Two ex-servicemen from Kent travelled to Downing Street in a bid to get justice for nuclear test veterans.

Terry Quinlan from Leybourne and Brian Unthank from Erith, near Dartford, were both teenagers when they served on Christmas Island in the South Pacific during Britain’s nuclear test programme in the 1950s.

Mr Quinlan, who was a driver with the Royal Army Service Corps, was injured with shrapnel kicked up by one of the H-bombs - even though it was detonated 20 miles away.

Almost immediately after completing his National Service he began to suffer from cancerous lumps that have plaqued him ever since, along with hearing loss and heart disease - all of which he puts down to the effects of radiation from the blast.

Brian Unthank was a cook with the RAF. He too suffered ill-health, with more than 90 operations to remove skin cancers and he had lost all his teeth by the age of 20.

But perhaps the saddest after-effect was on his family. His first wife suffered a dozen miscarriages. When he later remarried, his second wife bore him six children, but four suffered birth defects, including a girl born with two wombs, and a boy with two holes in his heart.

Both men are now in their mid-80s, but they led a delegation from the nuclear test veterans’ organisation LABRATS, which called first on the MoD headquarters in Whitehall and then at Downing Street.

The group, which is seeking compensation for the veterans’ poor health, is demanding access to medical service records, which the government has until this point been withholding as a state secret.

On Tuesday last week, the veterans served a "letter before action" on the MoD, threatening to start legal proceedings if the MoD did not release the records. They then handed in a petition to Downing Street.

Mr Quinlan said: “Back in 1958, we were instructed to sit on the beach when the bombs went off. We had no protective clothing, most of us were in shorts and nothing else.

“We were just used as guinea pigs.”

LABRATS is led by Alan Owen who is calling on the government to establish a special tribunal to investigate and compensate alleged victims of the nuclear test programme, which took place between 1952 and 1967, first in Australia and then on islands in the South Pacific.

Even should the government comply, it will be too late for many.

Only an estimated one in 10 of the 120,000 service personnel who took part in the tests is still alive. Many died unusually young.

The nuclear test veterans had to wait 65 years before they received a campaign medal for their unique contribution to Britain’s defence.

It was finally given to them in January this year.

The day after the Kent veterans made their trip, the government announced it was declassifying 150 documents relating to blood and urine sample results taken from veterans during the test programme.

Defence Minister Andrew Murrison said he would make a statement to the House of Commons this week about how they would be released.