The Great Fire (19 page)

Miss Evon, born in Detroit, was the director of nursing for Near East
Relief—she was easily recognized by her broad-brimmed black sunhat and round, black thick-framed glasses. In her mid-forties, she had served in the navy and worked for the Red Cross in Paris during the war and in Czechoslovakia afterward, before making her way to Turkey. Sara Corning, thirty-seven years old and from a small town in Nova Scotia, had cared for sick and wounded orphans in Marsovan and Samsun, on Turkey’s Black Sea coast, where she had witnessed the deportations and killings of ethnic Greeks in 1920. The three—the doctor and two nurses—plunged into the city to find a hospital where they could receive and treat sick and wounded people from the streets. Like battlefield surgeons, this was work with which they were familiar and skilled.

AFTER THE MEETING
, at about 10:45
A
.
M
., Hepburn retreated with George Horton to the consul general’s office on the consulate’s first floor to the right of the entranceway. It was a simple space: rolltop desk, swivel chair, two armless wooden chairs, and a typewriter table. As the two talked, Horton’s obvious exhaustion made an impression on Captain Hepburn. His fatigue was written on his face and showed in his posture. His eyes were dull; he had gotten little sleep. He moved stiffly. For the past nine days, Horton had been besieged by pleas for help—some coming even from other consuls in the city who feared for the safety of their nationals and themselves—and he had tried to respond to all of them. He was no longer young; the heat, the long hours, the demands of getting about the city—and especially the looming prospect of a Turkish occupation and what he felt in his stomach would be its inevitable and gruesome outcome—had worn him down physically and mentally. Hepburn had already absorbed the animus toward Horton at the embassy in Constantinople, but he felt a brief moment of sympathy for him.

As they talked, they heard a commotion outside the consulate, the sound of a human stampede, then they heard shots from the direction of the waterfront. Horton left the office, went to the front door, and saw the crush of people outside. He led Hepburn to the consulate’s rooftop terrace for a look at what was happening. Below them, hundreds of people surged up Galazio Street toward the consulate. Looking toward the harbor,
the two men saw a column of Turkish cavalry moving slowly southward and in good order along the Quay.

The soldiers were dressed in dusty, brown khaki uniforms, and their heads were wrapped in rags that lay back on their necks against the sun. Their faces were brown, their bodies lean, and most had their rifles slung across the croppers of their saddles. They rode quietly except for the sound of the horses’ hooves on the cobbled street. The morning sun glinted off their swords, stirrups, and rifle barrels. Their horses, small and delicate Turkish mountain ponies, walked with a prance despite their evident exhaustion. A steamer in the harbor sounded a single horn in salute. The Quay, lined with thousands of refugees only minutes earlier, was vacant except for the trunks, furniture, and personal goods they had abandoned in their rush to the city’s backstreets. There on the Quay, sitting straight in their saddles and looking directly forward through tired Asiatic eyes, was the embodiment of the fear that had gripped the refugees and triggered them to flee their villages.

From the ships, terraces, and other vantages along the street, the foreign military officers who watched the procession could not help but be a little thrilled by the display of martial discipline and the battle hardness of the Turkish soldiers. “Swarthy hard-bitten men, with growth on their faces,” a British officer said, “they showed evidence of their long advance of over one hundred miles during the week, but despite a lack of smartness they impressed one with the discipline displayed, and there was little arrogance in their manner as they entered the town.”

The cavalry had entered the city from the north, come down around the Point, past the mansions of Bella Vista, past Jennings’s safe house, where he stood out front watching them go by, past the clubs, restaurants, hotels, and movie houses, and past the consulates, and at the moment they were nearly abreast of the American Theater. Some carried loot: brass jugs, trays, electro-plated goods, guitars, rugs, china ornaments, and one even had a garden table balanced across his saddle. Some had no saddles—they had ditched them to lighten their loads and ride faster in pursuit of the retreating Greek army.

Their entry into the city had been marked a few minutes earlier by an event that could have been lifted out of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.
At a place behind the Point, a British officer, Captain Bertram Thesiger, commander of the HMS
King George V,
was ashore inspecting the British guard at the gasworks when he saw the column of Turkish cavalry moving toward him. He stepped into the road in front of them and raised his hand to signal a halt.

“Who are you?” asked the diminutive Turkish officer at the head of the column. He was Cherfeddine Bey, a major of the Turkish Fourth Regiment. He spoke in French.

Thesiger, responding in French, introduced himself as an officer of the British navy. (It would later come out that Cherefeddine misunderstood and thought he was the commander of all British forces in the Mediterranean.) Thesiger summarized the situation in the city—the Greek army had departed and the British and others were holding the city until the arrival of the Turkish army. There was no need for aggressive action; the city was calm.

“Thank you,” responded the Turkish captain. “What do you want me to do?”

Thesiger suggested that the cavalry proceed into the city along the Quay instead of the backstreets, which was the direction in which it was headed. He said it would be safer for them, and they would avoid getting lost in the welter of unfamiliar streets.

As this polite conversation went on between the officers, some of the soldiers in the column pointed revolvers at the heads of Greek men on the street, demanding money. One man refused and was shot and killed. Thesiger protested.

“But it is only one man,” the Turkish officer responded, “and he is dead.”

The Turkish officer gave the order to advance, and he followed the British officer’s directions and turned right to the Quay. The cavalrymen drew swords and some fired their revolvers into the air.

Now, on the Quay, silent but alert and erect in their saddles, the soldiers might as well have been moving through defiles of the Anatolian plateau in anticipation of an ambush. Theirs was the order of men who had ridden long and hard over a hot dry landscape. Someone threw a bomb, and Cherefedinne suffered a shrapnel cut to his face, but he remained
mounted. The soldiers cleared the street with a whiff of rifle fire. Several people in the street were killed. The soldiers continued on their horses without breaking formation. As they moved along the seaside, with the harbor on their right, past Galazio Street, and approaching the Turkish Quarter and the Konak, the city’s main administration building, Turkish crowds gathered and cheered them, bringing them glasses of water. The air was full of red fezzes thrown skyward.

Inshallah,
Izmir was back in Turkish hands.

MacLachlan and Merrill, who had been in the consulate when Hepburn and Horton had been meeting in Horton’s office, fought their way through the Turkish crowd to the Quay. (Davis was at one of the city’s better restaurants enjoying lunch. It was mostly empty except for him and the waiters.) Greek soldiers were still departing the city when the Turkish cavalry came on to the Quay, and a group of them was caught near the Konak as the Turkish cavalry arrived. There was a brief firefight, and the Greeks were captured and some were killed. Merrill, wanting to be near the action, had followed the Turkish cavalry to the Konak. He wiggled and squeezed his way through the crowd like a boy at a crowded parade route and entered the building, producing a document that Horton had prepared for him in French the previous night identifying him as a naval representative of the United States. There, among the gathering Turkish officers, he recognized Major Cherefeddine, the small, slight officer who had led the cavalry into the city. Exhilarated and never shy, Merrill introduced himself, and the two officers chatted in French. Other Turkish officers arrived at the second-floor reception room outside an office occupied by the ranking general in the city, Murcelle Pasha, commander of the First Cavalry. Merrill offered his congratulations and shook their hands. The Turkish major, whose shrapnel showed under his eye, told Merrill the story of the bomb that had been thrown and a second that failed to explode. The two had a good laugh about it. Merrill had made another friend.

NOW THAT THE TURKISH ARMY
had entered the city, it was necessary for Captain Hepburn to make official contact with the Turkish command,
but the jubilant Turkish crowds made it impossible for him to get near the Konak. He decided to wait until the Turkish celebrations calmed down and the crowds dispersed.

The appearance of Turkish troops had created panic among the refugees, and they attempted to enter any building that showed a French, British, or American flag, often crowding the entryways and trying to force their way past the guards. Using a relief-committee car with a small American flag flying from the grill, Hepburn, Knauss, and Davis made a round of the buildings guarded by American sailors and directed them to lock the doors and remain inside. At the American Girls’ School, the refugees, frightened by a Turkish civilian who was leveling his rifle at them in the street, broke through the doors and entered the building while Hepburn was inside talking to his men. By midafternoon, Hepburn saw that the Turkish army had posted sentries on most of the main street corners, sometimes accompanied by Italian reservists in the city. The captain returned to the theater. At 4
P
.
M
., he finally was able to make his way to the Konak, bringing Davis, Jaquith, and Dr. Post with him. Merrill, who had returned to the consulate after meeting with the Turkish officers, also came along. Hepburn entered the general’s office and, with Dr. Post serving as his Turkish interpreter, congratulated him on the good appearance of his troops. Their arrival, he said, was a great relief to the city.

Murcelle listened with polite formality. A broad-chested veteran of World War I, Murcelle had fought the British and Russians at the Battle of Baku, and after the war, he had been arrested by the British as a nationalist threat in Constantinople and then released, allowing him to join Mustapha Kemal’s army in the interior of the country. His cavalry had fought hard from the initial assault at Afyon Karahisar fourteen days earlier and formed the vanguard of the Turkish force in the final push toward Smyrna. Hepburn told the Turkish general that he had positioned sailors as guards at the consulate and other locations. Murcelle in turn said the guards could remain. Hepburn then introduced Davis and Jaquith, at which point Murcelle realized he was speaking with Americans, not the British. He brightened and ordered his aides to offer his American guests cigarettes. More relaxed and cordial, Murcelle promised to send a liaison
officer to the American consulate in the morning to coordinate refugee relief. All of this pleased Hepburn; it’s what he had expected.

As Hepburn left Murcelle’s office, he was satisfied that he would get the general’s cooperation and the relief committee would be able to do its work. As the group was departing, Merrill recognized three faces in an anteroom. They were Clayton and Brown, and a third showing its familiar ruddy complexion. It was Sweeny whom he knew from Constantinople. With Bristol’s encouragement, Sweeny had come to Smyrna on the
Lawrence
. His goal was to take a trip on the road that led east from Smyrna to the towns and villages burned in the Greek army’s retreat so he could write an account of the Greek atrocities that Bristol had told him about. Merrill peeled away from Hepburn and joined the reporters who said they were waiting for an interview with Murcelle. Merrill admired Sweeny’s reputation for military adventure—he had heard from Bristol of Sweeny’s many exploits—and decided to stay with the reporters, where there was likely to be some action. Hepburn returned to the consulate.

General Murcelle gave the reporters an interview, and then Sweeny, who was armed with letters of introduction he had brought with him from Constantinople, presumably from Bristol and Hamid Bey, persuaded Murcelle to give them a pass to travel to Magnesia. Sweeny wanted to meet with Mustapha Kemal for an interview about his victory and the Greek retreat. Apparently, Bristol’s suggestion to Hamid Bey about the utility of the Greek atrocities had fallen on receptive ears. Sweeny was in Smyrna to show the Greeks for the dishonorable race that they were, but to do that he needed access to the villages burned by the Greek army and an interview with the supreme Turkish leader. Murcelle provided the pass and assigned him a Turkish lieutenant as a driver and interpreter, and off the reporters and Merrill went on their sanctioned errand toward Magnesia. It would be Merrill’s third attempt to get there since arriving on the
Litchfield
three days ago.

Just outside of the city, near Bournabat, the four encountered a crowd blocking the way. There were several bodies lying in the road, and an Italian army officer stood between a group of Turkish civilians and a group of Italian residents of Bournabat. The two sides were in a deep dispute,
shouting and threatening each other. The Italian officer appealed to the Americans to intervene with the Turks, though the root of the dispute was unclear, and the Turkish lieutenant who was their driver joined the argument against the Italians, making matters worse. The dispute was moving toward a violent climax when a contingent of Turkish cavalry came up the road in full gallop followed by a big touring car. The crowd quieted, and the car skidded to a stop next to the Americans. The Turkish lieutenant, looking frightened, stiffened and clicked his heels. It was obvious he recognized the imposing man in the rear seat. Merrill and the reporters would soon learn from the driver that the man was Noureddin Pasha, commander of the Turkish First Army and a hero of the recent campaign.