Outposts by Simon Winchester Page B

exiles, at the express direction of the faraway Earl of Oxford, who was acting on orders from London.
    Over the next eight years the islanders were systematically removed from the Chagos atolls. The Pentagon had been told that only ‘a small migratory population’ existed on the islands, and that to all intents and purposes the archipelago was deserted—which was just as well, since the US Navy had insisted that the area be made ‘sterile’, and that even the islands a hundred miles north of Diego Garcia had to be ‘swept clean’. The Foreign Office kept insisting there was no problem—only some ‘rotating contract personnel’ were ever present on the islands, and they would be ‘resettled’ on the termination of their various contracts. And to assist in speeding up the process the British Government bought out the Chagos Agalega Company for one million pounds, and summarily closed it down.
    The islanders now had no jobs; there was no longer any need for the food supply boats to call, since there was no working population, and no money to pay for food imports. So more islanders were persuaded to sail to Mauritius, with promises of work, and an altogether better life.
    Paul Moulinie, the Franco-Mauritian whom the British Government entrusted with the winding-down of Chagos Agalega’s copra operations, was to say later that it was ‘never pleasant’ to have to tell the islanders to get out. ‘It was a paradise there. We told them we had orders from BIOT. We just said—sorry fellows, but onsuch-and-such a day we are closing up. They didn’t object. But they were very unhappy about it. And I can understand this: I’m talking about five generations of islanders who were born on Chagos, and lived there. It was their home.’
    Slowly, steadily the ‘small migratory population’ was cleared. ‘All went willingly,’ the Foreign Office said. ‘No coercion was used.’ (An American congressman snorted incredulously on hearing this remark. ‘No coercion was used—when you cut off their jobs? What other kind of coercion do you need? Are you talking about putting them on the rack?’)
    Then, in March 1971, the first American troops arrived. They were Seabees, marine construction workers, and they had come to rebuild the old RAF runway on Diego Garcia, which had been built during the Second World War, and at the end of which were still two wrecked Catalina sea-planes, damaged in a hurricane. There was an old ops room nearby, and the Americans found RAF emblems and pin-ups stuck to the walls, mouldy after twenty years of neglect.
    The last islanders were evicted over the next two years. The British had always said that troops were not used; and indeed the only time soldiers did become involved was when one of the evacuation ships broke down, and the troops gave the departing islanders some of their rations. Otherwise the pathetic became the routine. An islander said: ‘We were assembled in front of the manager’s house and informed that we could no longer stay on the island because the Americans were coming for good. We didn’t want to go. We were born there. So were our fathers and forefathers who were buried in that land.’
    Some of the voyages must have been cruelly uncomfortable. One woman reported seeing the Nordvaer , which normally carried a dozen passengers, arrive in the Seychelles with 140 islanders aboard, sheltered by tarpaulins from the scorching sun. Some families were given a brief extension, with officials moving them off Diego Garcia and on to one of the island groups to the north, where it was still possible to fish and grow a little grain and fruit. But the Americans demanded that everyone be cleared off every atoll and every island,and so these last few were herded on to a final supply vessel, and carted off, like so many cattle.
    Once the dispossessed and ragged Britons had been discovered in Mauritius, the world’s attention became briefly focused upon them and their fate. The Senate held