My uncle, Len Wallis, who has died aged 80, was a surveyor with the Royal Engineers, and was posted to the Pacific atoll known as Christmas Island – now Kiritimati – during Britain’s nuclear tests in the late 1950s. He worked on extending the island’s airstrip as Operation Grapple sought to perfect a viable one-megaton hydrogen bomb.
Len became a dedicated supporter of attempts by the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association to get the UK government to recognise a link between exposure to radiation and the ill health reported by test veterans and their families. Len died from the effects of metastatic melanoma, convinced that, while other countries have paid compensation to those affected, Britain would compensate its veterans only when most or all them had already died.
He was brought up in an army family, the youngest child of Sidney Wallis and Nora (nee Skinner). Posted to wartime Singapore, they left shortly before the 1942 Japanese invasion, eventually settling on the Isle of Wight.
Len’s own military training started at the Duke of York’s Royal Military school in Dover in 1944 and continued at the Army Apprentice school in Harrogate. In a career with the Royal Engineers lasting two decades, he surveyed and mapped parts of the world where the British presence was in its final years, including Iraq, Uganda and Singapore.
In his mid-30s, he took a degree at Lancaster University and forged a new career as a teacher and academic, becoming head of social studies at secondary schools in Hampshire and Norfolk. He also maintained his expertise in surveying, teaching technical English overseas in later life.
In 1989 he moved to Norfolk with his wife, Sandra, whom he met in the forces in Germany and married in 1964. In 2003, he obtained a PhD at the University of East Anglia based on his teaching experience in Saudi Arabia. He was also an amateur rugby referee and a keen researcher of social and military history.
Len is survived by Sandra, his sisters, Joan and Gwen, and 18 nieces and nephews.
