Maralinga few survivors pay last respects to leader,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]
Mr McGee was officer in charge of Operation Brumby,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], the first official cleanup of the forward area at Maralinga in 1966. He died on December 6 after a long battle with cancer linked to exposure to the poisoned land he and his 35 airmen cleaned up, unknowingly dressed in little more than shorts and singlets.
Last year, Mr McGee tried desperately to locate the "missing men of Maralinga" but found just seven Operation Brumby survivors.
The former Royal Air Force Flight Lieutenant said the party of airmen whose task it was to collect, bury and salvage items from the Maralinga atomic test sites over two years from 1966, were never told the materials they dealt with could be radioactive.
The men salvaged whole planes to be returned to service and other scrap materials for auction at Salisbury,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych].
"The job sounded like a bit of a challenge; the chance of going to Australia all expenses paid was attractive too,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], so I accepted the offer," Mr McGee, who died aged 78, said.
"At no time were the words atomic' or nuclear' mentioned, and I personally had no knowledge of what the UK had been doing in Australia."
Mr McGee, who was the oldest of the party at age 41, believed many of his men must have died from ailments linked to exposure to radiation and poisons at Maralinga.
In 2010,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], Mr McGee told how he had been required to sign the official secrets act when returning from Maralinga,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], which prevented him from talking about it for 30 years.
"The people whose orders we were obeying didn't tell us anything," he said. "To find out I had unwittingly exposed them to something that might have messed up the rest of their lives . I feel terrible."
Before his hospitalisation for the cancer that led to his death, Mr McGee's treatments cost him more than $10,000 paid for it out of his own funds as his time at Maralinga was never recognised as service and he was refused compensation.
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