Christmas was
working as a locomotive engineer on the Illinois Central Railroad (ironically,
he was hauling a refrigerated load of bananas) when the accident occurred that
started him on the path to his new international career. While the cause of the low-speed head-on
train wreck was never officially stated, the fact that the engineer was unable
to determine the color of the signal lamps—coupled with the fact that he was
dead drunk at the time of the crash—certainly must have contributed to the
accident. The railroad promptly fired
Christmas.
Blackballed from
railroad work in the states, friends of Christmas arranged a job for him in
Honduras, running a tiny wood-burning locomotive on a 56 mile-long narrow gauge
Honduran railroad. Correctly reading the
signals wouldn’t be a problem there, since it was the only locomotive in
the entire country of Honduras.
Note.
Over time, the situation has actually gotten worse. Today, this is the only working rail line
between Mexico and Panama. When I rode
the train to the banana plantation in the early nineties, it carried about a
dozen soldiers, several empty banana cars, and a couple of million
spiders. You would not believe how many
spiders and snakes live on a banana plantation.
For years,
Christmas made the 56-mile run between the banana plantation in the interior to
the ice plant in San Pedro Sula, then on to the docks at Puerto Cortez three
times a week, hauling 200-pound blocks of ice and loads of green bananas out of
the interior. It was Central American
politics that eventually, quite literally, crossed his tracks and changed his
destiny.
The three largest
Central American countries are Guatemala to the North, Nicaragua to the South,
and Honduras (trapped in the middle).
For a century before Lee Christmas arrived, the area had almost constant
revolutions. Most of these were centered
in Honduras, since if either of the other two countries could successfully ally
with the country in the center, the resulting union would be strong enough to
control the rest of Central America. If
Guatemala could successfully arrange a revolution in Honduras, Nicaragua
immediately would start a counterrevolution, setting off a new cycle of
revolution and counterrevolution. Both
countries treated Honduras like a football in a no-rules scrimmage game.
Overthrowing the
government of Honduras was much easier than you might think. Since the only real source of government
revenue was import and export taxes collected at the Gulf ports, all a would-be
revolutionary army had to do was take and hold the major port at Puerto Cortez
and wait for the central government in Tegucigalpa to starve to death. The soldiers in the federal army had become
highly experienced in abruptly changing sides to serve whomever could pay them,
long since having learned that the secret to survival in Central America was to
be politically flexible.
So, it was no
surprise that, after the Honduran government of President Vasquez was
overthrown by wanna-be President Policarpo Bonilla (supported by President
Zelaya of Nicaragua), President Cabrera of Guatemala began supporting a
counterrevolution. Actually, it would
have been astonishing if he hadn’t.
In April, 1897,
the new revolution was led by General Jose Manuel Duron and thirten
sub-generals (at least two of which were American mercenaries). Most of these revolutions had more generals
than soldiers, since anyone below the rank of captain was probably a cook. General Duron was fronting for a new
president-in-waiting, Enrique Soto.
Leaving Guatemala in a sailboat, Duron and his men slipped into the harbor
of Puerto Cortez at night and easily captured the commandant of the small
outpost guarding the customs house. As
expected, the soldiers quickly changed sides.
The next task for
the revolutionaries was to take the larger town of San Pedro Sula, just 35
miles inland. If the city could be taken
and held, popular support for the revolution would inevitably, slowly shift in
his favor and Soto would become the new president. While General Duron was organizing his men,
Lee Christmas and his toy train arrived and were quickly drafted into the
fight.
General Duron
planned to use the train to transport his men to San Pedro Sula, and ordered
Christmas to help. The army offloaded
the bananas and boarded the train cars, but as they started the journey inland,
they discovered that the commander of the garrison in San Pedro Sula, Colonel
Giron, had decided not to wait for the revolutionaries, and was moving on foot,
down the railroad track to the coast.
Colonel Giron probably understood that if he allowed his men to sit and
wait, they undoubtedly would either desert or change sides.
Lee Christmas was
once again ordered at gunpoint to help.
Christmas moved the small train just outside of town to Laguna Trestle,
the small bridge crossing the Chalmecon River, where he urged the soldiers to
unload the train and begin building defensive fortifications, intending to
ambush the enemy as they crossed the trestle.
No—they did not
fight from behind piles of bananas. They
did, however, fight from behind a fort made out of 200-pound blocks of ice—which
makes it probably one of the strangest battles in human history.
What Colonel Giron
should have done was just to wait a few hours, since an ice fort in tropical
Honduras in April wouldn’t have lasted for more than a few hours. If he had halted his men just out of range,
they could have rested and laughed themselves silly as the fort melted. Instead, however, Giron and his men foolishly
attacked.
At some point in
the battle, Lee Christmas stopped being a reluctant observer and started being
a participant. Perhaps a bullet narrowly
missed him, or maybe, he just wanted to be on the winning side. Maybe he was tired of hauling loads of
spider-infested bananas. Whatever the
reason, Christmas picked up a rifle and joined the battle. By the time, Giron was wounded and his men
were driven off, Lee Christmas was no longer a railroad engineer, but an
officer in the revolutionary army of President Soto.
Against logic and
common sense, Captain Lee Christmas had successfully won the Battle of Laguna
Trestle by ingeniously building a fortress of ice in the lush Honduran
tropics.
That would be a
good place to stop the story, but historians never know when to stop
talking. Soto’s government lasted just
over two weeks, cut short when President Zelaya of Nicaragua sent a gun boat up
the coast and cut off supplies for the new revolutionary army while they were
still waiting for the capital to collapse from lack of funds. Christmas and the rest of the army scattered
and ran to the hills, ultimately taking refuge in Guatemala. Soldiers in the Honduran army simply changed
sides.
He wouldn’t have
to stay in Guatemala long, of course.
General Christmas spent the rest of his life fighting in revolutions,
participating in three more wars in Honduras alone. He eventually overthrew the country with the
aid of just six men. In between wars, he
occasionally worked as a spy for the United States.
But, those are
stories for a different day.
Mark, you do come up with the most delightful stories.
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