The Great Fire (16 page)

Jennings’s new routine in the job he had assigned to himself was to move through the city finding women, either far along in their pregnancies or suffering with serious injuries, and take them to his shelter. Again, his odd form with its strange up-and-down gait was seen making its way through the city’s backstreets. He identified the neediest cases and took them to his house on the Quay, where he used what primitive supplies he had to treat their injuries. At night he returned to Amy and the children at Paradise.

ON THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 7
, the British landed marines to guard the British consulate, a British bank, and the British-managed gasworks, which turned coal into gas to illuminate the city. It was just north of the Point and near the Standard Oil pier. The senior British naval officer also sent a train to Boudjah to bring British nationals into the city for evacuation on British merchant ships.

The defense minister of Greece and a new general arrived from Athens, and Hadjianestis was relieved of his command. The new general announced that the evacuation of the Greek army would cease and the city would be defended. He said the fresh troops that had arrived on ships from Thrace would form a perimeter around the city to prevent the Turkish army from entering the city. Martial law was declared.

Merrill’s job was to keep Bristol informed, but he was finding it difficult to send his cables from the radio room of the
Litchfield
because of radio interference from the other ships.
^*
In that first week, there were few ports in the world with as much aggregated armor and naval firepower as Smyrna. Five navies were present, four of them with capital ships, and every ship had its own telegraph transmitter. A ship’s telegraph at that time employed high-voltage sparks to form the dots and dashes that were sent into the atmosphere as radio waves that oscillated indistinctly over a wide range of frequencies. Two ships transmitting simultaneously were like two conversations over the same phone line;
eleven ships was a telegraphic babble. Few or no messages were getting out from the ships’ telegraphs.

On Thursday morning, Rhodes sent Knauss and the
Simpson
out to sea to escape the radio interference. The
Simpson
steamed fifty miles from the city and still it encountered interference. Knauss judged the situation in Smyrna too dangerous for him to put more running time between him and the city. In the meantime, Merrill used the Eastern Telegraph Office on the Smyrna waterfront to send his coded messages back to Bristol. He also returned to the French flagship and got Mme. Dumesnil’s consent to hand-carry his written messages back to Bristol in Constantinople. The ship had moved its day of departure from Smyrna up to the next day, and she was happy to help the pleasing young American officer who spoke excellent French.

Merrill continued to stroll the city, absorbing the scene and filtering it through his skewed perspective for messages back to Bristol. In the morning he inspected the American Theater and later had lunch with the retired British officer and railroad director, who, he learned, was operating as an intelligence agent for the British. With a tobacco agent from the Standard American Trading Co., he went to the railroad pier at the end of the Quay and watched Greek soldiers embarking on transports. Despite the assertions of the new Greek commander about a halt to the evacuations and protection of the city, the transports were leaving at the rate of one every hour. At the pier, Merrill also met a French intelligence officer named Lafont with whom he struck up a friendship and budding alliance.

In his rounds, and in his inimitable way, Merrill had found lodgings in the city far more comfortable than the bunk he had been assigned on the
Litchfield
. A departing Greek merchant had turned his elegant house over to Everett Washburn, the local agent for the U.S. Shipping Board, reasoning that there was no better way to protect his property than to leave it with the Americans. Washburn invited Merrill to stay in the house, which was only a short distance from Jennings’s shelter on the Quay. Soon, the reporters Clayton and Brown joined in, which made five of them, including Washburn’s local mistress. Knauss and Rhodes also made occasional use of the mansion. It was comfortably furnished and
well stocked with wines in the basement, which Washburn put to use entertaining his growing list of guests.

The relief work continued: Greek civil authorities turned over an orphanage at Boudjah to Professor Lawrence along with enough money to support it. Lawrence put a young instructor from International College, Raymond Moreman, a graduate of Pomona College, in charge of the orphanage, and children from other institutions around the city joined the two hundred fifty already there. Moreman’s first act was to raise an American flag over the building.

The relief committee also took possession of a warehouse near the Custom House Pier owned by the Patersons—a wealthy Levantine family that had left its property in the care of their American agent Roger Griswold, the committee’s secretary. Griswold was tightly connected in Smyrna—he owned and operated his own export business with the nominal Turkish mayor of the city as a partner, as well as being an agent for the American licorice company MacAndrews & Forbes. (He would later be accused of pilfering relief committee funds.) The Paterson warehouse contained foodstuffs that had been intended for export, and the committee created a record of items it withdrew for the refugees so that it could eventually reimburse the absent owners. Behind the warehouse there was a big above-the-ground water pipe that the relief committee opened and let run as a source of water for the refugees, who eagerly cupped it in their hands, drinking it and washing with it.

The Greek reinforcements that had arrived from Thrace saw the sorry condition and morale of the soldiers on the Quay, and many refused to disembark. By Thursday, September 7, it was clear that there would be no attempt by the Greeks to hold the city. The army was departing, and with the army would go the civil administration as well. Stergiades made an unsuccessful effort to charter ships to evacuate the ethnic Greeks who were Ottoman subjects—traitors in the eyes of the Turkish nationalists. Nothing else would be done. The Greeks and the Armenians were on their own, unprotected.

By late Thursday, the rearguard of the Greek forces, maintaining its cohesion and ability to fight, held a line less than fifty miles from
Smyrna. The Turkish cavalry was now only a day’s ride from Smyrna, and what had been the prospect of a possible Turkish occupation became certain and imminent.

Around midnight, George Horton boarded the
Litchfield
and requested that Rhodes land American sailors as guards in the city. The situation, he said, was too dangerous and unstable to leave Americans unprotected. Rhodes consented. He sent twelve sailors with rifles and two machine guns ashore and split them between the consulate and the American Theater. Further prodded by Horton, he summoned the
Simpson
back to Smyrna so that its crew could provide a bigger landing force. The
Simpson
received the recall message at 4
A
.
M
. and was back at 7
A
.
M
. Rhodes put sixty-four men ashore: in addition to the consulate and theater, he put sailors at the American Girls’ School, the YMCA, International College, the Standard Oil property, and the homes and businesses of Americans in Smyrna and nearby Bournabat. None were assigned to Jennings’s safe house since the house belonged to a Greek and the people inside were Ottoman subjects. The guards were limited to guarding Americans and American property.

The sailors were armed with rifles and three additional machine guns and given five days’ rations to allow them to remain at their posts onshore. Unsure that this was a sufficient force, Rhodes, in a quirky move, distributed U.S. Navy uniforms to some of the American civilians. He also detailed four sailors to watch the Washburn house where Merrill was staying, and he detailed an orderly to assist him in his work. He positioned the
Simpson
to keep a close watch on the Standard Oil dock and tanks.

BY THE MORNING, FRIDAY
, September 8, the Turkish army was twenty-five miles east of Smyrna, and the Greek army continued to load men and material onto ships in the harbor.

Merrill called on the Greek governor a final time and found him tired and defeated. Afterward, he had lunch with his new friend Lafont at the Union Francaise, where he learned from him of Allied plans to arrange a meeting between Mustapha Kemal and the Allied admirals
and consuls general in Smyrna. The objective was to broker a peaceful handover of the city. The French officer said he would be at the meeting, and Merrill eagerly sought to be included. The meeting was to take place the next day, at a secret location just east of the city. The French officer agreed to let Merrill join in, and he told the intelligence officer to meet him early the next day, before sunrise, at the Italian consulate. Merrill was elated at the prospect. He would be in the same room with Kemal. It would make a stirring report to Bristol.

Merrill returned to the
Litchfield
where he read the daily roundup of press reports compiled by Bristol’s staff in Constantinople and routinely transmitted to his ships’ commanders. When Merrill saw that the British press was inaccurately reporting that the Turkish army was seeking armistice talks because it had been stopped by the Greeks outside Smyrna, he went to the reporters on board and laughed at the inability of press to get the story right. Nonetheless, being the good fellow that he was, he invited them along on another trip he planned to take that afternoon to the approaching battle line east of the city, and off they went, this time taking along Lieutenant Knauss. Merrill’s French friend also came along for the spectacle.

They passed through Bournabat on the road to Magnesia, and about twenty miles out of Smyrna they found themselves in a valley between the Greek and Turkish armies with both sides firing artillery, machine guns, and small arms. The Turks were advancing slowly on the Greeks. Knauss recorded the scene:

The group returned to the city, and Clayton filed a story for the next day’s paper.

Merrill still had plenty of energy. He fit in two social calls—the first to the wife of the British consul, Harry Lamb, whose daughter had recently died, and he offered his condolences. His second call was to the family of the Danish consul, Henri Van der Zee, who welcomed him and asked for American protection. Merrill sent a navy orderly with a note to Rhodes and Horton, requesting that the family be included on the protection list at the American Theater. These trips through the city took Merrill past Jennings’s safe house, but Merrill took no notice of it. The refugees seemed invisible to him. His cables to Bristol were filled mostly with critical accounts of the Greek army and administration. Merrill went back to the house he shared with the shipping agent and reporters, enjoyed a big dinner with his friends, and stepped out for a late-night stroll before going to bed.

By then, the British had taken Stergiades aboard a British launch, which took him to the
Iron Duke
. A Turkish crowd had gathered at the waterfront as he departed and beat tin pots in celebration. He was the last Greek official to leave the city.

At 4
A
.
M
., Saturday, September 9, an orderly woke Merrill for his appointment with the French officer to go see Mustapha Kemal. He went to the Italian consulate, where he expected to meet his friend and the Italian colonel. The French officer had told him that the three of them would then proceed from the Italian consulate by car to the secret location
to meet Kemal. It was still dark at 4
A
.
M
. and the city was eerily quiet despite the number of people who were sleeping in the streets. The moon still appeared full, and it was low in the southern sky. “As I walked down the narrow paved streets,” Merrill noted in his diary, “the hollow sounds of my footfalls could easily have been heard in Constantinople.”

At the Italian consulate, Merrill had trouble getting in—doors were locked and no one seemed awake. Finally, after banging on the door, he was let in, and the Italian colonel told him that he was still waiting to hear from Kemal. When word was received, he told Merrill, the French officer would come to pick him up. Merrill returned to his house. At 7
A
.
M
., the French officer came by and said he was going to the French consulate to get updated directions for their mission and that he would return to pick up Merrill. As the French officer departed, an orderly from the
Litchfield
came into the house and reported that a third U.S. destroyer, the USS
Lawrence,
had arrived in the harbor and Captain Hepburn was aboard. He wanted to see Merrill immediately. Merrill had no choice—he would have to go to the
Lawrence
and possibly miss the adventure of meeting Kemal. “I left with fear and trembling,” he wrote in his journal. “I feared Lafont (the French officer) would return and not finding me at the mission would leave without me.” He would miss the adventure of a lifetime.