Stanley Stair | |
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Born | 20 October 1900 [1] |
Died | April 2008 (aged 107) [1] Animal Hill, Lucea, Jamaica |
Allegiance | ![]() |
Service/ | British West Indies Regiment |
Years of service | 1916–1918 |
Rank | Private |
Unit | 3rd Battalion |
Battles/wars | World War I |
Awards |
Charles Stanley Stair (20 October 1900 – April 2008) was a soldier in the British West Indies Regiment, who was at the time of his death the last surviving veteran from the Caribbean to have served in World War I. [2] He enlisted into the labour corps in 1916, [3] [4] and was sent from Jamaica to France and Italy as one of more than 15,000 men who volunteered for "The Coloured Regiment". [4] [2] At the end of the war, he was awarded the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. [1] He lived to be 107 years old. [3]
Stanley Stair was born in Bellview, Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica, to Adolphus and Sarah Stair (née Campbell). [4] [1] In 1907, they moved to Haughton Court Estate, the plantation where both his parents worked. [4]
At the age of 15, Stair joined the British West Indian Regiment. Because he was too young to enlist, Stair was turned away at the recruitment office. [3] According to his grandchildren, Stair was so determined to join the British war effort, he went to a different recruitment office in the same town, and lied about his age. [3]
In March 1916, Stair was one of 1,140 volunteers who left Jamaica on the ship Verdala, which was diverted to Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the way to France to avoid a German gunboat. [3] [5] There, a severe Arctic blizzard caused 600 men, wearing only their summer uniforms, to suffer from exposure and hypothermia; five men died, and there were more than 100 amputations due to frostbite. [3] [5] Stair avoided injury and finally arrived with the 3rd Battalion in France in September 1916. [3] As part of the manual labour corps, his unit dug trenches, and were shot at as they carried artillery shells up to the field guns to be loaded. [3] According to British journalist Ian Hislop, the work the Black soldiers performed was "dangerous drudgery". [3]
Stair himself told the Jamaica Gleaner that after a year and a half in France, his unit was sent to Italy on an 11-day journey by rail, and was involved in a collision with an Italian passenger train while passing through Brindisi, resulting in mass casualties for the other train. [4] Of the group of friends he had enlisted with in Jamaica, Stair was the only one to survive the war. [4]
Following the war, Stair returned to Jamaica and worked on sugar plantations through the 1960s. [4] For four years, he worked as a labourer in Cuba for nine months of the year. [4] He then returned to the Haughton Court Estate in Jamaica, where he worked his way up to the role of plantation overseer. [4] Stair was married twice, had nine children. [4] and raised a total of fifteen children. [3]
In 2004, Stair was honoured with an award from the Hanover Homecoming Foundation for his contributions to the Hanover Parish. [6] [7] He died in Animal Hill – the community in Lucea, Jamaica, which he had helped to name [6] – in April 2008 at the age of 107. [1] [2] He was at the time of his death the last surviving Caribbean World War I veteran who had served on the western front. [2]
In 2007, the Hanover Chamber of Commerce started a campaign to erect a cenotaph to honour local heroes of the First and Second World Wars, including Stair. [8] The year after his death, two of Stair's grandchildren in London were interviewed by Ian Hislop for the Channel 4 series, Not Forgotten , in an episode called "Soldiers of Empire". [3]
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