Queen Elizabeth II meets ex-servicemen at her first official engagement shortly after arriving in the island yesterday afternoon. Almost 100 former soldiers who fought in both World Wars attended the ceremony in which The Queen laid a wreath at the Cenotaph in National Heroes Park in Kingston. (Photo: Bryan Cummings)

QUEEN Elizabeth arrived in Jamaica yesterday for a three-day visit, showing almost no public sign of strain from the death last week of her younger sister, Princess Margaret, and immediately plunged into a hectic round of official engagements.

The 76 year-old monarch will maintain a hectic schedule today, addressing a joint session of Parliament, having separate audiences with Prime Minister P J Patterson and Opposition Leader Edward Seaga and attending a cultural session as King's House before later in the evening attending a formal dinner in her honour.

The Queen, who still enjoys popularity among her Jamaican subjects, arrived in the island just before 3:00 pm aboard a chartered British Airways Boeing 777 aircraft, dressed in a British orange silk suit, hat, white gloves and shoes.

At Kingston's Norman Manley airport, she was given a quick red carpet welcome that included a review of an honour guard, a seven-gun salute and the greeting of Jamaican state and government officials before being whisked to the National Heroes Park to lay a wreath at the memorial for those who died in the two World Wars.

Hundreds of schoolchildren lined the route travelled by the Queen's motorcade and at Heroes Park, among the old soldiers who were there to greet her was 107 year-old Eugene Clarke, a hero the Battle of the Somme in July 1916 -- a full decade before the 76-year-old monarch was born. In that World War I battle, which has come to epitomise the futility of war, nearly 60,000 allied casualties and 8,000 German dead were recorded in a single day.

"I was happy to meet her," said Clarke of his brief encounter with The Queen. "All these years I have been reading and hearing about her."

From Heroes Park she travelled to King's House, the governor-general's residence, for a short rest before getting ready for an evening reception with many of the island's leading residents.

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