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Chapter 15:
Keep Coming On
The strong men
keep coming on,
They go down shot, hanged, sick, broken.
They live on fighting, singing, lucky as plungers.
Call hallelujah, call amen, call deep thanks.
The strong men keep coming on.
-- Carl Sandburg
[AB-1]
The accusation that he had been the culprit who chopped off
Villa's head dogged Holmdahl for years. In Chihuahua,
aging veterans who had ridden with Villa sat around flicker
ing campfires softly singing the ballad of La Decapitacion, which
accused Holmdahl of stealing the head for money. Some vowed to
kill him.
A friend of Holmdahl's told William C. Stewart, a Los Angeles
reporter, "Don't use my name. I don't want to be gunned down if
I ever go back to Mexico." He then related that he and Holmdahl
and two other men were drinking in a Mexican cantina, when a
woman slipped over to their table and warned them that old Villa
comrades were outside with machine guns. They were, she said,
going to shoot Holmdahl and his friends when they left the bar.
"Holmdahl just shrugged and stayed there. But the rest of us were
made of different stuff." The other three ran out the back door,
called a taxi, and beat it across the border. What happened after that
is not known; Holmdahl, however, emerged unscathed.
"Revolutions are scarce," Holmdahl complained to Stewart dur-
ing an interview, "and those you do find have all the sportsmanship
drained out of them by graft. It's getting to be like prize fights, no
patriotism anymore, everyone wants to be president." Reminiscing
years later, Holmdahl told Stewart,
Fifty years ago a man could go to
Mexico or Central America and take his pick of a dozen wars,
insurrections or marauding expeditions. But the rules changed and
soldiers of fortune have to admit that free-lance fighting is a thing of
the past. The world has gone to hell. [1]
While things were still cooling off in Mexico, Holmdahl, at loose
ends, gave a series of interviews to newspaper reporters. Being
interviewed about his adventures continued throughout his life.
Now in his forties, he expounded on his many adventures, waxed
philosophic about Mexico, talked of joining foreign armies, some-
times promoted some project or scheme, and enjoyed the attention.
In many of his interviews, the facts were badly skewed either
because he exaggerated, or, more likely because of the ignorance of
the reporters who garbled names and places in improbable
sequences. In the summer of 1926, he announced he was going to
join the forces of Abd-El-Krim, whose Riff guerrillas were fighting
the French in Morocco. "Of course the Riffs will be defeated, but
I've always liked fighting with the underdogs," he said. [2]
On June 29, 1926, the El Paso Herald quoted Holmdahl,
I may go to Damascus to fight with
the Druses against the French. I had a mysterious note (now in the
Holmdahl papers) it said, 'If you want to take up the case of the
underdog ... go to the Druse mountains in Syria ... and see some real
fighting between the French and the Druses.' I was figuring on
going to fight with the Riffs but they've quit. I don't know where
I'll go next ... Life is all a gamble anyway. I may get killed
some of these days fighting but at that I'd rather go that way than be
run down by a flivver. [3]
When the reporter asked if Holmdahl had been involved in the
alleged kidnapping of famous California evangelist Aimee Semple
McPherson, he enigmatically replied, "Well, maybe I did and maybe
I didn't." (He didn't. McPherson's kidnapping was a farce. She faked
the dramatic story of her abduction and escape from Mexico to
cover up a sexual tryst with a member of her flock.) When a
reporter asked, "Why haven't you ever married"? Holmdahl replied,
"I am to those." He pointed to his knife, pistol, and cartridges.
[4]
On April, 7, 1927, while in Brownwood, Texas on business,
Holmdahl told a reporter,
I planned on going to the defense of Shanghai against the Cantonese,
but when the Americans and British stepped in I decided not to go.
Before
that I expected to ship for Nicaragua but halted when American Marines
were sent to that war torn country. For I intended to take sides with
the
rebels and I couldn't fight my own countrymen.
The reporter described Holmdahl as "Tall, grey haired and erect as
a pine, despite his 44 years spent among battle and bloodshed." [5]
According to Gordon Holmdahl, sometime during 1929 the
aging soldier married a woman named Ann. She apparently was a
lady who desired a settled, wel1-to-do type of homelife and within a
very short time the marriage failed. [6] On January 4, 1930, Holmdahl
made the news again when a Phoenix Gazette headline reported,
"ADVTENTURER RUNS RUM TO GET THRILL -- EM1L HOLMDAHL
SAYS HE WAS TIRED OF SITTING ALONE IN HOTEL." The story
reported that, while Prohibition was in effect, Holmdahl, restless
and wandering, was arrested for transporting 254 pints of whiskey
and fifty pints of beer. Following his detention a hundred miles east
of El Paso, he denied being a bootlegger, claiming instead that bore-
dom, not money, was the motive for his action and that the whole
episode was a thrill-seeking stunt. [7]
Through the remainder of the 1920s, Holmdahl was involved in
mining and real estate ventures in Mexico. In January 1930, he gave
an interview in which he said, "Mexico is entering an era of
constructive development and economic advancement."
Philosophically he remarked,
Soldiers of fortune and kindred adventurers
make plenty of money
at
various times and lose all at others. But the fascination of action has
never
lessened in my many years of dangerous enterprise. [8]
Perhaps by the 1930s, Holmdahl believed his time
was running
out, but it was not his life that was ending, but his era. One portent
was a newspaper story about an old comrade in arms, Tracy
Richardson, who had fallen on hard times.
In July 1932, Richardson was indicted on charges of using the
mails to promote a fraudulent Mexican gold-mining scheme in 1930.
The six-count, 29-page indictment told a story of lost Spanish
mines and fabulous wealth. The lost mine was described as having
been hidden near Mexico City for more than a century. It was
recounted that rich deposits of gold and nuggets ''as large as the end
of your finger" lay beneath eleven Mexican waterfalls. Richardson
was arrested on January 31, 1932, in Denver, having forfeited a
$1,000 bond by not appearing in federal court the previous
December. [9]
It was Richardson's third brush with the law since the end of
World War I. One charge was for "rudely displaying and flourishing
a deadly weapon." The other, in 1922, was for murder of a man in
New Orleans. Some of the machine-gunner's luck still held, and he
beat all three charges. He proved that he managed a real gold mine
in Mexico to dispel the fraud charge. He produced a permit enti-
tling him to legally carry a gun, and he was "no-billed" on the mur-
der charge after proving self defense. Still, he was often broke, and
at forty-one years of age, his swashbuckling image was beginning to
fade. [10]
In May 1932, Holmdahl became involved in a new venture with
Garret Peck, an inventor living in Hollywood, who claimed to be a
graduate of MIT. Peck maintained he had developed a new
principle of dirigible airship propulsion. The two embarked on a
Hollywood to New York trip, presumably to raise money for the
construction of the radical lighter-than-air craft. Holmdahl's job
apparently was to garner publicity by giving interviews about the
project and promoting a dirigible flight around the world. As
Holmdahl dazzled reporters with tales of high adventure far and
wide; Peck talked technology.
In his projected airship, Peck boasted
Air is sucked into the craft by
two propellers through a tube running through the center of the ship and
is expelled by two pusher-type propellers. Steering, raising and
lowering are controlled by a universal joint arrangement. [11]
The idea of running the tube through the center of the aircraft
was to decrease the resistance caused by the blunt end of the airship.
Peck explained that the tube would do away with 87-1/2 percent of
the resistance encountered by the Akron. (The Akron, a U.S. naval
airship completed in 1931, crashed on April 4, 1933, in a storm off
the New Jersey coast, killing all 73 crewmen.)
The inventor said his new design would increase speed, driving
the behemoth from 350 to 700 miles an hour and could carry a pas-
senger from New York to Los Angeles for $30.00, or less than one
cent a mile. During their joint interview, Holmdahl chimed in that
after completing their flight around the world, he was going to set-
de down and spend his time constructing dirigibles. Peck said he
had allowed Sir Hubert Wilkins, the noted Australian polar explor-
er, to use his patent on a submarine he was planning to construct.
Patents, Peck said, had been obtained in every country except
Russia. [12]
Luckily, for both of them, the Peck dirigible was never built.
There were not enough naive investors in the Depression-wracked
United States to invest in such a project. Had there been, they
would, undoubtedly, have suffered the same fate as every other rigid
airship from the Zeppelins of World War I to the Hindenburg of the
Nazi era.
Now divorced from his first wife, Holmdahl married again.
Elizabeth, called Betty by his family, was a pleasant, outgoing
woman. She accepted Holmdahl's repeated forays into Mexico and
assorted "get-rich-quick" schemes with equanimity, according to his
nephew, Gordon Holmdahl. With a daughter, Ramona, from Betty's
first marriage, the three settled in Van Nuys, California, their home
life broken only by Holmdahl's business ventures into Mexico. [13]
In October 1934, Fortino Contreras, a well-known Mexican
composer and old friend of Holmdahl's, wrote a military march
entitled "Soldado de Fortuna." He dedicated it to Holmdahl in
honor of his heroism during the Mexican revolution. The old sol-
dier obtained a U.S. copyright for the composition on March 28,
1939. [14]
Throughout the remainder of the 1930s and into the 1950s
Holmdahl did scouting work for petroleum companies, prospected
for minerals, and engaged in real-estate promotions in Mexico. With
the outbreak of World War II, he applied for active duty with the
United States Army, but was turned down in a cursory manner. [15]
Because Holmdahl's service as a scout for Pershing was either
overlooked or unknown to the Mexican government, or possibly
because Villa was not held in high repute by government leaders in
Mexico City, Holmdahl remained on excellent terms with many of
the Mexican generals with whom he had served during the revolu-
tion. The Historical and Biographical Dictionary of the American
Revolution
published in Mexico City, relates that "... in 1952 the Mexican
Government made him a member of its Legion of Honor and at the
same time gave him the honorary rank of Colonel for his service
during the Revolution." [16]
The ceremony was held in
Waterfill, Chihuahua, just across the
Texas border a few miles east of El Paso, and it was quite a festive
affair. A military band played the Contreris march, and many vet-
erans of the revolution sang the martial corridos of the day, as their
aging compadre was presented with his honorary commission. The
beer and tequila flowed copiously, but it is doubtful that they sang
the Decapitacion.
Later, in 1952, Secret Service Agents knocked on the door of his
Van Nuys home. It seems, the agents told Holmdahl, there was a
rumor that someone had smuggled $20,000,000 in gold ingots
across the Mexican border, and Holmdahl was the chief suspect. [17]
Holmdahl denied any knowledge of such a crime, but one wonders,
was the old soldier still involved with finding Villa's gold? The
investigation, however, was subsequently dropped.
In 1957, his wife Elizabeth suddenly died. She was buried in
Forest Lawn Cemetery, and Holmdahl moved in with his step-
daughter, Mrs. Ramona L. Foster. [18] In August 1958, Holmdahl was
involved in his biggest project yet, the development of a gigantic
resort community on Punta Banda peninsula. The land fronted
Todos Santos Bay, approximately ninety miles south of San Diego
on the west coast of Baja California, only a few miles from tourist
developments at Ensenada.
The area offered duck hunting,
deep-sea fishing, skin diving, and a
warm, pleasant climate ideal for
retirees. The development was to
have modern docking facilities,
charter-boat availability, a mobile-
home facility as well as a hotel
resort, and homes built to the
owner's specifications. The project
was to be developed by a consor-
tium of Mexican and American
businessmen, and would be, their
advertisements said, "The Riviera
of the West." Holmdahl's contribu-
tion to the project was apparently
his inexhaustible number of gov-
ernmental and business contacts in
the area. [19]
When historian Bill McGaw
interviewed Holmdahl in June
1962, Holmdahl told McGaw he was heading back to Mexico, where
he was organizing the settlement of a huge land grant in Baja, for
settlement by French refugees fleeing from newly-independent
Algeria. [20]
During the last decade of his life, Holmdahl must have missed
his roistering comrades. In 1925, Sam "The Fighting Jew" Dreben,
his health shattered and flat broke, died at the hands of a clumsy
nurse who gave him the wrong injection. Tracy Richardson, "The
World's Greatest Machine Gunner," served as a lieutenant colonel in
the U.S. Army during World War II. But after the war he was
reduced to selling household goods door-to-door, until he died
broke in 1949.
Lee Christmas, his massive bulk reduced to ruin by an assort-
ment of tropical diseases, died raving in a New Orleans hospital in
1924. Edward "Tex" O'Reilly, who fought under eight flags from
the Philippines to China to the Equator, died in a veteran's hospital
in 1946. Holmdahl was alone. He was the last of that breed of
soldiers-of-fortune who fought their way from the Philippines to
Mexico under an assortment of flags, mostly foreign.
His nephew, Gordon Holmdahl of Dublin, California, remem-
bers the old soldier with great affection. Gordon Holmdahl is in
possession of the original pardon papers signed by President
Woodrow Wilson, as well as various swords, pistols, and other mem-
orabilia of his uncle's fantastic career. "Uncle Emil," he said, "used
to keep us spellbound for hours with stories of his adventures. I still
have a photograph of him riding his horse with a little dog perched
on his saddle. Emil said he carried him into battle with him."
Holmdahl, according to his nephew, "spoke the Yaqui language
like a native." He supported himself in his later years as a prospec-
tor for American mining companies in Mexico, and even into his
seventies made regular trips into remote areas of Mexico to bring
ore samples back to the U.S.
According to Gordon Holmdahl,
During the last year of his life,
when he was in poor health, he was
planning a trip back into some remote area of Mexico. My Dad and I
tried to talk him out of it, we even tried to hide his car keys, but
he found
them. On April 8, 1963, while loading his automobile with his prospect-
ing tools, he suffered a sudden massive stroke. He died almost instantly.
He was buried in a crypt alongside his wife of almost thirty years. He
was
nearly 80 years old. [21]
If "Taps" were played at Holmdahl's funeral, it sounded not
only for the old veteran, but for an age when soldiering could still be
an adventure. He was the very last of the swashbuckling soldiers of
fortune. It's difficult to come up with a fitting epitaph for a man like
Holmdahl. He served his country bravely and honorably in the
Philippines as a foot-slogging infantryman, with Pershing and
Patton as a daring scout, and as an officer fighting with the
American Expeditionary Force in France during World War I. He
was respected by honorable men on both sides of the border.
As for the rest, perhaps the words of the Canadian adventurer-
poet Robert Service might well be appropriate.
Yes we go into the night as brave
men go
we're hard as cats to kill,
And our hearts are reckless still,
And we've danced with death a dozen times or so ...
Of our sins we've shoulders broad to bear the blame;
But we'll never stay in town and we'll never settle down ...
No, there's that in us that time can never tame;
And life will always seem a careless game ...
_______________
American
Buddha Librarian's Comment:
[AB-1] Sandburg is talking about a
completely different kind of man than the Emil Holmdahl type which this
author glorifies. Holmdahl is the enemy of Carl Sandburg.
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