 Well, thank you John. It's certainly a a privilege and an honor to be able to be the speaker here and And tell you a little old story Long ago and far away So I appreciate you're coming in this cold cold day. I'm going to do this My time on the island was 1971 is CEO of a CB battalion on Island commander But in order to understand the island we need to go back a little bit in time with some history And then what I do is to project it on the other side of my personal experiences To well a personal experience a year and a half ago when I did get back to the island and see what it is now Rip fan Winkle experience. So it's it's been a well, it's been an island that anybody who's there has Memories of hopefully good memories certainly it was a unique experience My time there really started in 1971 and as I say I was the battalion commander of a CB battalion selected to do the so-called pioneer work to develop a communication station Runway from scratch on an island that somehow still was there Undeveloped except for a copper plantation that had been there for 200 years It wasn't like the Pacific Islands. Somebody was always there the Indian Ocean not not not so so in 1971 You know, we were assigned this rather unique role and it was a a Rhode Island type of Adventure for not only our CB's 850 that I had but also for the construction battalion center a Tremendous job of coordination all of the logistics came out of there. And so it's very much a Rhode Island story But you got to remember it was a Cold War this was 71 it was the heart of the Cold War and It wasn't our ocean. It was the Soviet Ocean at that point in time We had ships that were transiting but they weren't making much in the way of port calls And we didn't have any establishments along there that they could go into so basically when we went in We were very much under the surveillance of the Soviets They were running ships around all the time that we were working Destroyers such as you see here. This is a Soviet destroyer as well as Soviet spy or surveillance ships So we were very much aware it was a Cold War. In fact, we had a detachment in Vietnam the hot war Which was still going at the same time. So this this was a different context of time than what it is today geopolitics change But the Soviets when they saw us moving in and started watching what we were doing We're very much concerned because what they saw it as was Getting able to strike at their underbelly from the south which we didn't have before we could transit But we really didn't have a a strong point to operate from but we would with Diego Garcia So the Soviets were we're concerned Now up until that time it was considered the forgotten sea. I mean that's what term of one of the books that described the Indian Ocean but to us the motivation was it was a communications dead zone in 1975 we had a a squadron of ships including a couple nuclear Vessels that were transiting and they found out they got in the middle in the ocean. They couldn't talk to anybody It was a dead zone. So that was our official Amputus in going out there not really at least publicly Saying we want to be able to hit the Soviet Union from the south But the Diego Garcia, of course is is in them midpoint of the Indian Ocean and from here you have With an airfield surveillance all the way around and with nuclear submarines as we have now the ability to move any place We want to in particular Right up through the Straits of Madjoka and up through the oil-rich areas Why is this important? Well, we said communication station But it also is tremendously important for the transits the commercial shipping across your container ships oil ships some 70% of all of the oil in India in China have to come through here for it in more than that for Japan tremendously important as To who controls this sea route. So with our Entry into it in 71 the whole geopolitical scene changed India is still there, but they don't have the capability China's there They didn't and don't yet have the capability to really control it. So we we operate as a stabilizing influence then Really to start with in spite of what the Soviet view was but even even now But it's a it's a place. That's not easy to get to How did it start? Well, it started really so far as we're concerned Americans with a 50-year agreement in 1966 The 50 years is up this year and the agreement is re being rediscussed Renegotiated. I don't I can't get any information on it But I'm sure there's a lot of talks going on because the geopolitics both in Great Britain and in the United States have changed tremendously Interesting I've got this side view of operation pop-up Polaris missile. This is a part of the deal When we the Americans said basically we'd like to have a base on Diego the British says yeah, and The Americans really said and we want the plantation moved which was there and The Brit said well, that's gonna cost money because we just Are about this the start of this started in 1966 Mauritius was still a part of the unit British Empire, okay, but they were gonna get independence and they got independence really in 68 but We were making this deal before that time But there was money going to be involved. So we said wait a minute you guys you Brits you always 15 million dollars for all of the research on the Polaris missile You haven't been paying us. They said ah, here's the deal if you forgive us 15 million dollars, we'll consider it a quid pro quo and That would take care of our deal with Mauritius. That's why the Polaris missile is important so in 1971 and in Actually, this this was in April when I I went on and actually I should make it just a little bit of a post facto correction Because the commanding officer of MCB 40 my predecessor was already in the island He'd taken advanced party out. So when I came out We had a change of command and then I relieved him as the commanding officer and the island commander There were no Brits there at that time none except for the plantation people who technically were British But there was it was us going across and this is as we approached the island After some five days at sea on an LST coming from the Cocos Islands on the east side We'd already spent three days by air trying to get the Cocos Islands But that's the only way you could get out to this place by LST So this is the atoll now This is a more recent picture There were no ships in the lagoon when when we first went in and there certainly was no runway up in the In this upper part right here. So this is a much more recent picture that depicts what it was This is probably about 2010 But it's a beautiful coral atoll and it's considered the classy a classic coral atoll some 37 miles of Continuous land from here to here the longest of any in the world But it has three small islets in the front here and Bruce I Had a marine with me my adviser so we set up the island defenses But we started getting reports of lights in this little island out here. So I said to the gunny I said we're gonna make a invasion an invasion an armed landing anyhow of this little island Yes, oh, yeah, yeah So we got our mic boats, which we had it armed about a dozen CVs with the gunny sergeant And we actually we did landings all around here. I don't know what we would have done Well, I know what we would have done if you meet the Russians, but I didn't ask anybody It was strictly an island and I've never told anybody about this before So anyhow, we found footprints, but nobody there But the surveillance ships and the destroyers were circling us about two to three miles out all the time And so it's not an route wasn't unreasonable to me that we could get so few recon People on that island. So that's that's the marine story the first one in the Indian Ocean the marine and to my knowledge the first armed assault on Soviets weren't there Anyhow the island belongs to the Queen But also to the hammerhead sharks were too prolific all over the lagoon But it were a concern when we were what worked in the water, but it I've got to emphasize yet. Yeah, it's a British island there are only about 50 Brits there now an army or a a well Royal Marines who provide sort of the police force and a Royal Navy commander that's sort of the British contingent It's because of the island in its future. It's worthwhile to know where it came from It's as I said an at all island and what we see today is this but it started off with a volcanic island much as You see in the Hawaiian islands which continued to sink But the coral kept growth with that and ultimately this is now about 5,000 feet down but in any we talk in Bikini they've gone that deep and they find it about 5,000 feet there There is basalt volcanics Originally this whole concept was by Charles Darwin Who you know for the evolution of the species, but he's talked about how everything evolves and this was one of his concepts It's a wet island About a hundred and two inches of rainfall a year. I Have been looking at the recent records. It's increasing the climate is changing dramatically even in the Indian Not even in but in the ocean the last 10 years the rainfall has averaged about 120 inches It's getting getting water and sea level is rising But it's a tropical island and well, it's wet. It it it we Futsal either is a dry season and we had most of our time was on the dry season to start our construction But it's a beautiful island beautiful coral sand beaches The mystic banion trees are found in the jungle, but it's it's still a beautiful island particularly on the place plantation site Which is now completely reserved as a as an environmental niche These the booby there are no seagulls these things look like seagulls when they're flying But there are no seagulls on Diego Garcia But there's coconut crab which will go about three feet in span and as our some of our seabees tested out They'll chop a broomstick right in too as well as your fingers So there there are something not to fool around with but the plantation people would eat them But now they're back proliferating at the plantation because there's nobody to bother them and the British have environmental control They protect them so but the other thing interest are the donkeys in the jungle These are remnants of 200 years ago the coconut plantation. These were imported as labor to replace slave labor back in 1834 and With mechanization, they were just turned loose in the jungle. They're still there today We've got donkey gates to keep them from getting on to the runway But they're there are happy in the jungle, but they're also very curious But the reason for being for the island before we came was Copra just the meat of the coconut tree and the French back in the last part of the 1700s First Sighted that yeah, we can do something with that and so the French got a concession They own the island at that time with yield the France which then Napoleonic Wars Took over and it became more asius and the territory became British and the British took up the copra plantation When we were out there and still the island is separated into two areas of responsibility or jurisdiction Well, the Brits have jurisdiction police type jurisdiction over everything This is a completely off-limits the old plantation area. It's been reverted back to an environmental type of Sort of reforestation although with all of the 200 years of occupancy There are a lot of trees that are we're not needy to start with but the US side is all of this right here. This is one of our original maps and you'll see French French notations in all these this is one of the first maps. I had that we started annotating stuff on even did it well even in 71 the Plantations language was not was not English. It was French and French Creole The French had the island first the British took it over the Napoleonic Wars the flag changed the culture that people did not So French Creole was the language of the plantation. I I had Louisiana Seabees interestingly enough They could converse with the plantation people in Creole French Creole in Louisiana Archaic between the two but they could still understand each other amazing This is an interesting picture 1819 this This was still in the days of slavery no donkeys in this picture these are oil pressed mills and the slaves were hitched up to these posts and Round and round and round to press out the oil from the Copra 34 though participation by the British the donkeys came in But the slaves then were technically became contract laborers Which officially is what they were in 1971 as they were moved out Your contracts up now. This is a continuing big boner contention So when you look up on the internet and you see Diego Garcia, you'll see a lot of Very slanted views as to what the island is. What did we do to these people etc? So I'm not going to talk to that but it was a very unique one But the thing you this one is that you see a ship with the American flag. This is a ceiling ship an American bring from Boston These people here are not visitors. They were shipwrecked off of a Dutch warship. It was offshore had been damaged in a Storm was sinking but couldn't make it into the lagoon This sealer happened to be in getting supplies went off and off loaded 300 Dutchmen off this warship Including an admiral and the head of the Dutch East Indies company. I mean very dignitary This is why the Dutch flag flies there, too but This American rescued him 300 of them But it took took two months for some of these people to get back off the island to Mauritius to go on their way so they're still walking around with their walking sticks and and Meanwhile, you know Turtles are being taken over to cook for them and all kinds of good stuff So it was an interesting event in which Americans were first first involved in the island when I was there, you know This is Samson the champion coconut picker and Husker this this old gentleman here, Mr. Amador Cool our door Amador. He was the oldest man in the island and he's the one that said hey Here's he pointed out places on the island. He also told us don't go swimming at night. There are sharks here And this is this is a plantations manager house a Church and again a cat French Catholic Church and but this is a normal abode of the plantation workers But it was the end of era in October we'd spend eight months With the plantation and they were supposed to have been moved out in July They did not there were not for a lot of reasons that were inefficient on the British side But we tried to we took care of them. We gave them medics medication We sent our doctors over or Dennis over and provided them food Really up until October when they sailed out on the last of the copra sailing ships You know under sail and I took this picture just in the last I call it the last sail and the last of last of the islanders went away on this one on a Bright bright sunlit morning now many flags flew we took the flag down at the plantation And then put it up on the CB side and actually it was a Union Jack then but I gave the flag to the plantation Manager so I didn't have it we had the British Royal Incident which we then flew I In the island command we not only had most of the CBs But we also had a beach group the ACBs for offloading over the beach Logistics support component which would ultimately take care of all of the runway operations a chap group Which was the stevedoring operation from ship to to lighters the comm communication unit this is a actually an air air Transportable communication tactical unit, but it came by ship not by air in a medical unit I had six doctors Dennis Enthusiologist everything because we were completely isolated you couldn't get anybody off if we had somebody hurt and then as they were Signed they signed me a support ship on station and LST until we got the runway done Which was about mid-deployment so the ship could go any place that we wanted they would They did go to Mauritius and pick up fruit and vegetables Which we were by the embassy State Department ordered to do as a matter of I don't know official Condolences to the Mauritian economy But the fruit and vegetables were no good by the time they got back back to our island, but we did it anyway Anya, but everything came from an island to Diego Garcia. This is this is Davisville Pier And this is what the ships would of course then anchor out in the lagoon. We had a lighter on my shore And this this is Admiral Pratt Beach Admiral Pratt was the commander-in-chief of the landing force. He was our boss It was all on the land even though Indian Ocean it was all run out of the Atlantic side not the Pacific side It's since been shifted to the Pacific, but that in those days. It was all Atlantic so These these are just lighter lighter barges which would come up against these Pantune but these are the old so-called magic boxes of World War two particularly Normandy But even back to Anzio and everything just big Square or actually rectangular box steel boxes that floated bolded together But that was our that was our offloading dock causeway Nationally, of course tents is all you had and the first group is only only about 30 people the advanced party started Going shore putting up tents and then progressed from there mess hall Recreation wasn't much had a few fishing poles and this is one of my worn officers Sunday afternoon after we got the runway you could you could get Sunday afternoon off and go fishing and he's just caught a shark essential construction components For us water You got a lots of salt water, but you can't drink it and you can't make good quality concrete with it Aggregate, where do you get this? I mean this is big bulk weight stuff not to be hauled from the United States and Seaman, which wasn't on the island, but was a critical critical component Water water everywhere nor any drop to drink. It's the old line and that's true the early early Exploratory people who went to the island including a contractor said there ain't no water on the island So the way we're going to handle it is we're going to give you three of these old water distillation barges Which they did and for the first month they really worked and then about four months in they started going down they weren't meant for long-term operation and so in in August I Got a a guy came in he said you know captain. I just got this water. I Said where'd you get it? He said the barges and They tested it. He says it tastes salty to me. Yeah, it was really salt water all of all of the Lines inside the barge are broken down and they'd crossed over and that was the first one the second one went down and That's when I was really in trouble because we had a half a tank of water in the storage tank and we weren't making any water So but I had enough Knowledge to say this is a wet island. They ain't no rivers Lakes on the island it all sinks into the ground. Yeah, so the next day we got out our Bulldozers and our Digging equipment and started digging about ten feet down to the water table and tested it. It's fresh It's fresh and I did some calculations and figured that there had to be a hundred feet of water Which was proven to be the case fresh water under the widest part of the island So this is what it looks like in cross-section. There's there's fresh water floating on heavier salt water It's just a matter of density that the fresh water is light. This is heavy. It floats on top You just put your shallow well down and you've got yourself fresh water It smelled of hydrogen sulfide but spray it up in the air and that disappeared And we drank it without chlorination to start with and then we did some chlorination just to safety, but Today this is still the water supply for 3,000 people on the island. They got about a hundred and twenty-four shallow wells now all connected up through very Sophisticated control system for salinity water level and so forth. So it's a very very viable system There's lots of water on the island and at one point they had over 6,000 people on the island all drinking water out of here For the most part. So this this is a very interesting phenomenon on Islands No, in fact the Commodores suggested that that we Collect rainwater off the runway but on second thought wait a minute with all the planes You don't want to do that it would provide a construction water, but not drinking water on the plantation side Yes, that's what they did. They collected their drinking water in some of the buildings had Steel or metal roofs and they funneled it down connected into big big old barrels and We tested their water and it was good. So they were drinking good water But that was their drinking water in the other side. So it could be done in a you know Sophisticated way crown waters is is safer from a lot of viewpoints But and you can get a lot of it there, but on the plantation side they had some shallow wells, but they weren't protected They were just contaminated by all of their animals and everything. So their drinking water came from the roof Cement came all the way again from Davisville and these are 50 cubic feet rubberized type bags and We then would have to dump Pick it up and dump the cement out Unfortunately, though some of these bags were wetted and filled in wet weather in Davisville and they came and they were just big old hunks of rock so So we we were doing well in the runway and The cement didn't come in from Davisville. We were running out. So I got the LST I said I gave my supply officer a whole bag full of money and Asked the LST skipper to take a rundum and the rations and get every bag of cement We could so we put a we put a couple of dozen seabees on and my supply officer with a bag of money to Mauritius Which is about six days away and but they scoured the whole island and they manhandled bags of cement I think there was ten thousand bags of cement they got which kept kept us going till the next run came in What was our assignments well To build and build a communications facility number one a town for about a thousand people number two and an airfield Which would be at least one C-130 capable and Then a support base starting dock facilities and so forth but the first one was really the communications that as I said it's a dead zone and so Basically, we had the communications unit found the tallest coconut tree I think this is about 80 feet high and put put a transmitter on there and We had I think it was too good to almost two dozen specialists communication specialists with this unit and the lieutenant commander in charge and They put the a first message out This is the second message the first one in six little vans nestled under coconut trees Six little jennies buzzing like bees 22 men and CB greens work three days on pork and beans Give to navcom its lifelong dream worldwide communication smooths as cream and they did it They did it and it was only you know It was only a less than a week after they first landed on the island We put our first doser down there to clear out a spot for them and they were fabulous and some also a personal message of Congratulations as well. He should have But then two years later there was a permanent We started communications facility permanent ones two years later than a permanent communication station was established to to replace the the tactical Units and this was their their goodbye Message despite the donkeys despite the rains In in 8 act 2 4 no longer remains we pack up our bags and duty part act 2 4 is off the air So that that was very momentous But for the town, this is what we built so called see a hut or Southeast Asia huts These are the kind that we built all over Southeast Asia. They're they're They're plywood but all Predimension and so forth so they can go up fast. We built probably a couple hundred of these guys right here But we also built outhouses And you didn't want to be at the bottom of the totem pole on the island as somebody had to empty these things out every day The fuel pier we built the fuel pier and cause way out in half mile out into the lagoon As I said sharks are a problem and we had the surveyors lining lining up this and Doing the surveying out in advance of this in the water up to the waist So we station CB shark shooters on all along the causeway edge right there Never had a problem, but it was a real concern But the classic of course the bulldozers pushing down the the coconut trees and coconut trees Are fun to push down But there's son of a gun to get rid of and we had we had thousands and thousands of them And we tried burning them sort of the logical thing. They don't burn at all They're not a they're very dense and they also have a lot of water content But they're so dense that we said well, maybe we can put them on barges and dump them off shore And they don't sink. I mean they were just So we ended up we just had to dig big trenches alongside the runway and buried them in there where they're still there today But they're windrowed in long sites, so they're not a problem, but it was a real concern How do you get rid of a coconut tree? We had one casually one of these guys was pushing down a coconut tree and somehow it got and sprang back and took out a chunk of skull right in letter his head and He was evacuated to the Philippines. He survived. In fact, I corresponded with him about a month ago He went after Recuperation he went back to duty and spent 20 years retired I was happy to hear that I never heard that story until somebody told me send him a book which I did But but this guy it was a real concern who got because he really lost a chunk of skull The runway itself what we built was made out of what they called soil cement But it was a a very rigidly compacted coral and cement and water and it's very very much the specifications because it all of the stuff that we did was to What they called buttocks and specifications it wasn't do anything you want I mean it had to hold up and this was being prepared for c-130s and it had a nice hard surface when we finished It wasn't concrete, but it was pretty close to it and But it was a very very rigorous type of operation to get the leveling process the compaction and everything the specifications and And finally this is this is it this I took this this picture from that first c-130 that came in and The pilot said you want to see your island? I said sure He flew he flew us over and we got a real first bird's-eye view of what what we did really look like 15 July three days ahead of our schedule. We got this runway in The 3000 feet This is the first plane coming in a c-130 coming in From Thailand some 2500 miles away. It's flown by a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force He and his other fellows in Thailand were still flying Sorties and runs over Vietnam, which is still very active at that time. So this was an alternate route I asked him he said I'm not sure I prefer this or Vietnam Because he was he was the third plane that Attempted to find the island the first two reached the point of no return and turned back They were used to flying to Vietnam line of sight coastlines rivers Not celestial navigation although technically they were supposed to be able to do that But they were too rusty so they turned back and so it was a few days after our runway before we got that first plane in So he was a very notable type. This this is the plantation manager Marcel Moulinier French name old French family British island, but his heritage is all French This is lieutenant commander Raul. He was the OIC of my support unit who was specialized for runways administration and maintenance and so forth and this is a young young me Well, let me go back. There is one other thing I'll point out This reindeer up here is significant the code name because the place was classified in its early days was reindeer station and So that's what we still called it and when I found out in the plantation when they closed it up The plantation manager gave me some coins. He said here. You want these I looked at when there's a reindeer on it Oh, and it was a Mauritian reindeer and They named it appropriately and I never found out if they did it deliberately or Most of our seabees when they first heard we were going to reindeer station thought they were going up north I may have been a intended subterfuge So I'll give you some epilogue here We talked about the preposition ships There were anywhere when when I was there a year and a half ago, I'd say I think they were about 16 out there then There typically are 12 to 20 in the lagoon all ready to go and As I said, they're anchored and not to boys. They're they're hard-bottom anchored But they're loaded with 30-day provision for Marines in Several of these are for army, but everything from from tanks to ammunition food supplies Everything fuel of course so these guys are all ready to go on our's notice and they did when the Gulf War broke out and And so this is a status today of what it is there now When I was out there, there were no planes stationed there They're deployed in and out depending on the need and in the heyday of the Gulf War There were the bomber crews. This was filled up the bomber crews You know slept in tents and there were some over two to three thousand of those as support people in bomber crews for rest, but This this is what it is today capable of really handling Not only this as a runway, but More well, let me back. Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna well, I'll slip this one in because Bob Hope was a certainly a great guy and He he came on the first C 141 jet plane to land on the runway But that time it had been extended. I think to about four thousand five hundred or five thousand feet But he brought his whole Christmas troop out here and of course as I mentioned I mentioned somebody we were all guys I mean, there's I wasn't here then this was a year later But it was still an all-man navy and all the Seabees were all male So, you know, you can bet that his Christmas Entourage was well welcomed Interesting that he also brought his wife out though Maybe she said I got to go along if you're going with all these girls probably that's more yet So so they so they they enjoyed a brief stay on the island But they came back Bob Hope came back about 15 years later He and his wife so they must most they had fond memories and they were put up in a suite Spatial VIP suite well after they left the the captain and the British rep at that time said We got to make something spatial out of this one. So they called it the honeymoon suite for Bob Hope and his wife Well, there's a problem though Because other people said I'd like to use that but the Brits had if a law that anybody on the island has to Cannot have a married Companion on the island or no, I don't know what they how they say it, but You couldn't you couldn't have you couldn't be married and living together on the island was at that time So the Brits said well, I'll tell you what we'll do In the justice of peace the Brit can marry not the American captain But the Brit can do the married ceremony. So he said if any if it now In more recent times you have females on the island So after a month of unaccompanied tours some of them have liaisons and they say yeah, we'd like to get married So the Brits said we'll marry you but the next day one of you have to leave the island So it's still called the honeymoon suite and If you go out and meet somebody you could have your last night in the honeymoon suite if you get married Anyhow it whoops Okay As I said the runway, you know this this is just a before and after this is our original 3,000 feet now, it's 12,000 feet long But but you still end up in the ocean We these are a thousand feet overruns that we had at each end of it and it's a better fact you do Environmentally, I was I was given very stern Directions don't don't mess up the wetlands done at this end of the island We tried we didn't but that was all forgotten as the runway extended and Carved itself all the way to the very end I mentioned that the bomber crews and so forth when they had to be billeted on the island It was they were billeted intense on this made land here. This is from dredging and This this area right here that you don't see up here basically is created land However, the island is still very low lying the the runway now they say is about 10 feet I think elevation when we were there ours ours was probably about four feet above what we called mean sea level but it's it's a very very low island and The highest point was on the other side of the atoll some 22 feet and The dunes the 22 foot dunes when I went over there looked at my saw White white pumice way at the upper part of the dune and what I found out later This is from the eruption of Krakatoa in Indonesia in the 1876 I think it was and the pumice is still there in indicating that yes, you can get some pretty serious impact from a long way away on the island and In something like that would certainly inundate the runway Not to mention storms and storm surge Yes to some extent It's sinking my observations were the south and the island is sinking because I saw old stands of coconut trees that were now dead and Just the stumps were still there in the water and it's sort of a perpetual wetland and and of course when they started growing It wasn't so at the south end is sinking when we made our excursions in the north end of the island on that little invasion I Saw elevated beach lines, so I think the north end is coming up and the south end is sinking I Communications a long long way from the top of a coconut tree, you know now They're very probably the most sophisticated communications Set up in the world a transmitter site way at the south end of the island a big receiver site at the north end of the island also a a space geodetic station tracking all space debris in the world and Why well, it's the middle of the Indian Ocean the air couldn't be better So seeing things in the sky Is the that's where you want to be and so it's got a lot of communications operations there Of course most of them classified even even when we had this guy going, you know, I talked to lieutenant commander Klein Who's the OIC and I wonder I said can I go in and see what you're doing inside? He said no cap me. You don't have a need to know So I couldn't even go in to see what he was doing and it's even more so now of course I Come a long way from the from the tents to now air-conditioned barracks running water toilets inside Micromave, you know, it's to me its first class In bicycles to run around in on hard surface roads, we just had coral roads now You don't have a lot of roads, but they're hard surface. So they can bicycle miles down one end and come back and it's a Well, it's a primitive recreation, but it's it's it if if you like that kind of natural recreation You'd like going out to Diego Garcia for another year 2010 though there was a I'd say a monumental change in United States strategy in which we said, yeah, we're gonna say this is a nuclear Support base and they they took the emery land one of only two submarine tenders and home ported it there from I think of Seattle and they actually Permanently home ported it there now and so when I was there, you know, there were two submarines that were in here This is not my picture. It's an older picture But yeah, I I saw I saw the subs go in and out of of the entrance now Cautiously when they go in and out there are two harbor tugs that are in both sides very Gingerly making sure they stay in the channel. They sure don't want one of these guys up in the rocks And so but they go in and out all the time that they come ashore for a crew rest After their months-long deployments or replenishment repair if it's a technical repair The crew are the technicians are flown out for the United States to the island and the sub-states here They don't have to go all the way back home to the United States and Home home made submarine home born and bred here in Rhode Island also was out there This is her just coming coming in The the islanders of the you know why This is the first return since they were Taken off the island in 1971 There had been a prohibition against any of them coming back Which it got great international argument and if you look at the web some very very negative press on that They still think they have a should have a right to return now about every year They've been allowed to return and and pay respects to their ancestors and so forth But they've never been allowed to reestablish themselves But there's a movement of the old-timers are almost all dead now, but they're Their children grandchildren still have a very active movement of we want a right to return and The most recent one just this past year has been maybe you should the international community But they don't want to return to those glass grass-covered huts They want modern Conveniences they want to use our runway and in response to what do you want to do? Well, we think tourism would be a great thing for us. You've got the runway Hey, they're not gonna go out picking coconuts again. I mean, it's you know, it's a cultural dilemma You know their culture is gone. It was a wonderful wonderful romantic culture, which the old-timers saw as Well, they said living living in paradise and you forced it out of there. Well It was what they knew and I mean they worked and all they knew was picking and taking care of coconuts It was an era that was going I mean it was no longer economically even viable if the company would have been allowed to stay and yeah You just keep doing your thing. No, it wasn't really but they still it's still a very strong movement So this is a very very active issue The last word well this one I took a year and a half ago and about six years ago or so They not only I've served before that but Found out that the shoreline were many of our barracks and our main barrick buildings are was eroding very very rapidly And so they started rip wrapping it millions of dollars involved in hauling this kind of rock there's nothing like this on the island and Not only the rising sea level, which isn't just because it's rising but it's warming and Several years ago. There was a big die-off of coral on the reefs Well, the reef is what protects the island and so you start losing that it's a big concern So a lot of the scientists are saying The island may not last forever the question is is there is a coral still growing is it growing fast enough to take care of the sea level Change and secondly, you know, you've got tsunamis you've got earthquakes too so A hundred years from now It may not be geopolitics, but it may be something else now with regard to geopolitics and these are these are work college gentlemen China and India continue to accrete their military might yes, they do they're not up to us by far But they pull its center gravity toward the Indian Ocean. This is this is a lifeline to them and as long as It's not prohibited. They see us as an honest bokeh We sort of insure freedom of the sea because we don't want a conflict there, but of course India and China Have still active combat activity along their borders India has the biggest footprint in the Indian Ocean and they've publicly said hey the Indian Ocean That sounds like it ought to be ours And we're gonna claim that whole whole circle of influence But they don't have the might to do it But they're getting stronger and stronger someday if there's a conflict who will who will say who who does belong to The British have that I know of have no position they've given given no well, yes, I After World War two they started giving up the British Empire India Mauritius ultimately the Seychelles All of the British Yes, except it's still the Queen's Island, so they have about 50 Brits there and saying We're going to enforce British law one of the things they tried to do early on when I was there I was fortunate I didn't have a British representative with me But a month after I left a Brit rep commander in the Royal Navy came in and said I'm in charge of the island And I'll say I'll say what the rules are and one of the first thing I was told that he tried to do is say now We're gonna we're gonna drive on the proper side of the road And after a few months of that They decided the Americans were never gonna adapt to that one So they they went back and they've acceded to their American way of driving But yeah when I went out there I met with a British rep and She said I Said I think I said it's great to be back on our island Very innocently. He said our island. He said it isn't our island. It's my island in the Queen's Island He let me know where I stood Well, including the captain who was standing right alongside of me the current captain of the Navy support activity No, he made it known that it was the Queen's Island and he was the Queen's representative And for any kind of customs or anything, they're the ones that do the searching. I mean, it's not the Americans It's all British customs in and out and the rules When I was I brought back some beautiful coral red white and blue coral, which I was in the book I was I looked at you said wow red white and blue. That's the right colors And I was gonna pick up some more and I was about to I had in the box and My counterpart says you can't take that off the island the British won't allow it It's against the rules to take any coral off the island He says and I wouldn't even ask the British rep for permission to do it He says we don't want to make waves with the British So that's kind of the British view. I Don't know it's a it's not it's not a military view Per se at all our geopolitical view. I don't think they have any more interest in Geopolitics their oil comes I think mostly from the North Sea They don't I mean, it's not a big thing and they don't care about China and India I don't think anymore or even the Soviet Union now the Soviet Union You know the current discussions have been largely about China and India is the big guys out there But and I'm so almost surprised the Soviet Union hasn't said yeah Now you really can hit our underbody nobody talks about nuclear war anymore, but we've now got them covered all over And nobody has said anything there. So the future. What's the future? Well Whose ocean will it be? Have we got the will the cost and I don't know where this is going in American politics I would think there'd be some discussion. It's it's it's costing. It's like 55 million dollars a year just to maintenance and Minister the place not to mention new construction. It's it's billions of dollars that have been put into it Just the part that was authorized for the the first three years for the sea bees Which I analyzed out was over a billion dollars just that first rudimentary part since then it's tremendous We've got a tremendous investment out there, but have we got the will and the two issues now are Mauritians Soventry the Mauritians say well when you gave us independence You separated out the British Indian Ocean territory in the Middle Indian Ocean because the Americans wanted to build a base there. Yeah The iron lady Margaret Thatcher was asked in a conference with the Mauritian authorities, you know about Getting to the island back. She says well, we'll give it back to you when there's no longer a military need for it. Ah Now they're throwing that back and in the Brits face saying she as much as acknowledged that there was a Mauritian interest in the island now with the 50-year agreement original agreement up the Mauritians are saying We should have a right to say what the Americans doing the island with the British doing the island with the future is Etc. It's an opening and it's been Yeah, it's been pretty much Understood by the Brits and the fact that the Brits maybe have no more serious interest in it And I don't know what their politics are But they're not going to put any money in it and I don't think they want any serious political problems So that's a problem, but the right to return is the other the other problem. There's a very strong international Collaborative now the other thing that has happened is that about five years ago the Brits established a a Ecological zone of no take no take fishes no take anything. It was in an environmental officially prescribed area and so This now has been thrown out by a review at the International Courts and Because they said well, you're just trying to keep the Mauritians from getting back to their homeland and fishing in there For us though, it was a wonderful protection. Nobody could go in there around our island We've still wonderful base. We got a thousand miles of mode around it The most secure foreign base certainly in the world You're not it's tough to get in there You don't just float in there if you want to Terrest, I wouldn't worry about them And thank you Yes, Bruce And many of your battalion already been deployed in combat And well, yeah, yeah when we were when we went I'd already been to Vietnam our battalion had just come back from their deployment in Vietnam these are the wilderness that we're still going on when we were out there that the battalions were Going to Vietnam and then they went to places like this, but yeah, I'd say Probably well over half well probably almost as three-fourths of including my gunny sergeant Of course had just been to Vietnam and we had a detachment there in the Delta of a 12-man detachment winning hearts and souls of People they were attacked back both twice by the vietcong suffered 25% casualties and that was when We not we the American the powers would be said We can't protect no place is secure and they weren't you know us You know the vietcong would come into this little village and with these guys the sea bees were doing they were you know building roads Water supply systems. I mean they were helping the people. Well, it was the hearts and minds which yeah, but the poor villager As soon as it gets night, you know, how do you are they pull out now what I do? If you were helping the Americans, you're in trouble. So yeah, no, it was a we were in fact one of my doctors while we were there You got a very sad telegram. His brother had been killed in Vietnam, which I had delivered delivered to him. It was a no It was a yeah, we knew there was war going on Yes The reason I'm asking I was on a ship in the Indian Ocean 65 we and we had planned to go there, but we got diverted somewhere else Well, I tell you it was I think the year after that That we sent our first serious engineering recon party in and these were guys who did drilling into the coral to find out Where the hard coral was and it turned out it's to the outer reef. So that's why we had to take it from there But there was a party of about I think it's about 2024 people experts who went out to Investigate the feasibility of an airfield and that was just prior to the agreement 66 so it was prelude to that to say are we really serious about building something out there We didn't have any authority or any money, but that could well have been because they they were taken in Biship smaller ship Actually, they set up their tent little tent for I think they were there for about a month What they found out was that the Russians had been there just a few weeks before that the plantation said and they found Russian Batteries and wine bottles and every one vodka bottles and everything Right in this area that we're looking at and the Russians had done the same thing digging holes and everything the Russians At that time probably knew more about the island and we knew Yes Appreciate your presentation today as you and I mentioned before I've been down here a couple of times around the 1980 time frame And I saw a lot of the doggies on the other side that I went in the area with the British officer that was down there But went down with a team from Subic Bay to Philippines via Singapore with the human resource detachment to You know brief a lot of the US sailors that were down there and one of the things that Was kind of off-limits was swimming out in one of the goons because of the sharks that you made Yeah, and I would always finish the presentation with the sailors because the sailors are going to do anything Yeah, but this is a photograph Taken from a helicopter and there's a 26 foot motor whale boat on the surface and underneath that was one of the sharks with This head and tail longer than 26 foot Yeah, it kind of gets the idea that when they say you're not supposed to do Maybe they're telling the right story. Yeah, I I've seen that picture and in fact They even they even named that I don't remember what the name was but they saw they saw it subsequently a huge Hammerhead and I went fishing once, you know right out just right off the reef and I started catching I think it was yellowfin tuna and I got a couple and then I pulled one in and it went the lane went slack on me And I got the head and then I looked down and here all these hammerheads swarming around them Swarming around the boat. I mean, I wouldn't have wanted to fall in the water Yes Well, I I hope there's some more college people here because I I would not be politically Capable of answering that, you know, I know you my opinion but Oh, yes, yeah, I think so no we got too many much investment and you know and it's it's going on But you know what the conditions of of our future Relationships will be particularly visa v. I'd say more ratios, you know And maybe even the the old islanders who may say yeah, we want to set up camp over the other side of the island I I don't know. I you know in the early days, you know Well, I'd better not say anything because I don't have any I really not that well-versed in the geopolitics of what's happening right now and there's got to be a lot happening though both Brits on our side. Yes Yes, let me just go back a little bit more in history. It's a Spanish name and This was back in the 1500 excuse me Portuguese back at Portuguese back in the Mid-1500s there was there there was a fleet of Portuguese ships that went there and one of them we believe Did found find the island but the Portuguese did nothing with it But the island was supposedly named after Diego Garcia who is the captain Or the navigator on one of these ships and that's where the name originated. So it's been there a long long time, but Which ship and it precisely went and it did he land there? Nobody really knows Yes The British just have a small office I think a commonwealth house, you know about six late staff that minister the island but the recent thrust in that respect has been to Make it a Pristine ecological area. Yes. Now the original thing if you read in WikiLeaks Was that the British in conjunction to some extent with the Americans? Actually had a notice saying that if we make this area pristine way, you can only fish certain game fish by the way It's very limited Then the islanders won't want to come back because they'll have no form of nutrition or Sustenance that was the original intent But it has since developed. It's an important sort of ecological project for England and I've said several research scientific teams out there Examiner area because it's unusually clean. Yes. I think that's one there. It is to me You know went out there. I was I was both pleased and amazed at how it has reverted back to well a quasi natural environmental niche and Yeah, it's Well, I've I've I've gotten verbally shot about it. Yes, no the environment I didn't show you the picture But yes, we did put some pretty big holes in the reef and the environment is let's have taken shots at me In fact the Mauritius they have not been widely accepted at all. They're kind of a The league of minority there Yeah, they haven't been treated well. They have not been treated well And you know, certainly I do have a personal opinion on that because I I have followed them Because I want to know what's happened to these people and initially when I when we're when they first went off I was told and I Think truthfully so that well, we're going to let them go to these other two islands farther north That had copra plantations. So so they'll go to there. They'll still be able to do their copra work, etc. Etc And then after they left I found out that yeah now that we're going to close down those copra plantations, too This now was the big dilemma technically the the islanders belong to Seychelles or Mauritius mostly Mauritius so far as their citizenship is concerned and they were contract workers so at least the officials American and British statement was well their contracts over the plantations closed and they'd go back well But but they're they've only lived on an island and what do you do when you go back? You live in a shanty town and they were not given enough to really establish themselves. Yeah, and I yeah personally I do feel strongly about that that they were they were not treated right and Yeah Yes, and far back 1977 I can imagine And she decided she wanted to go to the Overseer So we took her down there. She was put up in the dispensary because that's the only place you could put a woman and Then she decided one day she wanted to see the old gun mouth still existed down here And so she came out I was supposed to show how to get down there I did except she decided she'd wear the key I do have one John I think is ready to go but I have one more post script the island was never easy to find you know as I mentioned There were there were two planes that turned back when they're to try to get the first run to the runway Well, there's another very notable event. You know the first p3's came to the island about 75 and On one of those planes and they were coming from Thailand also over 2,500 feet of open water No GPS no satellites and The clouds came in no celestial navigation Strictly dead reckoning over 2,500 miles of water There was a young instant navigator who did the dead reckoning and It were 120 miles out from the island before he finally picked up a real signal. It said I'm almost here That instant was John W. Kennedy But John John in his very humble way Said my stock as a rookie navigator went out a whole went up a whole lot after that I Mean oh for the ships. No most of it. Well, I'd say you know About half of them came around the Cape of Good Hope the other ones what came across the Pacific on a circuitous route You know and we had some that had taken a stop at Australia on the way carrying The first the first dozen ships were all MSTS military LSTs etc. Atlantic ship docks and so forth then the commercial liner came in and of course they came from all over But no not through the none through the suites that I know no it was all open ocean all the way Yes, what's the draft all of my water is in the lagoon? Well first you know first of all, you know initially the the channel depth was about 33 feet And even at that you had coral heads to worry about it's been dredged to about 50 feet now So it can handle the Saratoga which has it at least book wise a draft of about 37 feet But there's also about a four or five foot tide so you'd have to watch the tide, but the Missouri has a draft I I did a midship and cruise on the Missouri, and I thought she took about 40 feet I see now in the books. It's a little bit less than that But yeah, it's so the turning base, and I think is 50 feet has been the intent or is the intended Draft now No, no, no, no, that's no the lagoon has depths down to about a hundred feet or a little bit over a hundred feet And and but I don't think they've dredged at that. I mean dredging is a big deal So I think they've got enough to have that 50 feet for a for an anchorage and turning basin The south end of the lagoon coral studded. In fact, I got hung up on coral going across I thought I was going to be shipwrecked on Diego, you know one stormy day, but Yeah, it's it's I'd say that it will handle any ship that we have Yeah, a more detailed story about John is there what what they did to him when he got to the island To find out yes Actuality when you showed you those Seahuts the one on the left was the one that I had Definitely no women at the time not to put too fine a point on it Clothes were optional You would come back you just take a flight suit off go out the back door and you'd be on the beach And you'd have a little to the temperature range We were out there in our air time frame. I was out there May May through Yeah, no No, it was seven degrees south. So it was a warm environment. It's about But we were flying. I mean Flying all the time Upper upper 80s is what the temperature usually was with 80% humidity and in the jungle of course confined well over a hundred Well, that's another story we didn't have any R&R and Not until the last part of the deployment Yeah, and I y'all had a little bit of problems with Thailand, which is where we were supposed to be able to go and The embassy cut us back. We I think I had 50 cbs at a time The longest there and in the embassy came back three days before we had them all lined up Cut it in half There were 25 very unhappy cbs, but 25 very happy cbs who came back a week later Yeah, yeah Well No, there there aren't any you know To my knowledge not in the Chagos in the Central Indian Ocean at all the Cocos Islands, I think has It has British Contingent, but actually we landed at the Cocos Islands and I don't think there any natives there either Yeah, other than the Cocos Islands the Cocos Islands are Australian actually, but they were private privately owned Yeah, can you smoke it? Thank you. Thank you