THE LIFE OF JIMMIE ANGEL
ANGEL IN CHINA AND RUSSIA, 1919-1920
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.
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.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
