Rear-Admiral Grantham Us Navy Strides Ashore..... Poem by Sean Joyce

Reel one:
The Chagos Islands are a coral archipelago - says the commentator.
Thriving villages, school, hospital, church, a railway, and a copra plantation - says the commentator.

Reel two:
See the islanders' beloved dogs as they splash in a sheltered lagoon catching fish, and here, a line of mothers with their babies waiting for their baptism.

Reel three:
1961, Rear-Admiral Grantham of the US Navy strides ashore with his men. As does Sir Bruce Greatbatch, KCVO, CMG, MBE, governor of the Seychelles. They put the dogs in a furnace and more than 1000 pets were gassed. When their dogs were taken the children cried.

Reel four:
What had been agreed was that the 2000 Chagos Islanders would be forced from their homeland. A UK Foreign Office memo describes how the US government made the expulsion of the entire population “virtually a condition of the agreement”.

Just real:
The gentle Creoles were throwing out, “these people have little aptitude for anything other than growing coconuts”. They are, wrote Sir Bruce Greatbatch, “unsophisticated and untrainable”, - expendable.

Not just but true:
Today, on Diego Garcia there are more than 2000 US troops, anchorage for 30 ships, including nuclear-armed aircraft carriers, a satellite spy station and two of the world's longest runways, from which B-52 and Stealth bombers have attacked……

(The Creoles could not be compensated as officially they did not exist. The basis of this item can be found at)