The 1960 shooting of the Royal Hampshire soldiers – Part II

AN ALL-NIGHT vigil and search for the five men suspected of shooting four privates of the Royal Hampshire Regiment who went with local police personnel to raid a Rasta camp in Red Hills, St Andrew on Tuesday, June 22, 1960 was futile.

The desperadoes, as the suspected shooters were branded, used the heavily forested Sligoville region in St Catherine to great advantage. It was Jamaica’s greatest manhunt yet. Sligoville was transformed into a military zone, which spread to Bog Walk where several people were arrested on various charges, not relating to the operations. When daylight appeared, it did not uncover the fugitives.

On the Wednesday, the men on the run were seen by a spotter-plane that was assisting the forces on the ground. Upon realising they were seen, they sought refuge in the district of Cedars land settlement, near Sligoville. A detachment of police and soldiers swooped down on a cave where residents had said the desperadoes were hiding.

The police surrounded the underground ‘hide-out’, while members of the Royal Hampshire Regiment went down into it, firing rockets. A group of 75 men of the West India Regiment then went searching, only to find not even one of the fugitives.

Twenty-four hours had elapsed, and the search of huts, houses, caves, bushes, pathways, fields, roads, etc, was frustrating to the over 1,000 men, including members of the Royal Hampshire Regiment, West India Regiment, and the local police force, who were on the heels of the fugitives. Guns and rockets were fired into bushes, but the targets were not connected. Moreover, the police and military headquarters in Kingston had lost radio contact with Sligoville, the epicentre of the operations.

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Reinforcements and replacements were sent into the area, and top military and police officers, including Brigadier Derrick Lister of the Caribbean Area Command and Commissioner L. P. R. Browning of the Jamaica police, were among the units with new orders and instructions.

At Red Hills, most of the police and military guards of the destroyed camp were withdrawn. A small detachment was, however, kept at the old country club near where the shooting took place. A heavier detachment was established at Ferry in St Catherine. All vehicles going to and from Spanish Town was searched. Roadblocks were set up from Sligoville to Tredegar, to Bog Walk and Harkers’ Hall. Troops were relocated from Cedar’s settlement to Paradise.

Late Wednesday evening, news came that the fugitives had been seen and fed by people in the operation zone, and that on Tuesday afternoon just before the get-away vehicle crashed at Cedars, they had invaded the house of a Dr L. Freeman and forced the caretaker, Jonathan Thompson, to feed them. But, it was the story of the encounter of the Kerr family with the fugitives that was most chilling.

Fourteen-year-old Joan Kerr was on her way from her Cedars home to the Sligoville post office some five miles away. At her gate, as she was about to step on to the road that led to the main road, she chanced upon four of the armed fugitives. Startled, she stood still.

The men approached her. One was “tall and light-skinned, one stout and black, two medium sized and brown. They were dressed in khaki uniform type clothes with long tropical jackets with four large pockets”. The black one told her that they were not going to hurt her, all they wanted was food and water. All Joan Kerr wanted was to disappear, so she took off up the hill to her home, calling for her father.

“As she ran the men followed … Breathless, she rushed into the three-roomed house. Her father and mother had heard her cries. They stood as their daughter rushed past them into the house, and stared even more at the four men following her, guns in their hands. Dimly in the background they heard the drone of an airplane,” The Sunday Gleaner of June 26, 1960, reports.

The men who spoke with a foreign accent, assured the startled family that they would not hurt them unless they gave them away. It was Mrs Kerr who was the most inquisitive. As the family fed them corn dumplings and other things, she engaged them in conversation.

They told her they were not born in Jamaica, and that they got their training at the Y. They showed the family medals and trinkets that they got at the Y, and photos that they had cut from magazines. The youngest fugitive expressed a desire to give up himself as he was tired of the hunger. They said something about heading to Port Antonio or Vere where they had a training camp and where their belongings were.

But, the fugitives did not let down their guard. Their weapons were constantly ready. They showed Mrs Kerr something that looked like a bomb, and inquired about a place to hide. They were told about a nearby cave. But, where was the fifth fugitive?

Sometime after 1 p.m. movements were heard outside. The fugitives took up position, one at the door. Another peeped through a hole in the wall, and saw soldiers walking on the hillside. They held their automatic weapons on the Kerrs and told them not to cry out. The man at the peep hole watched until the soldiers disappeared.

“Undaunted by their warning, Mr Kerr left immediately, taking his wife, Maud, Joan and his other children. About half mile up the road they met a soldier and told him about the matter. Within one hour, military and police units had converged on the cave and they sent rocket after rocket screaming into the dark hole in the ground. Later, a search party entered the cave, traversed its 120 yards length. The fugitives had disappeared,” The Sunday Gleaner says.

The account of the desperadoes continues in tomorrow’s Gleaner .