Lee Christmas

Leon Winfield Christmas or Lee Christmas (born February 22, 1863 in Livingston Parish , † January 21, 1924 in New Orleans ) was an American mercenary .

Life

Christmas was born on his father's plantation in Livingston Parish near Baton Rouge . He grew up in Springfield ( Louisiana ) and drew about 1,892 to New Orleans .

In 1866 he began his working life as a smutje on a small ship of the Cileste under the command of Capitán Bob Caldwell, at 13 he became a seaman . In 1880 he became a stoker on the Illinois Railroad . In 1885 he worked as a machinist for the Mississippi Valley Railroad . In 1889 he was a train driver . On November 29, 1891, on the journey between New Orleans and Memphis , he fell asleep, overlooked a stop signal and hit a train. He had not slept for 54 hours and was hangover . The insurance company found red-green poor eyesight at Christmas .

In the fall of 1894 he traveled to Puerto Cortés in Honduras where he found a job as a train driver. For the next three years, Christmas drove ice-laden wagons from Puerto Cortés inland and returned with ice-cream and banana-laden wagons.

April Revolution 1897

On April 14, 1897, a group of filibusters around Coronel Enrique Soto, a son of Marco Aurelio Soto , from New York , captured Puerto Cortés. To overthrow the government of Policarpo Bonilla from the Partido Liberal . A flat car with sandbags, 3/4 inch boiler plates, shooters and a Hotchkiss cannon was stretched in front of the Christmas locomotive . Christmas drove the train to San Pedro Sula .

Coronel Carlos Girón, the commander of the barracks of San Pedro Sula, rode to meet the invaders with a command of government troops , surprised them at a truss bridge over a lagoon and involved them in a battle. Coronel Carlos Girón was injured and the government troops withdrew, leaving the truss bridge on the lagoon to 13 generals and Lee Christmas.

San Pedro Sula was occupied by the invaders. The sea route via Puerto Cortés was taken by the Nicaraguan schooner under the command of Manuel Bonilla . When the port of Cortes was taken by Terencio Sierra , Christmas and the other filibustiers fled from San Pedro Sula to Guatemala on mules . In 1899 he deserted and moved to the Honduran government troops where he was hired as a captain. In May 1902 he was appointed director of the Tegucigalpa Police Department under Terencio Sierra . Manuel Bonilla proclaimed himself president on February 1, 1903 in the port of Amapala. In 1903, Lee Christmas was appointed general by Manuel Bonilla. The New York Times reported on Lee Christmas. He was acting as the prison guard of Policarpo Bonilla and its judge when the latter was charged with numerous offenses. Policarpo was sentenced to a long prison term and remained in prison until early 1906, after which he went into exile in El Salvador.

In the battle of Nacaome from March 18 to 23, 1907, Christmas was injured and he went to Guatemala. In Guatemala he met again Manuel Bonilla and an employee of Sam Zemurray , "El Amigo", who were preparing the 1910 coup attempt.

1910 Tatumbla

In 1910 an attack on the Tatumbla artillery garrison on two 42 mm Hotchkiss guns , which had been delivered to the government troops by Zemurray, failed . In June 1910, Manuel Bonilla had met with two filibuster groups in Glover's Reef and sailed with them to Puerto Cortés . Manuel Bonilla's liaison in Puerto Cortés died the night before the filibus animals arrived. Government forces found records of the planned uprising in his clothes, including the names of some 200 insurgents in Puerto Cortés, San Pedro Sula , La Ceiba , whom the government immediately captured.

1911 Islas de la Bahia

In March 1911, Manuel Bonilla and his mercenaries occupied the Islas de la Bahia off the east coast of Honduras. They were armed with surplus US Army M1895 Colt-Browning machine guns . They occupied Trujillo and Ironia and won the battle of La Ceiba on January 25, 1911 . The use of machine guns as barrages cost the lives of around 600 government troops. Miguel R. Dávila fled on March 28, 1911.

Through the US intervention in Honduras in 1911 , Manuel Bonila was again President and Christmas Commander in Chief of the Honduran Army . After Manuel Bonila's death in 1913, Christmas traveled through Latin America. He was a division general in Colombia. It is possible that Christmas took care of unruly customers of Sam Zemurray during this time. That he provided support on Emiliano Zapata's side cannot be confirmed. At the age of 54 he applied to US President Wilson to take part in World War I. He was not drafted for reasons of age. He was married four times in a row. He returned to Louisiana with tuberculosis . He died of acute anemia , possibly leukemia.

Publications

• The University of Tennessee has documents donated by Marion Samson of Abilene, Texas in 1958, which contain correspondence from Christmas, including an invitation to marry Ida Culotta in Puerto Cortés in 1914.
• He was the model for the fictional character Robert Clay in the novel Soldier of Fortune by Richard Harding Davis and Captain Macklin
• Hermann Bacher Deutsch The incredible yanqui: the career of Lee Christmas , Longmans, Green & Co., 1931, 242 pp.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Lester D. Langley, Thomas David Schoonover, The Banana Men: American Mercenaries and Entrepreneurs in Central America, 1880-1930 , University Press of Kentucky, 1995, p. 48
2. ^ New York Times , April 21, 1897 Insurgents Capture Puerto Cortés
3. ^ ^{A b} New York Times January 15, 1911 GEN. LEE CHRISTMAS Manuel / Policarpo Bonilla
4. ^ Time Feb. 04, 1924 Died. General Lee Christmas, 61
5. ↑ General Lee Christmas and President William Walker Collection ( Memento of the original from July 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.