by Lou Ureneck
Horton saw the situation as a Bristol-inspired whitewash. The Smyrna consul general claimed to have heard one of the American reporters say of a story describing the true conditions: “I can not send this stuff, it will queer me at Constantinople.” Surely, a story about Jennings’s effort to save Christian women who had been raped by Turkish soldiers was a legitimate story for the reporters to send back to the United States. When Sweeny had shown up and begun agitating for access to the backcountry to report on Greek atrocities, Horton again saw the hand of Bristol. The old man fumed. In a report to the State Department, Horton later wrote, “Early in the development of this gigantic horror, I heard several of these correspondents say they must hurry away to Constantinople as it was necessary for them to get back into the interior of Asia Minor through that city in order to write up the Greek atrocities. It struck me as curious that men, in the presence of one of the greatest and most spectacular dramas in history, should think it their duty to hurry away in order to write something which would offset it.”
Horton saw an opportunity to change the press narrative on Monday. During the day, he had learned from a source at the British consulate that the British were likely to declare war on the nationalists. Horton went to Constantine Brown at the home where he and the other reporters and Merrill were staying (down the Quay from Jennings) and passed the information along to the reporter, adding that the British would cite the need to protect the Christian population as the cause of the war. Horton may have put his own spin on the tip, reasoning that the Christian element in the story would have forced the reporters to acknowledge the killings in Smyrna. Rather than the Turkish atrocities in Smyrna, it was far more likely that British consideration of hostilities was tied to the incursion of the nationalist army into neutral territory at Chanak, threatening the straits. In Brown’s upstairs bedroom, Horton encouraged him to not downplay the Turkish cruelty. Brown listened to Horton without making a commitment. He understood the conditions under which Bristol had allowed him to travel to Smyrna, and he had no intention of writing the story Horton was insisting on. Brown revealed the conversation to Merrill when Merrill returned to the house from the late-night rounds with Knauss. Brown knew that Merrill was Bristol’s man in Smyrna. He also understood the bigger game, and the outing of Horton as a tipster surely would put Brown in Bristol’s good graces.
Merrill saw immediately that Horton was surreptitiously undermining Bristol, and despite the late hour, 10:30 P.M., he went to Hepburn aboard the Litchfield and reported Horton’s leak to the press. The breach between Horton and Bristol was now out in the open. Rather than attempting to report this information in code via radio telegraph, which was a chancy matter at best, Hepburn decided it was important enough to dispatch Merrill back to Constantinople. He told him to be ready to leave on the Lawrence in the morning.
Hepburn was angry with Horton, but now he had a bigger worry, worsening his dilemma: a declaration of war by the British might result in Turkish closure of the port, and that meant American citizens would not be able to leave, and nor would the valuable cargo of tobacco that had just been loaded onto an American cargo ship, the SS Hog Island.
THE NEXT DAY, TUESDAY, September 12, Hepburn went ashore and saw that violence against the refugees was worsening. His officers reported it from their rounds, and he personally saw the bodies of three refugees, only recently killed, at the Basmahane station.
Nearby, about eight thousand refugees had taken shelter in the gated grounds of St. Stephanos, the Armenian cathedral. Turkish soldiers had tossed grenades into the churchyard, killing and wounding several people. The Turks wanted the gate opened and the people to come out. The Armenian bishop refused both demands. There was a standoff until a Catholic priest arrived with an Italian officer and Italian troops, and they took the women and children from the church to the Quay, where they dispersed into the mass of people. The men were arrested and the soldiers led them away.
At midmorning, Hepburn and Vice Consul Barnes called on General Kiazim Pasha, the city’s military governor, to select areas in which to concentrate refugees for protection and feeding. The meeting was interrupted by a Turkish officer who informed the general of a serious incident at International College, which, astonishingly, Hepburn was unaware of. His ignorance of the event suggests he was isolated from the worst of what was happening in the city—and not communicating well with his officers.
On the previous day, a member of the school’s staff had seen Turkish soldiers looting the college’s settlement home, a kind of Christian community center, and he awakened college president Alexander MacLachlan from his afternoon nap to report it. MacLachlan decided to investigate and told Crocker, the senior American guard at the college, that he was going to drive to the house, about a quarter mile outside the school’s grounds. Chief Crocker tried without success to persuade MacLachlan against it. MacLachlan prided himself on his good relations with the Turks. During World War I, MacLachlan, a British subject, had chosen to remain at the college, technically as a prisoner of war. The war had raged in the Near East—at Gallipoli, in Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia, and even along Anatolia’s Aegean coast, including occasional aerial bombing and naval strikes at the old Turkish fortress overlooking Smyrna harbor—but MacLachlan had sought to keep the school open as a redoubt of civility and good relations with the Turks. When the Ottoman army had turned the campus into a prison camp for British soldiers captured in the Mesopotamia campaign, MacLachlan, who spoke Turkish as well as Greek and Armenian, received Turkish military officers in his home for afternoon tea and cultivated their friendship and goodwill.
Stubborn and unwilling to heed the advice of Crocker about the danger of confronting the looters, MacLachlan was determined to chase the unruly soldiers from the school’s property. Crocker decided to go with him and brought several sailors along in case help was needed. They stopped their car about one hundred yards from the settlement house, and MacLachlan and Crocker approached it as the sailors, arrayed in a line and armed with a machine gun, stayed near the car. At the settlement house, MacLachlan shouted in Turkish “What are you doing here? This is an American house, American property!”
Six Turkish soldiers came out of the house with their guns pointed at MacLachlan. One of them whistled, and another six soldiers appeared from another house that was being looted. The second group of soldiers took a position between MacLachlan and Crocker and the sailors. The American sailors were about to fire when Crocker, realizing that his men were outnumbered and likely to lose in a firefight, threw his pistol to the ground.
“Don’t fire,” he shouted to his men. “Retire!”
The sailors backed away, and after covering about thirty yards, Crocker shouted to them again, “Run.” They did, with the Turks firing at them, and reached the college unharmed. The action left MacLachlan and Crocker alone with the Turks but within sight of the college. (An American sailor in the college’s clock tower was watching all this.) One of the Turks went up to MacLachlan and demanded his watch, then his wallet and coat. Two other soldiers beat MacLachlan with the butts of their guns, and he fell to the ground, temporarily losing consciousness. He got back up and one of the Turkish soldiers told him to start running. MacLachlan stood in place, taking the beatings, fearful that the order to run would provide the soldiers with an excuse to shoot him. Speaking Turkish, MacLachlan explained that he was trying to protect American property. Some of the soldiers listened, but others were goading him with their rifle barrels to run. The first soldier demanded his shoes. At this moment, a Turkish boy from the school appeared and appealed to the soldiers to stop the beating, explaining that MacLachlan was his teacher. He had no effect on the soldiers and ran off to find help.
The soldiers asked MacLachlan what was in the car, and he said nothing, but they found a stick inside and beat him with it. They took the wedding ring from his finger. Crocker was getting the same treatment, beatings with gun butts and the stick, and the soldiers forced both men to strip and stand
naked. The beatings continued. The boy who had run off had found a Turkish cavalry officer nearby, and when the officer appeared, he asked MacLachlan who he was, and what was going on. MacLachlan explained he was the president of the nearby college, and the officer dispersed the soldiers. Both men were injured, MacLachlan seriously, but Crocker was able to help the president back to the campus.
It was a humiliating incident—and a serious sign that order was breaking down even further and that the situation was dangerous not just for naturalized Americans. Even American sailors might be attacked. It seems inexplicable that Captain Hepburn would not have been informed of the incident immediately, but Hepburn’s own report says he learned of it a day afterward at the meeting with the Turkish military governor. (Rhodes was the officer detailed to making the rounds of guarded American properties and keeping Hepburn informed.)
Even for the cautious Hepburn, it was clear that the city was approaching a crisis. There were other troubling signs: Noureddin had issued another proclamation, which, by requiring passports and Turkish permission, made it difficult to remove refugees and naturalized Americans; none of the Turkish guards that had been promised for the refugee encampments were provided; and news of the beatings and killings of Europeans and their servants in Boudjah and Bournabat was finally reaching him.
Knauss also brought him reports of worsening violence. “On my round at 5 a.m., I found looting in full progress throughout the Armenian quarter with desultory firing everywhere and many new dead in streets especially about the Collegiate Institute (Girls’ College).” In the afternoon, he spotted Turkish soldiers on rooftops in the Armenian Quarter sniping at refugees inside the Girls’ School. He went aboard the Lawrence to report it to Hepburn who was meeting with a Turkish officer. The Turkish officer gave Knauss a note to take to the city’s district police commander, who, the officer said, would intervene to stop the sniping. Knauss departed with Jaquith, who spoke Turkish, and after a runaround at the police station, a Turkish army officer said he would go with them to the school to investigate. At the school, the offficer gathered some nearby Turkish soldiers from the street and told Knauss he wanted to enter the school to investigate. Concerned about the Turk’s intentions, Knauss stalled and told one of his sailors guarding the school to hide the refugees inside the building.
“I could see that he (Turkish officer) desired to enter the building and kept him on the stairs until I felt all refugees would be out of sight and when he remarked that it was cooler within than without we entered and while there 1050 refugees in the building not a head was in sight.” Knauss introduced the officer to his men, said he would feed the Turkish soldiers a meal, and quickly escorted him out. The Turkish officer said he would post guards at the school to prevent the sniping, and Knauss returned to the Quay.
On his way back, Knauss saw a French officer and two French sailors backed against the wall by Turkish soldier, and the French officer was talking furiously to save their lives. Knauss slowed down, and a Turkish soldier in front of the car pointed his gun at him. Knauss pressed the accelerator and the soldier jumped out of the way. Knauss pulled out his revolver but was able to get away while the Turk was still off balance and unable to shoot. Later in the day, the Turks held a parade on the Quay to celebrate their victory, and Americans along the parade route were forced to remove their hats as it passed by. To make matters worse, small unexplained fires were breaking out in the Armenian Quarter, where the stench of rotting bodies had become overwhelming.
“On Tuesday, a visit to the Armenian quarters was, literally, like entering a ‘city of the dead,’” wrote a British officer. He went on:
In the first Armenian street were one or two dead bodies, but turning into the main street the whole place was strewn with them. It was impossible to proceed without going over them. A cart outside a house was being filled with loot from one of the top-floor windows. A Turk held up a flaming-red woman’s petticoat, grinned, and threw it to his companion below.
The shutters of some of the houses, that had been pushed to, were opened. The same story everywhere. Families of six and seven dead in a room; the women had suffered; and the place had been looted. Not a sign of life anywhere, except the Turks taking away what they could find. And the smell of putrefying bodies was terrible.
George Horton reported that nine cartloads of bodies were removed from the Konak and three cartloads near the Aydin Railroad station.
“In the early hours of the twelfth,” wrote Knauss, “squads of Turkish soldiers were sent out to collect the dead bodies exposed to view in the streets, and by ten o’clock no bodies were to be seen on the more important streets of the Armenian quarter. However, at three o’clock in the afternoon, fifty bodies were seen on one street in this quarter by an American.”
The frustration and alarm among the relief committee was growing more intense, the pressure on Hepburn to act more severe. Charles Davis sounded the alarm in a cable to the Red Cross: “Only way to picture this refugee situation imagine refugees some single, families, groups few to five thousand hidden in institutions or huddled here, there moving panic stricken when irregulars begin shooting them.”
Hepburn was getting smiles and pleasant receptions from the Turkish command even as the Christian refugees were being terrorized and shot, and he came to see that the Turks were working him. Late Tuesday night, Hepburn talked the situation over with the relief committee’s leaders, who strongly favored immediate evacuation. Jaquith pledged Near East Relief money to charter a merchant ship if it was necessary to remove the naturalized Americans. Hepburn, keeping his own counsel as they spoke, made up his mind to evacuate the vulnerable Americans, and he decided too that George Horton would be among those he would send away. He said nothing to the relief committee; he would make his decision known in the morning.
PART
TWO
CHAPTER 16
Fire Breaks Out
In summer, a north wind blows in a ceaseless rhythm over the eastern Mediterranean, gusting to a gale in the afternoon but nearly always slowing to a whisper in the evening. Stirred in the vast spaces of the faraway Russian steppe, the wind—the Meltemi, as it is known—sweeps down the Balkan peninsula, ruffles the blue surface of the Aegean, and bends the wild grasses of the Anatolian littoral into undulating waves of green and brown. As timeless as the ancient landscape it scours, the wind once filled the sails of Greeks on their way to Troy and Persians on their way to Athens.
In the first weeks of September 1922, the north wind brought a small measure of relief to the hundreds of thousands of people crammed into the hot and fetid streets of Smyrna.
On Wednesday morning, September 13, something strange happened. The north wind died, and almost immediately a new and unfamiliar wind lifted out of the south. The shift was at first imperceptible. For a brief moment, the air in the city’s streets was motionless. Curtains that had been lofting in open windows went slack and the trembling leaves of the hillside olive trees went still, but soon the south wind—“Samyeli,” in Turkish, the Damascus wind—was gusting with force, bringing with it the heat of the desert. The city already was hot, but the new wind was hotter. It was a strange wind for Smyrna in summertime, and it came as an alarming portent. A few men lost their hats. People felt something unfamiliar without knowing what the unfamiliar thing was that played at the edges of their senses. The surface of the harbor turned to white chop, the flags of the Allied warships in the harbor snapped to the north, and donkeys and horses standing among the crowds in the hot morning sun lifted their heads and flexed dry nostrils to sniff the danger in it. The danger was fire.
Hepburn came ashore early, on this, his fifth day in Smyrna, went to the American Theater, and met with officers who had made the morning’s rounds of the guarded checkpoints. They told him they had seen less looting and fewer corpses, but, in Hepburn’s judgment, the change had come because nearly all the shops and homes already had been cleaned out and residents killed or driven off. He motored through the c
ity to have a look. He traveled along the Quay, then into the Greek and Armenian Quarters. Smashed-up furniture and broken doors and windows filled the streets; the arms and legs of corpses were bent and turned in lifeless and unnatural gestures on the pavement. It was a scene to make a man sick, and the captain could no longer avoid concluding the obvious. The Turkish command had encouraged the sacking of the city. He made a note for his diary: “Few patrols were in evidence, and these paid no attention to the wandering chetahs and rowdies that were obvious looters and probable murderers.”
Hepburn seems not to have traveled north on the Quay, toward the Point and Jennings’s safe houses. It was an area untouched by looting, and there so far had been little violence on the upper area of the Quay in sight of the foreign consulates. Hepburn turned onto Galazio Street and arrived at the American consulate at 8:30 A.M. He found George Horton meeting with British consul Harry Lamb. The two had been close colleagues, brought closer by recent events, and they would continue their friendly relations after both had departed Smyrna. Horton momentarily excused himself from the conversation with Lamb and told Hepburn privately that he now had confirmation that Britain was about to go to war with the nationalists.*
