by Lou Ureneck
At about 4 P.M., navy ensign Thomas A. Gaylord (a red-haired recent Annapolis graduate from Pittsfield, Massachusetts) and four additional sailors arrived to evacuate the teachers. The navy men told Miss Mills that they had come to take only Americans, but she refused to depart without the school’s children, principally Greek and Armenian. Ensign Gaylord told her she would come along on her own or a sailor would carry her back, but in any event, he said, she would be evacuated. These were his orders. Miss Mills was determined to stay with the children. The standoff continued and the fire touched the building. Miss Mills planted herself; she wasn’t moving without the children. Gaylord had four of the sailors carry Miss Mills to the truck they had parked outside the door and promised her that he would leave a contingent of sailors to lead the children and school staff to the Quay. The truck with Miss Mills and other teachers departed.
The remaining seven sailors, including Petty Officer J. W. Webster of Omaha, brought the children and staff together and led them out the door. “When we left,” Webster wrote in a letter to his sister, “we could hardly get out of the door, and some of the Turks fired into the crowd and killed a few people.”
The group started toward Rue Rechidieh, the main avenue leading through the Armenian Quarter toward the Quay, but the fire stopped them. They turned back toward the school to find a different route, and as they passed the school the sailors saw that the Turkish soldiers had begun shooting the refugees in the courtyard. The group followed Tchinarli Street in the opposite direction for a short distance, then turned left toward the Quay, wending its way through the cross-hatched neighborhoods without any clear sense of where it was. The streets, which sometimes jogged right or left, were not arranged in neat squares or rectangles: they crossed each other at acute angles as well as right angles, and sometimes the streets dead-ended at masonry walls.
At about the same time, Dr. Post and nurses Agnes Evon and Sara Corning decided they had to leave the Dutch hospital, where they had been treating refugees, to retrieve children at an American-assisted Armenian orphanage, near the Girls’ School. They walked about a half mile in the direction of the fire to reach it. Coming through the smoke and litter of the streets, they arrived at the orphanage to find the children—one hundred and fifty little girls in black-and-white aprons—waiting quietly under the protection of Jean Christie, director of the Smyrna YWCA, and Bertha Morley, a teacher at the Girls’ School, who, in the mayhem, had taken responsibility for the children. The orphanage also had a courtyard, and hundreds of refugees had gathered there, behind its gate.
Miss Christie, born into a missionary family in Turkey, was a Wellesley College graduate and thirty-nine years old. Miss Morley, from Oberlin, another school with a reputation for turning out missionary teachers, was five years older. Preparing to depart, Miss Morley and Miss Christie lined up the orphan girls two by two to form a column to march to the Quay. Miss Christie and Miss Morley were at the front. Sara Corning took position in the middle, and Agnes Evon and Dr. Post at the rear. Miss Morley carried an American flag on a pole. Because it was officially an Armenian and not an American institution, the orphanage had no American guard.
The women and children stepped from the school’s door into the street. At this point, they became visible to refugees in the courtyard, and it was obvious to the people that the orphanage was evacuating the children. Turkish soldiers were standing outside the courtyard gates, and soon the fire would force the refugees into the street. Knowing their probable fates, the refugees came crashing out of the courtyard to join the evacuation party and overwhelmed the column of girls. About one hundred of the orphan girls had passed into the street by the time of the rush, and in the chaos, many of the children were pushed aside, some trampled underfoot. The women and Dr. Post tried to separate the refugees from the children, and Turkish soldiers joined the fray. One of soldiers was about to drive his bayonet into a male refugee when Miss Corning struck him in the face with a fat Bible she was carrying. He went down in a heap.
The women pushed through the crowd and rounded up the girls, who had remained quiet through the ordeal, reassembling the column of black-and-white aprons. Then, the children followed Miss Morley with her flag, as the women led the orphans through the burning streets toward the Quay. The group founds its way to the YWCA, which lay in the direction of the consulate and the Quay. Another young American missionary teacher, Myrtle Nolan, was there preparing to evacuate the women and children with the help of American sailors who had been placed there as guards. Miss Morley had planned to stay at the YWCA, but as the fire approached, she departed and took the children, on her own, toward the Quay. Some would be lost along the way.
The medical team went back to the Dutch hospital, which was about four blocks from the YWCA, and found that many of the patients had been removed. Others were too badly injured or sick to be moved, and the Greek medical staff said they would stay with them. The hospital was made of stone and occupied the inside of a courtyard, which offered protection from the fire. Dr. Post directed Agnes Evon and Sara Corning to return to the American consulate with the sailors; he said he would go to the YMCA.
It was close to 6:30 P.M. by then, and the southeastern part of the city and much of Smyrna’s midsection were engulfed in flames.
ALL THROUGH THE AFTERNOON, the fire had forced people from homes, churches, and schools, all the places they had been hiding. They filled the streets, moving toward the Quay and away from the burgeoning mass of the fire. From above, they must have seemed like animals trying to outrun a rapidly moving forest fire. It was becoming clear to all Christians in the city—residents and refugees, Greeks and Armenians—that the Allies and Americans had no intention of evacuating or even protecting them. They were being left behind with the fire, the Turkish army, and the lower class of Turkish residents that had turned into a mob.
At 5 P.M., the American sailors at the American Theater carried the evacuees’ luggage to the whaleboats and ferried it to the Simpson. Then at about 6:30 P.M., Hepburn prepared to give the order to begin moving people. The transfer needed to happen quickly. The sailors moved the assembled groups into the theater’s lobby, and then, with a double line of sailors forming a passageway, the whaleboats were made ready at the seawall. Hepburn gave the order, and when a sailor at the seawall saw that the whaleboats were in position, he signaled the sailors in the theater to send the people to the street. The evacuation began. The Americans moved through the line of sailors and to the whaleboats ten at a time. The refugees pushed and pulled and attempted to pry themselves between the sailors; women shrieked and begged to be taken along. The sailors were sickened at the duty, and they were forced to beat them back.
Among the last to pass through the line of sailors was Asa Jennings, his wife, Amy, and their three children. Jennings was near total exhaustion. He had not slept in two days and barely had taken anything to eat. He took Amy and the children to the lip of the Quay, passed them to the waiting sailors, and said good-bye. He had decided to stay in Smyrna to maintain the safe houses. He stepped back from the Quay’s edge and watched his wife, who had suffered an emotional breakdown in the chaos, ride through the harbor’s chop with the other Americans toward the destroyer. From the deck of the ship, Amy saw Asa melt into the crowd of refugees on the Quay. It would be nearly a year before she would see him again.
Some time after 7 P.M., the theater was empty of Americans.
Hepburn now wanted to get his sailors aboard the ships. He sent Roger Griswold to retrieve the guards that remained at the bakeries and then to the consulate to help load files for transport to the ship. Davis and the consulate staff, including Horton, were still at the consulate. Hepburn wanted them to depart as well. It was time for everyone to leave. There were still sailors guarding the Standard Oil property and International College but since they were safe from the fire, Hepburn decided not to recall them. They would remain at their posts for the night. (He had left guards at International College because some of the Ameri
can families had decided to remain.) He sent other sailors to move several of the relief committee’s cars to an area near the Konak, which appeared to be outside of the fire zone. Eventually, the fire would be over, and he wanted to preserve the vehicles for his and the relief committee’s use. At a minimum, he would need the cars to retrieve the Standard Oil and International College guards.
Next, Hepburn had sailors clear a small section of the Quay, just astern of the Litchfield, as a collecting place for the Americans who had not yet come in from the Girls’ School and the YWCA. It was after 7 P.M. and they had not yet arrived.
THE SITUATION IN WHICH HEPBURN found himself was chaotic. It was impossible for him to know precisely what was happening around him, except as he could see it. He was not communicating with the Allied navies or the Turkish authorities, and his men had ceased making their rounds of inspection. The fire made movement through the city impossible. The heat, the flames, the smoke, the cacophony and panic of refugees—all of it conspired to create an atmosphere of confusion. A kind of fog of war prevailed. The captain was sensible only to the world that contained the theater, a small section of the Quay, and the destroyers.
It would later be established that Turks, both soldiers and civilians, had begun starting fires late Tuesday night and very early Wednesday morning. A lookout at the city’s fire station (a few blocks east of the American consulate) had spotted the first fire at 1 A.M. in a house on Rue Rechidieh, the thoroughfare through the Armenian district (and quite probably the route Hepburn and others traveled when they drove out to Paradise). Ten minutes later, another fire was reported nearby, next to the Basmahane station, in a house next to the Armenian Club. At 1.45 A.M., another had sprung up in the same general area at Rue Suyane, in a tight grid of small streets southwest of Basmahane station. As the fire brigade extinguished the Rue Suyane fire, they spotted smoke nearby at yet another fire. And so it went through the early hours of the morning—the fire brigade would douse one fire only to have others set behind them. There were at least five fires by sunrise.
The fire that had threatened (and ultimately consumed) the American Girls’ School was reported at 11 A.M.—at about the time that Hepburn’s officer was returning from Paradise. It was one of the fires that would not be extinguished and would spread toward the main part of the city. (Hepburn’s officer was correct in his prediction about the danger posed by the south wind.) The fire brigade responded to the numerous early-morning blazes, each involving one, two, or three houses, and hooked its fire hoses to hydrants that drew water from a storage tank above the city. Around noon, the fire brigade was forced back to the central station because of faulty equipment—their hoses had sprung leaks. The brigade was sent back with new hoses to meet the spreading fires but forced to withdraw again as the blaze threatened to surround them. By late afternoon, the fire was past fighting in the Armenian Quarter.
THE FACTS ABOUT THE FIRE were established at a London trial in 1924 in which the American Tobacco Co. had sought to collect on its losses from the Guardian Assurance Co. The trial lasted fourteen days, and forty-two witnesses were called to testify under oath, and many more people, including George Horton, were deposed. Lawyers cross-examined nearly all the witnesses; the judge also put additional questions to them.
Everyone with knowledge of the fires concurred that they had begun in the Armenian Quarter. Firemen said they had seen Turkish soldiers and civilians lighting fires with kerosene-soaked rags and furniture cushions. One said that Turkish soldiers had forced Armenian families to remain in their homes as they caught fire, burning them alive. The court stenographer summarized one fireman’s testimony this way: “Witness went on to describe he found dead bodies in all the houses he entered in the district and spoke to having seen in a cupboard the mutilated body of a woman. He also saw [the] body of a woman hanging from a lemon tree.”
The lawyer for the insurance company called as a witness an Armenian woman, Arouskiak Sislian, who was in Smyrna to visit her parents. She was a nurse, and her parents lived around the corner from the Basmahane station. The insurance company sought to establish that Smyrna had been beset by civil disorder, which exempted it from liability. This excerpt describes her experience in the days and hours leading up to the evacuation of the Girls’ School, which was only three blocks away.
Mr. A. T. Miller [Defense Counsel]: Do you remember the Saturday on which the Turkish troops came into Smyrna?
A: Yes.
Q: On the Sunday did you see any serious incidents?
A: Yes.
Q: Will [you] just tell us about them?
A: They were stopping people and taking everything that they had upon them as regards valuables. In Bouchon Street [four blocks from the Girls’ School and about eight blocks from Dr. Hatcherian’s home] two men caught hold of either a Greek or Armenian; they killed him and took everything he had on his body.
Q: How did they kill this man?
A: Two men caught hold of this man, whoever he was, a Christian; 6 shots were fired at him. I heard the sound of 6 shots having been fired.
Q: What was the next thing that you saw at this time?
A: After that, in front of our house they caught hold of another man and took everything off him, and after a long discussion between them, they killed the man; they knifed him.
Q: Did you see any other incident of that kind on that day?
A: At the corner of Tchukour Street and Fethie Street [in the same general district at Bouchon Street], they caught hold of another man and they sabred him in about five or six different places, and killed him as well.
A: What was the night like between the Sunday and the Monday; that is to say, the Sunday night?
A: We were very frightened, and kept on praying the whole night.
Q: Could you hear noises outside?
A: Yes, rifle fire—gunfire.
Q: I am sorry to have to bring your mind back to the incident of the next day, the Monday, but will you please tell us what took place on that day, because it is important that we should know it from you. On the morning of that day, were you still at home?
A: Yes.
Q: Did you see any Turks?
A: Yes.
Q: What were they doing?
A: They opened 3 houses.
Q: Were these people soldiers or civilians?
A: They were mostly soldiers but there were civilians as well.
Q: How did they break into your house?
A: They tried many times to get into our house, but we had a big strong iron door. They began to knock at the door with big stones.
Q: Yes?
A: They put bits of iron under the door and pried the door open, and when I got down, the door had just fallen inwards.
Q: Did many Turks come into the house?
A: As I turned my face toward the door I saw at least 100 to 150 people coming into the house.
Q: What did they do?
A: Some of them got into the rooms, and they opened cupboards and tried to do different kinds of things to all of us.
Q: Did they take you anywhere?
A: Two soldiers said that I was to point out the men, and tell them where the men were.
Q: Did you take them round the house?
A: Yes. They thought there was somebody up on the terrace, so they took me up to the terrace.
Q: Was there anybody there?
A: Behind the door there was a lawyer, Dikran by name.
Q: Did the soldiers find him?
A: Yes.
Q: What did they do?
A: As soon as they found him, one of them smacked my face.
Q: Did they do anything to him?
A: He (the Turk) had a big knife in his hand and with one slash he cut his head off, the head falling to one side and the body to the other.
Q: Did you see anything happen to your sister?
A: Yes. I saw three soldiers. They raped her.
Q: Did your sister recover from that treatment.
A: No
, she went to Athens and died.
Q: Did anything of the same sort happen you?
A: Yes.
Q: Were you in great trouble also about one of your daughters?
A: A 3 year old girl, one of the civilians got hold of her and was taking her towards the water-closet; I shouted out with all my strength, “If God sees this he will not allow it.”
Q: Was this girl saved?
A: On that a man came in from the outside with a rifle in his hand.
Q: What sort of man?
A: Rather a well-dressed man; he appeared to be a superior officer, or a superior person.
Q: A Turk?
A: Yes, a Turk.
Q: What did he do?
A: He said, “Are you not ashamed of yourselves, you have done quite enough to the bigger people, what do want with a small child,” and he gave the little girl to me.
Q: How did you got out?
A: I took my daughter on my back, and a small one, a sister, and two soldiers took us to another house.
Q: What was that house?
A: On Tchukour Street; they killed my father, he was lying in front of the door, I said, “My father,” and they would not let me go near him.
Q: In front of the door to your house?
A: Yes, the street door.
Q: Did you see his body?
A: Yes, I said, “My father,” and they would not let me go there.
Q: Then the soldiers took you to another house, as you have told us?
A: Yes.
Q: Were there many of you in the house?
A: My sister, my two children, my mother and myself.
Q: What was going on outside?
A: Looting and stealing.
