Osmund James, Contributor
LIEUTENANT MIGHTY was in a foul mood, angrily pacing the room he shared as sleeping quarters with two other "Lts.", who were now out somewhere.
Lt. Mighty was angry because his captain had just ordered him to get his platoon ready to go on another joint military-police operation that evening in Kingston's latest ghetto's "hot spot" - it was now early afternoon.
Damn it, Lt. Mighty fumed, this would be the third street job that week. Police work, damn it! Hell, a soldier's job was to be ready to work when natural disaster struck, and to always be prepared for war. The cops were saying that this new flare up of gun violence was war, because two cops and one soldier had been killed in the "hot spot" during the past five days.
But Lt. Mighty knew better. As a soldier he knew war meant no home and family to see at the end of an operation, no set time for duty, no neat time-clock-punching; war meant living with death 24 hours a day for weeks and months at a time, liable to be attacked from land, sea and air anytime, every walk and drive liable to end on a mine blast.
Lt. Mighty was not afraid of dying while doing "police work" in ghetto streets. What he feared was that his soldier training and mentality may cause him to kill an innocent fellow Jamaican, a civilian he was supposed to be keeping himself fit and ready to rescue from natural disaster or defend in war, real war.
"Damn it," the lieutenant mumbled, "why won't the politicians create a part-time crisis-ready paramilitary police corps, something like a reserve corps of riot-police that train on weekends, used for sudden outbreaks of violence. Plus find social solutions to our worsening gang culture."
Then the lieutenant quit his pacing and began preparing for the evening's unwelcome "cop work".
Lt. Mighty and his platoon arrived at the ghetto "hot spot" 10 minutes after five o'clock that evening. Cops outnumbered them five to one. But the soldiers were easily more gloomy, every soldier silently fuming about doing police-work. The summer evening was still bright, crisp sunlight angled low on the narrow streets and narrower unpaved lanes. Some of the little houses were brightly painted and had neat hedges and clean concrete fences - the area don's house and fence were cleanest of all - but most were drab and had dirty concrete fences, untidy hedges or rusty zinc fences, the tenement yards the ugliest of all.
On patrol
Lt. Mighty and his platoon were given the task of patrolling certain streets and lanes while cops searched the houses and yards. People were nervously moving about, arriving from work and schools, going out to work or with the intent of beating the nine o'clock curfew. But obviously most persons were already restricting movements outside their homes, as the cops and soldiers forbade playing, all idle standing, or sitting about on the streets and lanes.
Walking at the head of one section of his platoon down one of the unpaved lanes lined by rusty zinc fences, Lt. Mighty brought up his submachine gun as he neared where the lane ended on a paved street, although he heard cops cursing and growling while searching the houses and yards all around him and his slow-walking widely spaced section - army training says that when in hostile zone you always stay prepared for suicide attacks, no matter how many of your comrades are around you.
The lieutenant swung out on the paved street and was met by the sight of two big-looking khaki clad males walking gingerly towards him with a green oval-looking thing in each hand. Four ugly looking things.
Tragic reaction
The lieutenant's soldier's training and mentality immediately make him think: "Possible grenade attack by suicidal sappers/fanatics". A cop would have looked closer or shouted "freeze/stop". The lieutenant momentarily forgot he was not in a real battle zone. Worse, a cop not far off fired a shot in the air just then. So the lieutenant's submachine gun jerked to firing position; and simultaneously the two nervous youths involuntarily moved as if they intended throwing the objects in their hands. Time stopped dead cold. And the lieutenant's gun spat death in one swift burst, shredding the youths' chests, both dead before hitting the street.
One of the lieutenant's men fired, too, and several others had almost done the same. And the lieutenant snapped back to reality and said: "Damn."
He moved up to the corpses and saw that he'd killed two big schoolboys with knapsacks strapped to their backs, and that in their hands they had greenish and almost-oval shaped mangoes.
With a horrible grin the lieutenant rose up from over the bloody bodies, inserted a fresh clip in his gun and fired at a group of cops who'd rushed to the scene. Three cops died instantly and four went down badly wounded. Civilian onlookers were able, luckily, to run and dive to safety. Another group of cops turned their guns on the lieutenant, killing him on his feet. And the lieutenant's men went to earth and turned their guns on the cops.
A deadly cop-soldier battle followed in the fading sunlight of that ghetto street; then got even deadlier when the other two sections of Lt. Mighty's platoon came on the killing scene and saw dead soldiers and cops-and-soldiers still firing at each other. The massacre that took place chilled the world.
