For Britain’s last surviving nuclear bomb test veterans like Brian Davies, from Llanfair Caereinion, it has been a long and arduous wait to be finally recognised with a medal for their service.

More than 65 years since he experienced as an 18-year-old the severe heat of a 1.8 megaton hydrogen bomb on Christmas Island, Mr Davies said the surprise announcement made by the Prime Minister on Monday (November 21) was “absolutely brilliant after successive governments have been denying it all these years”.

“We saved their world wars,” Mr Davies told the County Times.

“It was a deterrent. It’s very important to be recognised. There were 22,000 of us sent out there and there’s only 1,200 left. I’ve lost four friends. I was thinking about them when they were saying about the medal.”

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It comes after years of campaigning for nuclear test survivors to be given medals by veterans groups.

Marking the 70th anniversary of the UK’s first atomic test, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak described the decoration as a “fitting tribute to the incredible contribution that you have made. It is an enduring symbol of our gratitude.”

Mr Davies, 84, who was a baker supplying the whole Indian Ocean island with the Royal Army Service Corps from August 1957 and March 1958, said: “I saw one bomb going off but that was enough - it was huge.

 

Nuclear test veteran Brian Davies left Llanfair Caereinion in 1957 to join as a baker with the Royal Army Service Corp on Christmas Island where he later saw a hydrogen bomb on November 8, 1957. [PB67I-2009]

Nuclear test veteran Brian Davies left Llanfair Caereinion in 1957 to join as a baker with the Royal Army Service Corp on Christmas Island where he later saw a hydrogen bomb on November 8, 1957. [PB67I-2009]

 

"The heat against my back was like putting my back against an oven. It blew the bakery tent down from 23 miles away.

“With our back to it, lined up on the beach with no protection whatsoever, our hands over our eyes and you could see the bomb through our hands with our eyes closed, like an X-ray. The heat on my back was unbelievable.”

Mr Davies, who continues to suffer from medical complaints which he believes is a result of being exposed to the nuclear bomb, has joined calls by MPs for the Government to provide further support to veterans and civilians by compensating them just like those in the USA, Canada and France.