by Alan Rimmer
But just as this information was being digested, there was a report of a radioactive leak on board a British nuclear submarine, HMS Resolution, based at Faslane near Hellenborough.
According to various accounts there had been a huge cover-up after reports alleging that crew member’s wives had given birth to handicapped children. Scottish Health Minister John Mackay became involved and picked up reports about problems with Resolution crew members.
The Ministry of Defence denied there had been any problems with HMS Resolution although it admitted that hairline cracks had been found in the hull of during a refit in 1970. A statement by the Ministry of Defence said that during the 14-month-long refit, the nuclear core in her reactor was replaced, although it wasn’t linked to the cracks in the hull.
It soon emerged, however, that after the multi-million pound work on the pressurised water-cooled reactor was completed the sub, which had set out on an Atlantic patrol, was forced to return to Faslane. The spokesman would not speculate on reports that the submarine first surfaced off an isolated coastline south of Oban, Argyle, and several crew members were landed before Resolution submerged.
Reports swept the base that there had been a catastrophic leak of radiation from the reactor and that members of the sub’s starboard crew had been contaminated and were being treated at a special hospital on the mainland.
The MoD once again rejected this notion, repeating there had been no radioactive leak. But a year later four malformed children were born to the wives of Resolution crew members. They were born within a few months of each other and they all suffered with hare lip and cleft palate. And what’s more they were all born to the wives of the starboard crew members. The MoD only belatedly admitted that four children of Resolution crew had indeed been born deformed after several MPs asked questions in Parliament.
An MoD spokesman grudgingly conceded: “It is known that during that time (1972-73) there were four cases of children fathered by crewmen aboard HMS Resolution being born with cleft palates and hare-lips.” He added, somewhat lamely: “However there is no evidence to indicate that these four cases were anything other than a very sad coincidence.”
The statement caused an outcry from nuclear protesters who picketed the entrance to the Faslane base. In an attempt to take the heat out of the situation, the Royal Navy gave permission for one of Resolution’s crew members to be interviewed. Chief Petty Officer Danny Davis said his son Stephen, then aged 11, was born brain damaged and with a hair lip and cleft palate. But he insisted: “We all believe that what happened to our children had nothing to do with radiation.”
But his ex-wife Pat didn’t see it that way and decided to go public about what she knew of the incident. She gave an interview to a TV company, and soon found herself plunged into a nightmare; her home was burgled and the word ‘death’ was scrawled on the cover of the notebooks in which she was compiling her evidence.
Her harrowing story was revealed in an interview: “In the early 1970s I was living with my husband in married quarters. We had one child then, our eldest son Mark. One day Danny came back from sea with bandages all over his arms. I asked him what happened, but all he would say was that he had been damaged by a spot of steam in the engine room. He didn’t seem to want to talk about it, so I didn’t pursue the matter.
“But then rumours began on the base. On the grapevine I heard there had been a leak on board Danny’s sub, the Resolution, and that several men had been injured. I asked Danny about it, but he just shrugged it off. He told me not to listen to gossip and not to ask questions.
“I put it out of my mind, until we went to a party for Navy people on the base. Everything was going smoothly until this sailor suddenly broke down. He spoke about an incident on board Resolution which caused complete panic. The reactor had broken down and there had been a radioactive leak. This man was badly affected and just sat on the floor and wept.
“It was a very strange incident. Then I heard the man’s wife later gave birth to a child with a hair lip and cleft palate. You can imagine how I felt when our son Stephen was born with the same defects about six months later. I heard of other deformed babies born at the base. In the two years after Stephen was born, three more crew member’s babies were born with the same defects.”
Mrs Davis made an official request to the Ministry of Defence for an inquiry after she was told of the suicide death of one of the mothers, but was turned down on the grounds her claims were inaccurate. There had been no radiation leak and she was told to not ask questions.
She and her husband moved down to Middlesex but divorced soon after. He returned to Scotland while Mrs Davis stayed in Middlesex. Free of Navy constraints, Mrs Davis began to make more inquiries about what had happened on board Resolution.
She had decided to write a book about it and tried to contact her old friends at the base. She also contacted Yorkshire Television who asked her to take part in a programme they were preparing on radiation workers at nuclear bases. Mrs Davis recorded a short interview and appealed for an inquiry into leaks aboard nuclear submarines.
Soon after, she received threatening phone calls. One came at midnight. The anonymous caller said that if she didn’t cease her inquiries she would be killed.
In the weeks that followed she was pestered by numerous calls both at home and at work. After one call she broke down and had to be taken home by colleagues. Mrs Davis said: “A man rang me to say my whole family would be killed if I didn’t keep my big trap shut. He said he knew where my eldest son went to school and that he also knew that Stephen was away at the time. I was obviously being spied on because he described a visit I made the day before to a dry cleaner. I reported all this to the police, but they didn’t seem to be interested.”
One night she was awoken by a knocking on her door, and two men, who claimed to be police officers, brushed their way in. One slapped her across the face while the other clamped a gloved hand across her mouth. They then proceeded to ransack her flat.
She recalled: “I was absolutely terrified. They were so brutal. I had the marks of the glove hand across my mouth for hours afterwards. I begged them to tell me what they wanted. I even told them where my purse was. I just wanted them to leave. But every time I spoke I got belted.”
The two men left as abruptly as they had arrived leaving her bruised and terrified. She contacted the police who insisted she got a hospital check-up. But because the intruders had apparently left empty-handed, they didn’t pursue the matter. It was only much later when Mrs Davis resumed work on her book that she found several chapters missing, as well as addresses, notes and ex-directory telephone numbers. She didn’t bother telling the police.
Whether Mrs Davis was the victim of brutal burglars or shadowy government agents bent on deterring her from making further inquiries has never been resolved. But there was an interesting postscript: soon after her story was aired, a priest at a seaman’s mission in Barrow-on-Humber, Humberside, revealed that three sailors from HMS Resolution had died of cancer within months of each other.
Fr Michael Cooke said the ashes of the three men, the oldest of whom was just 45, were consigned to the sea in separate ceremonies by a seaman’s mission chaplain. Fr Cooke said he had received the information from ‘an anonymous and private’ source. He said he was not prepared to name the individuals involved because their families had expressly forbidden it. “My hands are tied,” he said. “I cannot break a confidence, but the whole thing has left me extremely uncomfortable. There is no doubt in my mind that there should be an investigation.”
The Navy once again refused to hold an inquiry. A spokesman would only say: “We need more details about the men and their families before we can mount an investigation.”
Of course no investigations were ever carried out and further revelations were submerged as deeply as HMS Resolution -- which was sent on Arctic patrol hundreds of feet beneath the polar icecap, conveniently incommunicado for the next six months.
In the midst of all t
his, McGinley and his wife were facing their own problems: the collapse of their business. The slide began the week after McGinley’s meeting with the mysterious ‘Bill.’
One of the B&B’s oldest residents, a senior submariner, suddenly decided that Pitcairlie House, the name of McGinley’s hotel, had lost its charms. He gave only a vague explanation for his decision; something to do with wanting a change
McGinley, mindful of everything that had happened, was suspicious. This soon turned to certainty when over the next nonth or so, one by one the rest of his residents all drifted away. None gave an explanation that made any sense at all and McGinley was now convinced it was all tied up with the events surrounding the radioactive leak aboard the US sub. With winter sweeping in fast, the McGinley’s faced financial ruin.
KEN AND ALICE
Ken McGinley stamped on the accelerator and the car leapt forward like a greyhound out of the trap. The heavy lorry ahead of him hogging the lane loomed larger and larger and he pressed the pedal harder. His windscreen wipers struggled against the driving rain and the steering wheel felt loose in his hands.
Why not? He asked himself. Let’s end it now. There’s no point in going on… His front bumper was almost touching the rear of the lorry and his windscreen was filled with water and the blackness of the load. Time was suspended and his foot hovered perilously over the accelerator pedal: one touch…one final touch and…with a jerk of his head he realised what he was doing and just in time pulled sharply over to the side of the road.
The harsh blare of the horn in the car following filled his head as he came to a halt. Sweat poured in rivers down his neck and paroxysms shook his body…
There had been health problems since returning from Christmas Island, the worst of which was coughing up copious amounts of blood as he lay in his bunk. His joints ached, there were muscle spasms; the blisters on his face and neck which he thought had healed, kept coming back.
His problems were not all physical: he was beset by nightmares and irrational fears. Not that the army medic who examined him in his barracks cared; he showed little interest in McGinley and shoved a couple of aspirins in his hand before roughly dismissing him.
Two days later McGinley collapsed and was rushed to a military hospital. He was eventually diagnosed with a serious duodenal ulcer. That put paid to his Army days; he was discharged on medical grounds and given a ticket for home.
His sweetheart Alice was waiting for him as he got off the train at Glasgow central. At first she didn’t recognise the pale, gaunt figure that stumbled shakily on to the platform.
She recalled: “My God, what have they done to him? It was the first thing that passed through my mind. He looked so different from the man who waved goodbye to me almost a year ago. Kenny had lost an awful lot of weight and his once glossy black hair was lank and lifeless. The man I knew always walked with a swagger, bouncing about on his heels, full of life. Now he looked as though he was at death’s door. I knew he had been ill, but it seemed to have aged him. And when I got up close I noticed he had marks on his face like blisters that hadn’t been there before.
“I looked at him tentatively, not sure what to say. I had had my hair done specially and I wore a new coat I’d bought that day. He looked me up and down and then broke out into a huge smile. It was the Ken I remembered. “You look more beautiful than ever,” he said, and took me in his arms.
“I met Ken McGinley in a cafe in Johnstone. He was a good looking guy with an Elvis quiff. There were loads of girls interested in him. I was only 15 and he was four years older, but we just seemed to hit it off. I was still at school of course and Kenny used to wait for me outside the school gates. He’d walk me home, holding my hand; we were both just a couple of kids.
“On a sudden whim Kenny joined the army and seemed to grow up overnight. He was sent away on training and when he came back he was a man. It wasn’t long before he was posted abroad to Germany; we wrote to each other a lot. When things started to get serious he called down to see my mum and dad.
“They wanted to see what sort of guy he was. He was a strong catholic. I was a protestant. But neither family seemed to mind. We started going out steady, and sort of knew that we would probably get married one day, but we weren’t rushing things.
“Kenny was very good company, always polite, but cheeky with it. He took me out whenever he was on leave; we’d go to the pictures or have a coffee in town. It was a nice, quiet little romance that suited us both; all we wanted to do was to settle down and have a little family just like any ordinary couple.
“But out of the blue he got a call: he was being sent overseas to a place called Christmas Island. I’d never heard of it, and neither had Kenny. We didn’t know what to think. We looked it up in the library and there was just this tiny place in the middle of the ocean.
“Kenny was very excited; he was looking forward to all the sunshine. I just worried about the hula girls, and he laughed. ‘Marry me,’ he said suddenly. I looked at him uncertainly. ‘Marry me, when I get back. I love you Alice; you are the only girl I have ever loved.’
“It was a bitter-sweet Christmas, full of joy because we loved each other, and so, so sad that we knew he’d be leaving as soon as the festivities were over. I saw him off at the railway station and ran alongside the train as it pulled out from the station. Then he was gone, and to be honest, I wondered if I would ever see him again.
“The months passed. I received regular letters from Kenny and I could feel the tension rising with each one. The build-up to the bombs was taking place and Kenny told me how everyone was beginning to get worried, but he was trying to put a brave face on things.
“All that changed after the first test at the end of April. He wrote to tell me how all the men had got down on their knees to pray; it was the most frightening experience of his life. He wrote over and over of how much he loved me. Kenny wrote that all the men were getting knock-backs from their girlfriends and he begged me not to do the same.
“These were scary times; there had been some newspaper reports about the effects of the bombs on the men. I was walking home one day and some of my former classmates were sitting on a wall sniggering. When I asked what was up, they showed me a newspaper article about Christmas Island.
“I didn’t read it all, but they were saying things about babies and that how soldiers wouldn’t be able to have any. I walked off in tears. The thought of never having babies filled me with dread. Kenny must have sensed the change in me from my letters, and his replies became more and more desperate.
“I wrote back to reassure him that I still loved him. I knew I’d made the right decision as soon as he stepped off the train. My heart just melted when I saw his condition and I knew then that I could never love another man no matter what, even if he wasn’t quite the same man I had known before he went away.
“His personality had changed in subtle ways. He was quieter, more thoughtful; he looked as though he always had things on his mind. He was only 21 years old, but he acted as though he was much older. He was also very insecure. He kept asking me if I had been seeing someone else while he was away. I told him that was rubbish.
“But there was something going on inside him that I couldn’t understand. From being very gentle, he was suddenly very hot tempered. I could usually calm him down, but one day he just exploded after went for religious instruction. I had decided to become a Catholic in preparation for our marriage. On the way home on the bus this guy was looking at me funny and Kenny got mad and thumped him. He had never been like that before. I thought he had really hurt this guy. I managed to drag him away. I grabbed him fiercely to make him see sense. His eyes cleared, and then he burst into tears. It was bewildering.
“Kenny said he needed a job and started work in a paper-mill factory, but he found it impossible to settle down. He resented authority and couldn’t stand being confined. He was like a pressure cooker, and one day he blew. Some guy was giving him a lot of chat at work and Kenny hurled himself acros
s the room and had him by the throat before he could blink. There was a near riot, and Kenny lost his job.
“He was lucky not to be prosecuted. I thought he could get into serious trouble if something wasn’t done. Finally I told him that if he didn’t stop we were finished. That calmed him down. In those days there was no help for people like Kenny and we just sort of struggled on. We coped. He grew calmer; the storm subsided; the demons went away.
“We had no money but we decided to go ahead and get married anyway, and Kenny seemed happy as we made all the preparations. I made my own outfit and everyone pitched in to help.
“The ceremony at St Margaret’s Catholic Church in Johnstone took place on April 23, 1960 and the church was packed. To keep both sides of the family happy we held the reception in the Orange Hall.
“We moved in with Kenny’s mother who lived in a large house in Brewery Street, Johnstone. It was a chaotic arrangement as two of his brothers had also moved in with their wives, but it suited Kenny down to the ground. He was still suffering quite a lot from nervous anxiety, which today is called post traumatic stress disorder, and it helped to be with his family. By the time we’d saved enough for our own place, Kenny seemed to have recovered completely.
“As our financial situation improved we decided it was time to start a family. At least that was the plan, but nothing seemed to be happening. I thought there must be something wrong with me so I went to the doctor who carried out some tests. We were so desperate for children that Kenny also went to the hospital for some tests, although he was sure the problem wasn’t with him.
“Imagine my shock when the doctor called us back in together to say: ‘Mrs McGinley, there is absolutely nothing wrong with you, and you can go away and have as many babies as you wish --- the only problem is you will have to have them with someone else because I am afraid your husband will never be able to father children. His sperm count is too low.’
