EVERSOLE RESEARCH COLLECTION
THE LIFE OF JIMMIE ANGEL
ANGEL IN CHINA AND RUSSIA, 1919-1920
Revolutionary Russia in bedlam, frozen bodies roasting on
spits, warehouses raided by vigilant and starving peasant
brigades, Angel was accused of spying, imprisoned, and
tortured in the same town where one day earlier Csar Nicholas II
and family were brutally executed..Although none of the Angel
researchers were able to verify whether or not Angel served the
Chinese Warlord, Feng, in Kansu, 1920, he was, in fact, there,
operating his own private air force against fierce Gobi Desert
bandits. Evidence further corroborates that Angel visited the
new Bolshevik Republic. The ERC retains photos of Novei, the
extravagant White Russian countess who was Angel's fiance in
1920, a tragic love story, as well as the warlords caravan and
bodyguard, and mysterious Major Huang, who originally hired
Angel in Capetown, South Africa. Angel had just completed a
stint in the great War flying reconnaissance over Nancy, France,
where he was shot down behind enemy lines, and where he
scored his first kill of a Fokker D-VII. He arrived in Capetown
after a detached mission for T.E. Lawrence and Prince Fiesel
near Herat.
Discussions of Angel's China and Russia experience are integral to many
related aspects of our story, for it was in the Asian theater, 1919-1920, that both
of those lifetime obsessions, one colored red and one colored gold, originated.
One obsession manifested in Kansu Province, China, and the other, his
obsession for gold, originated in The Forbidden Land, Tibet.  His inordinate
passion for "fire-haired" women, or redheads, we attribute to an extravagant
White Russian countess, Novei, presumably his fiancé at one time. Then, it was
as if the ceaseless, loess-infested Gobi winds swept away both seeds and left
only a heavy conscience and the broken heart of a broken man. Skepticism
regarding Angel's presence in these early accounts, namely China and Russia,
is likely the consequence of the young American's tormented conscience, for
little did he speak of The Great War, Red Russia, or Warlord China.
Counter
courtesy of Wellington Warlords
Traveling on the Trans-Siberian
Railroad, 1919, Angel was captured
and accused of being an American
spy. After being tortured for 3 days
and near death, he was released
and returned to China.