paediatrician, acted as chauffeur, chaperone and general factotum to his youthful offspring.

  Shirley’s mother, a buyer for a major department store, had made sure her beautiful daughter had a ball gown fit for the occasion. Flawless white, strapless with satin bodice and wearing her grandmother’s matching pearl earrings and necklace, Shirley dazzled as she swept into the ballroom on her brother’s arm.

  Almost immediately she was surrounded by a gaggle of would-be suitors, and she enjoyed every minute of it. “What girl wouldn’t enjoy all that lovely attention?” She recalled. “All those handsome young men, in full dress uniform, what more could a girl want? The band was playing, the champagne was flowing, and I was being swept off my feet by a succession of young men who wanted to dance with me. It was wonderful and I’d never felt so happy.”

  As she was swirled around the dance floor, Shirley couldn’t help feeling sorry for a large group of rather plain-looking women who sat glumly to one side, toes tapping, but with no man to dance with. She had heard one of the young officers referring rather unkindly to the sad little bunch as “grimmies”, service slang for wallflowers….girls who never received any attention from the smart young officer cadets.

  Except, that is, for one. He was tall, dark and possessed of the chiseled features of a man who could look after himself. With great courtesy and without a hint of condescension, he invited each of the grimmies in turn to dance with him. Shirley found herself rather hoping he would ask her to dance.

  “I don’t know what it was about him, there were better looking men than him vying for my favours, but he seemed to have some special quality,” said Shirley. “Then all of a sudden I knew what it was: he looked slightly dangerous, which always appeals to a young girl.”

  In between dances, Shirley asked her brother who the mysterious cadet was, and was even more intrigued when the reply, “that’s killer Denson”, came back. Her brother explained that his name was Eric Denson and he was called “killer” because he was captain of boxing at Cranwell and possessed a killer right hook. Apparently Denson always punched above his weight, and in inter-service boxing tournaments had never been beaten. In fact no-one had ever gone the distance with him because of that famous killer punch.

  Shirley was not remotely interested in the finer points of pugilism, but she did wonder what it was about Denson that made him take the time to dance with the grimmies. Her brother said he always did that. Apparentl
y Denson hated to see anyone left out and made a special point of dancing with them at every ball.

  Shirley was impressed. Then she was annoyed at herself for thinking of him at all. She tried to dismiss the enigmatic Denson from her mind. Later, however, her brother introduced them. Denson it turned out came from Burnley, Lancashire which was not far from the market town of Chorley where Shirley lived with her parents in some style in a manor house.

  The ball marked the end of term at Cranwell and Denson was travelling back to Lancashire the following day to spend some time with his parents. On an impulse, Shirley offered him a lift home. Denson accepted, subject to the agreement of her father who, knowing Cranwell ‘do’s’ tended to go on all night, had retired to one of the dormitories. As the night wore on, the young couple found themselves sharing almost every dance. Shirley made a point of finding out everything she could of her new beau.

  Denson came from humble origins, but had won a scholarship to the prestigious Colne and Nelson grammar school where he excelled. He was one of that rare breed who could combine a first-class brain with outstanding achievement on the sports field. He was captain of both the athletic and boxing teams, and his tutors thought he could achieve anything he put his mind to. And when he brought in a series of top-grade ‘A’ levels, they said he could have his pick of universities, even Oxford or Cambridge.

  But young Eric had other ideas. Ever since he was a small boy he wanted to be a pilot in the RAF. As a schoolboy during World War II, he would often lie on his back in the fields surrounding his home town and watch the fighter squadrons returning to their Yorkshire bases after skirmishes with the Luftwaffe. He dreamed of being up there with them, high in the sky defending his country against the evil invader. More than anything in the world, Eric Denson wanted to be one of ‘the few.’

  It was therefore no surprise when he shunned the overtures of the more prestigious universities and applied instead to go to Cranwell.

  He was accepted immediately and his unique talents ensured he was fast-tracked for pilot officer training. Shirley recalled: “According to his colleagues, Eric was a natural; he took to flying like a duck to water and was marked down very early on to get to the top. He was only 20 when I met him, but he was mature way beyond his years.”

  After the ball, which went on until dawn, Shirley’s father drove the small party back to Lancashire. Shirley slept all the way in Eric’s lap.

  She recalled: “Eric came to my home and I made us all bacon and eggs. By this time it seemed we’d known each other for ever, and we sat talking for hours. I had never met anyone like him; he had this sort of old world charm that I found very attractive. He talked for hours about the Battle of Britain and how close we had been to defeat. It was all very patriotic stuff, but that’s the way we talked in those days. We were immensely proud of our country. I felt safe in his hands, and I knew that Britain had every reason to be proud of men like him. He was quite literally willing to lay his life down for his country, he loved it that much.”

  Shirley lived in a large, rambling seven-bedroom house surrounded by fields and woodland. There were stables, and Shirley had her own pony. There was a swimming pool, a rarity in those days. By contrast, Eric lived in a little two-up and two-down in one of the poorer districts of Burnley. But it made no difference to Shirley, who recalled: “Eric had very special qualities; he was the stuff of heroes. I had several boyfriends, but no-one compared to him. I couldn’t stop thinking about him, and was sad when he had to go back to Cranwell.”

  The romance blossomed in letters and phone calls in the months that followed. By the time of the next Cranwell ball Shirley, always very single minded, had made up her mind. “The funny thing is that I always told daddy I wouldn’t marry a pilot because they were always being sent off somewhere. But with Eric it didn’t seem to matter. I decided he was the only man for me, and I was determined to get him. I know that sounds shameless, but I have always been a great believer in the old adage that all’s fair in love and war.”

  The couple soon became inseparable. He visited her at home every weekend. Shirley said: “We were madly in love, but we never made love. We both felt it wouldn’t be right until we were married. Eric said he would never betray my father’s trust. Daddy knew this and respected Eric enormously for it.”

  In early 1954 Eric received his much-coveted “wings” and he passed out with honors as a fully-fledged pilot at a colourful ceremony at Cranwell. Six months later Shirley and Eric were married in a traditional ceremony, complete with honour guard, in an English country church near Shirley’s home.

  But there was no conventional honeymoon. Eric, as one of Cranwell’s rising stars was already involved in some very secret work which necessitated staying on site at the base. Eric would never talk about his work; all Shirley knew was that he had been inducted into the Canberra squadrons, which included patrolling the edges of the iron curtain countries.

  The mid-1950s was a period of intense fear and paranoia as the world watched the two superpowers squaring up to each other. America and the Soviet Union seemed to be hell-bent on destroying the planet as they vied with each other to produce bigger and ever-more fearsome weapons of mass destruction.

  America was laying waste to huge tracts of the South Pacific Ocean as it detonated ever more fearsome thermonuclear weapons. The Soviet Union was doing much the same thing in the vast wastes of Siberia and the Arctic Circle. Britain was desperately trying to hang on to their coat-tails by testing its own nuclear devices in the Australian outback.

  Into this feverish maelstrom were thrown pilots like Eric Denson who were being trained to fly the planes that would deliver Britain’s nuclear response should the Soviets launch an attack. They had to be on standby 24 hours a day and the aircraft of choice was the Canberra which was capable of flying higher and at faster speeds than almost any other aircraft in service at the time.

  Eric Denson took to flying the Canberra as though born to it. He was soon leading training squadrons and he excelled at penetrating the defensive radar screens of other forces. Low-level and night operations were given special priority.

  On one occasion Denson caused a minor diplomatic incident when he made a low-level run that took the US air force base at Lakenheath completely by surprise. To rub salt into the wound, he cheekily flew back over the base on his return…all without being detected.

  The Canberra squadrons remained Britain’s first line of attack until 1957 when the huge new Valiant bombers came into operation. But the military still had plans for the Canberras…and for Eric Denson.

  On the ground, Shirley got on with life as best she could. She recalled: “We were constantly on the move. We never had our own home and had to rent wherever we went. But we made the best of things. Eric was always busy and he was away an awful lot. The Cold War was intensifying and he seemed to be permanently in the air. I can still remember there was real fear at the time that the world was going to come to an end. By that time we had all seen the dreadful consequences of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. We were in the front line, and the threat of destruction was all pervasive. Eric was performing a vital part in defending our country. We were willing to put up with any inconvenience and no sacrifice seemed too great. I was very much in love with my husband and very proud about what he was doing. I worried about him all the time and I used to make a point of watching for his squadron returning to base. Eric always tried to fly over our cottage at the end of the runway, just to reassure me.”

  The couple was based back at Cranwell in 1957 when Denson suddenly received an urgent message. Shirley said: “There was a flap on over something and Eric was required for urgent duties. Before I knew it we were off again, this time to the big base at Basingbourne in Kent. I had to give up the little job I had managed to get at the local university and I even had to give away a gorgeous little red setter puppy Eric had bought me. But life was like that and we just accepted it. We packed our things and off we went. I was never told what all the
fuss was about. All Eric would say was that he had to train for a special operation. He looked extremely worried for quite some time.

  “Then one day he arrived back at our little flat and I sensed immediately there was something wrong. I was in the kitchen cooking dinner, but Eric didn’t give me a little cuddle at the cooker like he always did. I went into the living room and Eric was just standing there with his back to the door. To my utter surprise I could see tears in his eyes. I knew it was serious, then. I had never seen Eric cry in my life. It just wasn’t the sort of thing he did. He was only 25 at the time, but old beyond his years. I rushed up and put my arms around him and I remember saying, ‘Darling, whatever is the matter…?’”

  It was some time before Eric could reply. Finally he led her gently to the sofa and informed her he had to go away on a top secret mission, and he would be away for at least six months.

  Shirley was distraught: “I could hardly take it in. Six months was a lifetime for me to be without my husband. I asked him what it was all about and he said he couldn’t tell me because it was top secret. I told him I would go with him, but he said I couldn’t because he was being sent to a remote base in the Pacific Ocean. He said he would be involved in some very special training before he left, but he couldn’t tell me anything about it. He looked very worried as he told me, and I just knew he wasn’t telling me everything. It was as though he had a premonition that something terrible was going to happen. I had never known him to be so vulnerable. I couldn’t help feeling that it was all so unfair. After all Eric was a married man with a small child. But we were both very loyal to the RAF and our country, and in the end reconciled ourselves to the task in hand.”