Marine veteran is free to tell the story of America's nuclear test subjects

Marine veteran is free to tell the story of America's nuclear test subjects
Posted Saturday, Oct. 08, 2011

BY CHRIS VAUGHN
cvaughn@star-telegram.com
BURLESON -- James D. Tyler stuffed cotton balls into his ears and waited for the announcement.

He was kneeling at the bottom of a 6-foot-deep ditch, bearing every piece of his combat gear, too young at 18 to even consider that this might be the end of his life. If it was going to be, he wouldn't be alone. No one in Company F had any better odds.

Except that Tyler, then a grunt in 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, would not go over the ditch into the teeth of the enemy.

He and everyone else knew their orders -- hug the side of the ditch, close your eyes, put your face in the crook of your arm. Do not raise your head, under any circumstances.

"It was just before dawn," said Tyler, 72, of Burleson. "We assumed that the people in charge knew what they were doing."

The countdown began, and then everything went blindingly white.

Several decades ago, during the darkest days of the Cold War, with the threat of nuclear annihilation, the U.S. military tested more than 1,000 nuclear weapons in the deserts of Nevada and the waters of the Pacific. Many of the thermonuclear detonations involved the presence of large numbers of soldiers, sailors and Marines, who began to think of themselves as "guinea pig ground grunts."

It's a largely forgotten part of American history, mostly because the government didn't want it known. In today's world, it can be difficult to fathom using regular troops, given essentially no protection, as test subjects in an experiment in how to take advantage of the post-nuclear bomb drop.

"These guys were sworn to secrecy," said R.J. Ritter, national commander of the National Association of Atomic Veterans. "For the official record, it didn't happen. They were told by a CID officer, 'What you saw and heard here today didn't happen.' Now after all these years they're free to tell their story, but they are hard-pressed to find someone old enough, including in the military, to understand that it happened."
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