by Lou Ureneck
Jennings did survive—and he seemed determined to accomplish Amy’s prediction of important work ahead. Early in 1918, while he was working for the YMCA in upstate New York, Jennings answered some inner call of mission or adventure. He took a job as a YMCA army chaplain, and he traveled, without his family, to bases in Virginia and New Jersey where he ministered to soldiers departing for the war in Europe. The little man with the big smile and the hunched back was a success with the men—he gave them songs, quips, Bible verses, and reminders to write home to mother. A year later, with the war ended and Amy and the children still back in her hometown of Cleveland, Jennings had asked the YMCA to send him to France, and off he went with a group of forty-eight other YMCA men across the Atlantic.
Jennings’s job in France had been to direct the YMCA’s “huts” at the military forwarding camp at Lemans, the main staging area for American troops’ return to the United States. Jennings and his YMCA colleagues served hot coffee and little cakes to the soldiers, held Sunday-school classes, entertained the men with silent movies and vaudeville skits, and arranged sports events. Sports were embedded in the Y’s culture—a healthy body being one of three points of the “Y.” (The other two were a healthy mind and healthy spirit.) By the war’s end, the Y had shipped a half-million baseballs to France for the soldiers.
By the start of the 1919 season, the soldiers were back home in the United States and sports writers had picked the Chicago White Sox, with slugger Shoeless Joe Jackson in left field, as the team to beat in the American League. Jennings had departed France too. He traveled by train across middle Europe to Czechoslovakia, where he continued to minister to demobilizing soldiers with the Y’s mix of books, Bible passages, hot coffee, films, and sports including the new game of basketball, invented just a few years earlier at the Y’s training center in Springfield, Massachusetts. Balls were bouncing in the gynasiums of Silesia, and Jennings was still reminding soldiers to write home to mother when he had gotten orders to pack for Smyrna.
IN PARADISE, Jennings had use of his boss’s Chevrolet—a small four-seat touring car with a soft top. He decided to use it for his trip into Smyrna. Driving it required double clutching to change the gears, and the brakes needed heavy pressure to bring the car to a stop, but Jennings found that he could handle it. The continuing passage of so many people through Paradise on their way to Smyrna was mystifying to Jennings, but he did not see it yet as dangerous. He decided not to call Jacob back from his holiday and drove off to get an explanation at the American consulate.
The trickle of people he had seen on the road the previous three days had turned into a river, and the trains passing by the Paradise station were full of people and baggage, and the human cargo included soldiers. People were hanging on to the sides of train cars and riding on top of them, and the trains were passing more frequently than usual, not any regular schedule.
He took Amy with him in the car to Smyrna. The children were safe at home; the college was right there if they became frightened or needed an adult. On the way into the city, Jennings and Amy passed refugees trudging along the road, stepping aside to make room for them to pass, and they saw that many people were camped at the outer edge of the city where the ancient Caravan Bridge spanned the Meles River, not much more than a sluggish creek in late summer.
Once in the city, they saw many thousands more people—all more or less in the same condition as the people on the Paradise Road. They were coming in from the north and east as well as the south, on foot and by train. Jennings drove through the Armenian Quarter and by the Basmahane station, which was the terminus of the Casaba line that reached to Afyon Karahisar and was serving as the main path of retreat for the Greek army. The train station was across the street from the American Girls’ College, but Asa decided against stopping there. Jennings saw soldiers, unshaven, tattered, and dirty, leaving the station and walking toward the Quay. There were also many people sitting and standing in the public spaces around the station and gradually sifting into the city’s streets as the area around the station became too crowded to accommodate all the people who wanted to linger there. Most of the people were obviously country dwellers, in simple clothes—women in long skirts, aprons, headscarves, and rough homemade shoes, and men in cotton work shirts and vests, loose trousers, boots. The faces were brown, deeply wrinkled and strangely passive. They were setting down their bags and luggage wherever they could find space: churchyards, small public spaces, cemeteries, or just in the streets. Many had already gathered along the Quay.
Jennings and Amy were shocked at their physical condition—they looked like they had walked a long way and were covered with a thin layer of white dust from the backcountry roads and apparently without much food or water. Women were nursing babies. Old women were carrying sickly men on their backs, their big work-roughened hands hung from their sleeves. Families found small polygons of shade in which to sit and spread their household possessions, all the time holding the ropes of their goats or donkeys. It was terribly hot in the sun—in the high nineties, and it was not yet noon.
Asa and Amy clattered in the Chevy through the city and reached the YMCA, which was in a building it rented at 28 Frank Street, the city’s main shopping street, two blocks back from the Quay and a block south of the American consulate. It was an attractive building with a series of floor-to-ceiling windows at street level that offered a view inside to a sitting area arranged for reading and conversation. Inside there were classrooms where young men took classes in English and French, a bigger room for amateur plays and movies, and a thousand-volume library with current magazines and newspapers.
Alarmed but unsure how to interpret the presence of so many people—refugees, really, they were in flight and homeless—Jennings decided it was time to suggest to Jacob that he return, and he sent a message by way of the ferry to Phocaea. The YMCA building was next to the Grand Bretagne Restaurant, about two hundred yards from the American consulate on Galazio Street, and in a neighborhood of brasseries, dress shops, and the offices of tobacco brokers. The refugees were there too, shuffling along, looking for shelter. Amy was horrified by what she saw. “Women with nursing babies and nowhere to go,” she noted in a diary. “Streets packed with people of all ages sleeping on the pavements.” Leaving Amy at the YMCA, Jennings walked up Frank Street to the American consulate to find out what was happening. On the way, he stopped a man who looked to him like he spoke English and asked what was going on.
Don’t you know? They are running from the Turks, he said.
The American consulate was an established gathering place for Americans, one block back from the Quay and the fashionable Hunters Club. Americans were used to dropping by the consulate to chat with Horton, who was informal and gregarious and liked to tell a story. There were several good cafés, restaurants, and private clubs on the surrounding blocks, including the Boston Cafe, which American businessmen could retire to after getting the morning’s chatter and news at the consulate from Horton or other Americans doing business in the city.
Entering the consulate, Jennings found the receiving area full, and Horton and his two young vice consuls, Maynard Barnes and A. Wallace Treat, besieged with people, mostly naturalized Greek and Armenian Americans who were seeking the papers and means necessary to leave the city. There was barely room to squeeze in. The talk inside added to what Asa had heard on the street. The Greek army had suffered a serious setback, and the Christian population in the backcountry, fearing the advance of the Turkish army, had abandoned their farms and villages for the safety of Smyrna. The talk was fraught with rumor and speculation. No one seemed to know for sure what was happening. The Greek losses had come quickly and unexpectedly—and it seemed improbable that there had been a complete collapse of the Greek line. People were attempting to understand the situation by exchanging information about what they had seen, rumors they had heard, and conflicting reports they read in the city’s newspapers. The reports included a forceful published assertion by the Greek comma
nder that Greek troops would hold the city against a Turkish assault and a statement by the Italian consul that thousands of Italian troops were standing by at Rhodes to be transported to Smyrna if needed to bring order.
Two British battleships, the Iron Duke and King George V, had arrived the day before, on Sunday, and the city’s oldest and most respected Greek newspaper, Amalthea, quoted the senior British officer in Smyrna, Admiral Osmond de Brock, as saying that he was confident of the city’s safety, but the paper then suggested, inaccurately, that he was also promising Allied intervention on behalf of the Greeks if it became necessary for their protection. More than a few Greek and Armenian civilians had armed themselves in anticipation of a battle for the city, and the Asia Minor Defense League was secretly distributing guns and bandoliers of ammunition. Many had judged the appearance of the British ships, along with this day’s arrival of a French battleship, Waldeck Rousseau, as evidence of Allied intentions to land troops on their behalf. Eleven warships were anchored in Smyrna Harbor—British, French, Italian, and Greek. The warships were the spear points of Allied diplomacy, except that there wasn’t a unified Allied diplomacy. Each of the Allies—Britain, France, and Italy—was pursuing its own interests. All remained technically at war with Turkey, but the French and the Italians had found their own private accommodations with the Turkish nationalists, and the Italians had been arming them against the Greeks. The British stood alone as a serious potential belligerent. This was not apparent to the people onshore. Given the importance of Smyrna as a trading and banking center, residents took the Allied naval presence in the harbor as reassurance against disorder and a Turkish occupation. Still, there was also a lot of loose talk about the Greek army burning the city if it was forced to abandon it. Greeks and Armenians intent on resisting a Turkish takeover had hidden stockpiles of ammunition throughout the city, and the prospect of arson was frightening. There was also the troubling awareness that the British had brought a hospital ship, HMHS Maine, into the harbor and had requisitioned three merchant ships, Bavarian, Antioch, and Magira, to evacuate British nationals.
Jennings heard speculation and rumor that was ominous, confused, anxious, and mostly uninformed. He grew alarmed. What about his family and neighbors in Paradise, he wondered; were they in danger? Should the foreigners in the city be doing something to protect themselves? He, like everyone else in the consulate, knew there was no American military in Smyrna, and Paradise was even more exposed than the city itself. Jennings could see that Horton already had begun arranging for the naturalized American citizens with Greek and Armenian backgrounds to leave the city, and the situation’s gravity was further evident from Horton’s anxious demeanor and the feverish pace at which he was working. The diplomatic capitulations on which the foreign consuls relied in Smyrna allowed the consuls to designate “protégés,” local people who worked for the consulate and received limited diplomatic protection as representatives of foreign governments. In an unorthodox attempt to save people, Horton was writing letters that associated the naturalized Americans (and some others) as American protégés in the hope that the letters would be accepted as visas for travel or a means of protection.
Working his way through the crowded office, Jennings talked with other Americans at the consulate about the need for Americans to understand the situation as a group. Together they asked Horton to call a meeting of the American community so it could understand what was happening and take precautions for its safety—if indeed precautions were necessary. Horton agreed and said he would call the meeting later in the day. He wrote a note announcing the meeting and sent a courier to American institutions and businesses around the city to spread the message and went back to work.
HORTON HAD SLEPT HARDLY at all in the five days since his return from Sevdikuey. He had met the night before, on Sunday, September 3, with Governor Stergiades, who already had concluded that the Greek army would evacuate Smyrna. Stergiades worried that disaffected soldiers might set fire to the city. Horton had met that morning with the British consul, Sir Harry Lamb, and Admiral de Brock, and de Brock had informed him of British plans to evacuate its nationals. Horton and Lamb were friends as well as colleagues, and they would frequently collaborate over the next several days. They shared similar views about Smyrna, and both were married to foreign women whose fathers were diplomats, in Lamb’s case, an Italian woman. Only a few years younger than Horton, Lamb cut a familiar figure in Smyrna, his easily recognizable hat a racing trilby. He carried a walking stick and wore a Marlborough collar and tie.
Horton sent cables to Bristol and Washington about the British evacuation, and, still not having heard back from Washington by the end of the day Monday, September 4, he repeated his request for an American ship. In addition to the State Department cable appealing for supplies from the American Relief Administration, Horton appealed directly to the Near East Relief in Constantinople for aid.
At about 3:00 P.M., leaders of the American community gathered at the American consulate in response to Horton’s message. They were either missionaries or businessmen, and although there was often tension between the two groups, they were now bound by common concern for their safety and the safety of the organizations they represented. The missionaries were mostly aligned with the Greeks and Armenians; the businessmen with the Turks, in part because Greek and Armenian merchants and traders were formidable competitors and not so easily handled as the Turks. Among the missionary group were Alexander MacLachlan, the president of International College; Dana K. Getchell, a fifty-two-year-old Missions Board missionary from Northfield, Minnesota, attached to the American Girls’ School in the city; Jean Christie, thirty-nine years old and a Wellesley graduate, director of the YWCA; and Asa Jennings for the YMCA. The businessmen included Stanley W. Smith, director of Standard Oil of New York in Smyrna; representatives from the four American tobacco companies in the city, Gary, Standard, Glen, and American; and Chester Griswold, an agent for MacAndrews & Forbes, the licorice company in Camden, New Jersey. American tobacco companies used licorice to sweeten their cigarettes, and the herb grew profusely around Smyrna.
George Horton appeared strained and tired as he leaned on his cane and called the group to order. He reported much of what he knew, which was that the Greek army had suffered a serious defeat, and, in disarray, it was burning villages as it retreated toward the sea. It was less a Shermanesque strategy to deny the Turkish army provisions and more the result of a leaderless army, which, feeling betrayed by its government and hunted by Turkish civilians, had turned into a destructive rabble. There was discussion about rumors of the Greek army’s total collapse and the possibility of it being pulled back together for the city’s defense. It was hard for the Americans to believe that the Greek defeat had come so quickly and completely, but the Americans had seen, on the way to the meeting, Greek soldiers entering the city, and their ragged and disconsolate condition suggested the worst. Some of the soldiers were ditching their uniforms for civilian clothes and selling or giving away their guns. Getchell, who had just returned to Smyrna from a trip to towns east of Smyrna on the Casaba rail line, reported that he had seen Greek soldiers rounding up Greek civilians for transport to Smyrna on train cars ahead of the Turkish army. Turkish civilians, he said, had begun firing on Greek soldiers and departing Greek civilians, and a battle had broken out at the train station of the hinterland town where he had spent the night.
Horton told the group that he already had cabled a request for naval protection but had not yet received a response. Stunned at the suddenness of events, the Americans were unclear about their next steps. Horton was not advising them to leave the city, but neither would he give them assurances that all would be well as the Italian and French consuls were advising their nationals. He did not want to alarm the assembled Americans, but neither did he want to suggest that the situation was safe. Privately, he expected the worst, and his posture and demeanor more likely spoke more forcefully than his words. Horton asked the group to meet again the nex
t day at the YMCA, where there was more room; he would schedule daily meetings, he told them, so he could provide updates.
After the meeting, Jennings took Horton aside and offered another idea—again as a question. Would it be possible for the Americans, Jennings asked, to organize help for the refugees? At the moment, Horton said, his hands were full trying to find all the Americans in Smyrna and secure passage out of the city for those who seemed most immediately in danger. Horton suggested that Jennings talk with the other Americans who had been at the meeting and raise the idea for discussion the next day. Later in the day, Jennings took the idea to his neighbors at International College, and Caleb Lawrence, a professor at the school, agreed to make the proposal when the group met again, the next day, Tuesday.
HORTON HAD COME TO SMYRNA in 1911 expecting to deepen his learning and savor the classical ruins of ancient Ionia. His actual experience had been far different. The year after he arrived, in 1912, the religious strife in the Balkans erupted into the First Balkan War, pitting Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria against their old oppressor, the Ottoman Turks. To the astonishment of Europe, the Ottomans lost the war, and the city of Salonika and the Aegean islands passed to Greece. It was a humiliation the Young Turks would not soon forget, and ethnic Greeks throughout the Ottoman Empire would pay a heavy price in property and blood for the victory of the Hellenic state in the Balkans.
In the region outside Smyrna, in the villages along the coast and inland toward the Meander Valley, Horton witnessed a Turkish campaign of terror against Christians every bit as brutal as it had been around Salonika—perhaps even worse. Its goal was to drive the ethnic Greeks, who were Ottoman subjects, out of the country.
