New Zealand Nuclear Test Veterans’ Association
-Operation Grapple
February 10, 2023.
Aged 88
(Introductions)
Shimasaki:
Clive, I would like for you to explain your experience of Operation Grapple.
Strickett:
Well, when we were told we were going to Operation Grapple, we were going up there to be observers of Operation Grapple, and that’s what we were told. If you don’t want to go, you just step out of line and we will transfer you to another ship. Well no one stepped out of line. We were all volunteers. When we got to Operation Grapple, the Captain says, “well we’re doing this and that, and something else,’ and there’s a few ‘ums and ahs about it,” and he says, “you are in no danger.” “No danger.” He was a good man, Ted Thorpe, he was a damn good guy. I’ve still got respect for him. He didn’t know any different to us. He just tried to keep the peace and I can understand that. So, we were divided into four watches, I happened to be the Blue Watch, all the different colours, and we had to do upper deck work in that during the time there surveying anything to do with the Navy and we would go back and forth and we had patterns that we had to take up and down. Come back, for half a day, go back for half a day, then move over it, survey all this, survey the rain, the weather, the cloud situation, and all that, so this was our job. And then, the first bomb comes out and we had to be stationed, I don’t want to be gospel on this, I think it was 27 miles away. That was on Y, the bomb Y, and we were issued with boiler suits, white boiler suits, my own headgear, and dark glasses, gloves if you had them, and shoes; that’s what you had to have on. And, we were placed on the upper deck in different places, and I happened to be, there’s quite a few photos around, there’s one with four or five guys on each side of the flag right on the point of the ship, and I was one of those, right in it. And then we started patrolling and our job then was to make sure no foreign objects got in the road like fishing boats or pleasure launchers and any of that, so we were policemen going up and down. We got told that the bomb will go off between now and lunchtime type-of-thing so just be prepared, you’ll get called to go to stations and that’s where you’ll go. So, we got called to go to stations and we had to sit on the deck with our backs to the sea, the guardrail around the ship we had to lean on that, and our backs were to the sea, hands over our eyes, and “don’t move until you’re told to move.” So that’s alright, we ordered this. The bomb went off. The sudden jolt of the bomb, in me anyhow and I know a few of the other guys talked about it too, was sheer shock. Sheer shock- it was huge, it was huge. We got over that and they said, “don’t turn around yet, keep your hands over your eyes.” While we had our hands over our eyes, I could see an X-ray of my hands. So could the other guys, anyone on the upper deck could see the actual X-ray. Well that just blew my mind, I can tell you. We got over that, and they said, “ok, turn around and face the bomb.” Now, we weren’t allowed to take photos. In fact, if you had a camera you had to hand it in. So, only official photos were taken, that was part of it. So, that’s ok, we did all that and they directed us to start steaming and we had to steam towards the vapour cloud, the bomb cloud. As it descended it spread, first measure was six miles away- wide, it’s radius I think, a big radius, it went out to 26 miles and we had to cruise up and down there taking readings which we didn’t have to do, the people on the ship did, we were the seamen on the upper deck. We used to send photos of scrubbing the deck and all those things, we were that category. Cleaning the ship down, wiping all the paintwork, and that was the first bomb. They said, “there will be a hell of a blast shortly,” I am guessing now it was a long time ago, about 11-15 minutes as very quiet, everything was very quiet, and then this horrible ‘bang!’ and the ship got the pressure wave from the bomb. We rolled 18 degrees, like that, and the sea was flat as that sea, there was not a wave in it, beautiful flat, and the ship just went like that, and then went back because we rocked a bit and that was Y for us. That was all over. All we had to do there was patrol and patrol and patrol, and while we were doing that we ran out of water so they decided, good old New Zealand way, ‘we’ll catch the rain.’ So they put up the big quarter-deck awning and they put a dip in it, and then we started steaming. Instead of steaming in a straight line, follow the rain cloud over there and we’ll go get some water and over here, and it literally half filled the awning with water. And, we were washing in it, drinking it and all that stuff, it was full of contaminants and no one knew. Noone knew. Including all Officers, they had no idea what they were doing. That was Y. From there on, we had a break, they sent us down to Hawaii, we had a week in Hawaii, and did that. And then we went back on duty again and they had the Z. They were a bit different, they were big balloons, huge balloons- atmospheric balloons they used for hydrography and all this sort of thing. And the bombs, and they floated them out approximately six miles into the air… and they’d explode them. To us that was just as big as the bomb that went off because they were very close and they created a lot of damage everywhere they burst. Just human beings we got knocked around pretty badly. Not to the effect that we knew about it, we were quite ignorant about what was going on around us really. And then, I went through all that, came home and I got drafted off to Pukaki, and I went to a couple of other ships… The first one was Endeavour One, that little Antarctic ship that went down to the Antarctic. I was a Leading Seamen on there of the mess. We went down with Hillary and all this gear, the ship was loaded for his big dash across the ice. We took the foundations and the base work for Scott Base. We weren’t going to Scott Base, we were taking it down, and started building Scott Base. We did all that and did a few other things, did a scientific survey on Ross Sea, took boffins down, they dredged the bottom and a few other things like that, it was all very interesting stuff, I enjoyed it all. We cruised just about the whole Ross Sea Ice Shelf, it’s huge, it’s way up there somewhere, you know what i’m talking about, and we cruised it- it took three days to get from one end to the other. Three days, while we’re doing it we’re doing the odd dredge and that and we’re from here to that building way over there, we’re just up and every now and then there’d be a ‘crunch’ from the ice shelf and the skipper would change course and he’d go straight out to sea. And next thing, you see this lump of ice come down and create a wave and so he was running away from the wave, and he would go back in and start going again until the next time. It used to be like an explosion, the ice breaking away and just turning around and getting out of there. That was very interesting. And then I did it the following year we went down there and did the same thing virtually but I was promoted, I was Chief (inaudible) for the second time around… So I got promoted to that and it was the best time that I ever had in the Navy, I loved it. We all served pretty well down there, not a lot different to the first trip in the way of cargo, just overloaded and had a couple of very big storms. One of the storms I was on the wheel, middle of the night, 2 o’clock in the morning thereabouts and there was me and the Officer Watch, and the Officer Watch was a very nice man, his name was Doug Damere (Query spelling), we was Lieutenant Doug Damere in those days, he went to Admiral of the fleet he rose to that. He liked the seamen and he set sailor on them, and he didn’t care about the cooks or the engineers, he always stopped and talked to seamen, and we got on really well. And this storm came up, and the waves were higher than the ship and I was on the wheel and I couldn’t let the wheel go, he let go of the guard rail on this side, and he thought he was going to outrun the wave, he didn’t, he got caught and he got slammed, knocked out. And here’s me, at 2 o’clock in the morning the only person awake, everyone else is in bed, and Officer Watch who is responsible for the ship laying on the deck in front of me and I couldn’t even let the wheel go to try to help him. So I had to have those voice spout things, one direct to the Captain’s cabins and I whistled down that and I said, “Sir, you better get up here and don’t bother putting your slippers on, I need a hand. The Officer Watch is on the floor knocked out.” So, he got up there very quick. He was a good man too, he actually came from my hometown. So, that was quite good. And that all got sorted, and that was a little experience we had going down south, that’s all it was. And then the next day, we were cruising on a lake, beautiful, all the big icebergs going past. It was lovely. Then the ship got take back orders and while we were taking the storm, the start of the storm just before dark in the evening, they ordered us to get the Huskies off, they were all on the vauxhall in their hutch, there were twelve Huskies. We picked them up in Wellington from the zoo and we were taking them down and so me being the Chief (inaudible) I got the crew and I said, “no you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. You’ve got to wear a life jacket, you’ve got to attach yourself to the safety rail, you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.” I stressed that. Got all the Huskies off the vauxhall, some of the cages, huge big dogs, quite big these dogs, had one each of them. We got some of them on the quarterdeck and we couldn’t get them on, we were told to get off, it was too dangerous now, stay away. So, that’s alright. Now we had to find somewhere for the dogs, we had nowhere to put them. We couldn’t put them on the quarterdeck, the waves would come across there too and they’d be washed off. I made the wise decision, I called the Captain, “can I ballot these dogs into messes?” The cooks mess has some, the engineers had some… we took four… they spread them all around. Well I get up in the morning and walk out on the quarterdeck and this guy from the expedition who was in charge of the dogs who was not there to shift them, who was in charge, seemed to avoid that. I go out and I walk up to this dog and I give it a pat, and a cuddle around the deck and he said, “Don’t do that! He’ll rip you to bits!” I said, “rip me to bits? He slept with me all bloody night.” And that’s true! Yeah, so that’s just another experience we had.
Shimasaki:
After your time in the Navy, what did you do with your life?
Strickett:
I got married, one month after I got out of the Navy. (Strickett’s wife, “not quite.”). Got married on the 13th of May, and I came out on the 13th of April. Yeah a month, sorry dear! So, we got married and we lived in Nelson for what six years dear (to his wife), seven years? Went to Nelson. We built a house anyhow in Nelson and there was a semi-depression in New Zealand. There was no work in New Zealand anywhere, in Auckland it was desperate for students who come out of school and couldn’t get jobs. So, we made the decision, we’ll go to Nelson, so we did. Bought a section, built a house, loved it! That was all good. Then, Fem’s (Strickett’s wife) a Dutch person, she had her Dutch family all came out in 1956. We got married a few years later… we had our children and we decided, well, there’s nowhere here, we will go to Nelson, so we went to Nelson, and then Fem first, she did miss her family, and you would… So, I said, “we’ll go to Auckland.” So we sold up, sold everything up, had a whole VW van I think it was, threw what we had in there, and we drove up to Auckland. Then we stayed with a sister-in-law in her basement, a couple of rooms for I don’t know, might have been two months, three months. Then we decided to buy a house. We bought a house just around the corner, and we did that and we renovated that and sold it off and went better, better, then that was about it. That was the early part of coming out of the Navy… We are in Hamilton now.
Shimasaki:
From your time at the tests, did you find any impacts personally on yourself or your family.
Strickett:
No, none whatsoever. Nothing. I was fit, I used to drag whole carcasses of beef out of the abattoir about two or three o’clock in the morning and load them onto a truck- automatically in those days, and I would put them on my shoulders and carry them into the back of the butcher’s shops.
I was fit, very fit. Until… Until I started getting crook, and it’s a weird situation, I knew something was happening but I wouldn’t admit it. “I’m all right, I’m all right.” Still carried on, did all this and in the end I got talked into going to the doctor. The doctor looked at me on the consult table, looked at my wife, and looked at me again. “How long have you had this?” I didn’t answer the question. A certain person with me did, quite quickly, “two years!” I couldn’t eat and keep a meal down, I couldn’t go out to a restaurant. I went out once for breakfast, the whole family gathered, it wasn’t my birthday, it was someone’s birthday we went out for, we had a big breakfast cause I ordered a breakfast, ‘oh yeah, I could eat this.’ I couldn’t, I ate part of it and it’s sad, I’ll never forget it, the worst thing I’ve ever experienced, I had to get rid of it, I had to vomit. So I ‘uh’, toilet too far away, so I ran out the front door of the shop and across they road the had a garden, a garden island in the middle, so the footpath going across like a pedestrian crossing, it was all shrubbery, and I vomited in the shrubs.
[Break]
Shimasaki:
Any final comments you have on your experience or what you would like to see done with your oral history? What your hopes are.
Strickett:
You were at the meeting today and you heard what I want done, and I can’t take part in it in any shape or form really. Keep this organisation alive. When I see those people standing up, all young men, a couple of ladies, all stand up and say, “Yeah, we’re going to do it.” Well, that took a shoulder off for everybody. I can’t volunteer for anything. I’d love to be able to do something but I can’t. So, to see those people step up like that to give Tere a rest and others with their books and all the records they’ve done. It’s brilliant to see all these young people coming through so it will go on, long after I’m gone I’m hoping. So, that’s what I am happy about being here today just to find that out, and to see the people we’ve got here.
The disappointment I had, I stood out there today and they said “servicemen only, veterans only,” there was twelve of us. Twelve. And I thought, how sad is that, where are the rest? Some of them are incapable of travelling, but not that many, so they’ve all gone. That’s disheartening. And, I still haven’t found out where my mate is, if he is alive or dead. So, I’ll find out.
I had a Māori boy who was a good friend of mine and I always knew he had passed away and I always wanted to go to his grave… I was ill or, wrong time of year, I just couldn’t. So I had to travel down the east coast, east cape, travelled all the way down there to a place called ‘Tikitiki,’ middle of nowhere, a broken down store and an RSA, that’s all that was there, and a few fishing nets hanging on the fences and I asked them, the very first lady I asked, “have you heard of Rudolph Farapapa?” and they said, “Rudolph? Yes, I was his teacher at school.” This woman I spoke to was 90-something plus, and a retired schoolteacher. “Yes, I remember, he joined the Navy!” and I said, “You’re dead right, same day as I did,” and we tripped and we stayed together just about the whole Island, then he came home and he got married and disappeared. Well, I didn’t find him and I didn’t find his grave. He got married to a girl from Dunedin, they decided to travel to Dunedin, live down there, and he died down there… They cremated him, and threw his ashes on the Port Chalmers Harbour. That was very sad to hear that but I had poppies with me, I was going to put a poppy on his grave and all the rest of it, and I just came away with nothing. But, I know where he is now, he’s gone.
Other than that, no, my life has been pretty good until I got crook. Once I got crook it has been hard for my wife, very hard for my wife, and hard all around for the family.
My hands are full of arthritis, I’ve got it in my toes, I’ve got it in my knees, and I’ve got it in my hips; my hips are terrible at the moment.