The forgotten heroes of Britain’s nuclear tests will get their long-awaited medal this summer, it has been confirmed.
Parliament was told today, Friday, that applications will open by the end of March.
It means the forgotten veterans will finally get official recognition for their service 71 years after they helped develop the UK’s first atomic bomb.
Veteran’s son Alan Owen, who has led the medal campaign, said: “It is wonderful to know the veterans will be able to pin it on their chests before the next Remembrance Sunday.
“The tragedy is that it has come too late for more than 20,000 men who died, ignored by their governments, of radiogenic disease or in despair at the effects of radiation on their families. The medal means a lot, but we continue to campaign for war pensions, education, research, and an apology.”
Plans for how the medal will look are underway and the Ministry of Defence has been asked to include the late Queen in its design.
Steve Purse, whose RAF dad David was in charge of the airfield at Maralinga in South Australia where 600 toxic radiation experiments were conducted in the 1960s, said: “My father is long since passed away but he signed up to serve Queen and country, so it’s vital she is on it.
“It’s right the King is on there, he’s signed it off, but if his mum’s not on it, the medal would be missing something very important to a lot of veterans.”
Britain became a nuclear power in 1952, a few months after the late Queen came to the throne, and the medal was finally announced last November, just two and a half months after she died.
Lord Watson of Wyre Forest has echoed the call, writing to Defence Secretary Ben Wallace pointing out that when Arctic Convoy veterans received their medal in 2012, it broke tradition to include the cipher of her father, George VI, to mark the fact they served under him.
Lord Watson, who hosted test veterans in Parliament as part of the campaign, said the King’s suggestion of an “investiture-type” ceremony was ideal and “the veterans would be delighted to be so fussed over, and deserve nothing less”.
He added: “After 70 years, the veterans deserve their medal to be delivered with all the pomp the British state can attach to it.”
Junior defence minister Andrew Murrison told Parliament the medals “are expected to be available in summer 2023. He added: “There is a long-established process to design, procure and produce a new medal and collectively this process takes some months.”
