The Great Fire (20 page)

A big man with closely cropped hair and beard, Noureddin struck Merrill as having the bearing of a Prussian officer. (“The only man I had ever seen who could strut sitting down.”) He barked at them in German, and his car pulled away. Now, with Sweeny snapping orders to the Turkish driver, the Americans followed and pulled up alongside the pasha’s car. Sweeny thrust his bundle of letters at him, the ones he had brought from Constantinople. After shuffling through them, the general motioned for the Americans to follow him back to Smyrna. At the Konak, Noureddin told Sweeny that his cavalry clogged the roads to the east and he would not allow the reporters passage farther inland until the army had passed. Sweeny argued with him, asserting the importance of propaganda and publicity to the Turkish cause. Noureddin said he didn’t give a damn for either and dismissed him. The Americans returned to the house that served as home base for Brown, Clayton, Merrill, Washburn, and his mistress and now for Sweeny.

What the Americans didn’t know was that command of the city had passed to Noureddin. It was a fateful step.

IN THE FIRST FEW HOURS
after the arrival of the Turkish cavalry, the city was quiet except for Turkish celebrations. Hepburn had radioed Bristol that the city was orderly and conditions favored a peaceful occupation. “Large supplies will undoubtedly be needed, but approximate data not
yet obtained.” Hepburn was confident of Turkish cooperation. “There is no question as to the intention of the authorities to preserve order; and they are taking efficient measures,” he cabled his boss. He added this final note: “Special troops are detailed to protect refugees.” This is what Bristol had foreseen—or at least had hoped for—a smooth and peaceful occupation by the Turkish army. It would affirm the argument he had been making to Washington—that Turkish atrocities in the past had been exaggerated. It was the Greeks and Armenians who were instigators of trouble.

But by midafternoon, Hepburn’s assessment proved wildly inaccurate: Looting and violence had begun, and it would take Hepburn at least two more days to accept the extent of his misjudgment and alter his view of the Turkish command’s intentions. In the meantime, many thousands would die. Almost immediately after the arrival of the cavalry, Turkish residents had begun leaving the Turkish Quarter and roved the Armenian Quarter with clubs, rifles, and shotguns. In increasing numbers as the afternoon wore on, they swarmed the backstreets, the Armenian Quarter in particular, and were harassing, robbing, and killing Christians they encountered outside their homes. The Turkish sentries posted throughout the city looked the other way. Sometimes, the Turkish soldiers joined the civilian mob as perpetrators.

Knauss witnessed the violence firsthand on his late-afternoon rounds. On nearly every street that he passed in the Greek and Armenian neighborhoods, there were bodies lying about, shot from close range in the face or the back. The victims were young and old, and mostly men, though there were also the bodies of old women on the street. Often the man’s shirt or pants had been removed, and in every case his shoes had been taken. The method was the same: Several Turks would stop a Christian they found on the street, and with two men holding him, another would search his pockets. He would be ordered to hand over his clothes, then shot in the head or back at point-blank range. Knauss had brought Horton with him on the late-afternoon circuit, and together they witnessed three killings. As Knauss drove through the Armenian Quarter in the car, which was flying the small American flag, residents dashed from their homes, put their hands and faces to the windows of
the car, and pleaded for the Americans to save them. In one instance, an Armenian dashed from his home, and Turks on the street who could not see the American flag on Knauss’s car began firing at him, barely missing the car. Knauss was under orders not to interfere to save refugees. He drove on, leaving them behind. The shooting increased with each passing hour, and Knauss counted twenty-five bodies in the streets between the YMCA and the Girls’ School.

At the consulate Hepburn grew worried. There seemed to be no end to the number of refugees coming into the city, based on reports he was getting from the relief committee. The Greeks and Armenians who lived in the city were staying inside their homes behind locked doors and shuttered windows, but the refugees from the countryside were crowding ever more tightly near the Quay, and the two or three streets parallel to it—Rue Parallele, the first street back; Quay Inglise, the second street back; and Frank Street, the third street back, which formed the heart of the shopping district. The city’s forty-six Christian churches—Greek Orthodox, Armenian, Roman Catholic, and Anglican—were packed with refugees, and those who had not been able to gain entrance collected in the cemeteries and other public spaces where they could gather their goods and animals and spread a blanket. An American officer whose car tires had been shot out while traveling back to the theater from Paradise reported to Hepburn that Turkish snipers with long-range rifles had begun picking off refugees who had sought refuge at International College. There would be a muffled shot heard far in the distance, the elapse of a second or two, and then a refugee would drop to the ground, struck in the chest or head by a bullet. Each shot turned the refugees into a panicked herd.

Late in the afternoon, the congregations of several of the city’s Greek churches, led by priests in their black robes and toadstool hats, appeared in front of the American consulate and begged for protection inside the building or its courtyard. Hepburn declined, and fearing the people would storm the building, he sent an aide to the Konak to request Turkish guards for both ends of Galazio Street to keep it clear. By now more naturalized Americans and their families gathered at the American Theater. Hepburn ordered the exit of everyone in the theater who did not have proof of American citizenship, which meant pulling apart extended families
and sending those without passports or legitimate claims to American naturalization into the street. There were sobs and shrieks as family members were ejected. Horton was increasingly disconsolate. Pleading didn’t help. Hepburn’s orders were to offer protection only to American citizens. Protecting Ottoman subjects might be an affront to the Turkish military. As it grew dark, the crowd of refugees outside the consulate continued to swell until the Turkish guards arrived from the Konak. At their appearance, the refugees melted into the side streets or joined the tens of thousands on the Quay, where families camped in small groups and prepared small spaces for the night.

The Turkish cavalry that had entered the city in the morning had been about three thousand strong, but by evening many thousands of foot soldiers began appearing, some along the route traveled by the cavalry, others seeping into the city from the rear and entering the backstreets of the Greek, Armenian, and European neighborhoods, where they took what they wanted from shops and homes, including young women.

Hepburn returned to the
Litchfield
to get some sleep. He could hear gunfire on the backstreets from the ship’s deck. There was no fusillade as would be the case with the encounter of two armies. Rather there was the intermittent sound of a single shot, or two or three shots at a time, indicating killings of individuals or people in small groups. It was the sound of fatal muggings and executions. Hepburn lost count. It went on through the night.

BRISTOL HAD INSTRUCTED HEPBURN
not to coordinate a relief effort with the Allies, and consequently Hepburn did not meet with the British, French, or Italian officers at Smyrna. The ill will between Bristol and the British in Constantinople was spilling over into Smyrna.

Like the Americans, the British had no intention of evacuating Ottoman Christians, but they were faster to decide on an evacuation of their nationals and more sympathetic to the plight of the city’s Greek governor. The British admiral de Brock, commanding
the Iron Duke,
had steamed immediately to Smyrna on learning of the Greek setbacks from British consul Harry Lamb on September 2. He also ordered the
King George V,
another capital ship, to head to Smyrna. Both ships had arrived the next day. De Brock had gone ashore, and after meeting with Lamb and Governor Stergiades, he had decided to evacuate British nationals. De Brock and his officers had spent Monday, September 4, preparing for the evacuation, and on Tuesday he had landed British marines before sunrise to supervise the embarkation of the British onto the hospital ship, HMHS
Maine,
and British merchant ships that he had requisitioned from the Levant Steamship Co. And on Friday, he had taken Governor Stergiades aboard. On Saturday morning, the day that Hepburn had arrived, de Brock had put ashore a strong force of additional marines to protect the British consulate and property. He established British headquarters at the Oriental Carpet Manufacturing Co., which because of its height offered a good vantage for British signalmen. As he did all of this, de Brock kept close tabs via radio on the situation at Chanak, the eastward flank of the Dardanelles where the British expected a Turkish incursion into a neutral zone established by the Sevres Treaty. If the Turks were going to pursue the Greeks into Europe, or if they intended to take eastern Thrace, their prewar possession in Europe, they would have to cross the Dardanelles at Chanak. Britain had decided its response would be to engage them with naval artillery and a small force of infantry and sink any vessels that attempted to make the crossing. In other words, de Brock, while evacuating British nationals at Smyrna, was also preparing for war with the nationalists.

HEPBURN WAS NOT PREPARING
for war. The U.S. Navy was in Smyrna to protect Americans and American property, and the captain’s assignment was to collect information for Bristol. The necessity of protecting Americans would continue, but it’s hard to see what additional information Hepburn needed to gather. The situation was clear, and it was alarming. Hundreds of thousands of people lacked food and shelter. Nonetheless, Hepburn appeared in no hurry to steam back to Constantinople with his assessment or a list of necessary relief supplies.

On Sunday morning, September 10, his second morning in the city, he drove with Lieutenant Knauss to Paradise to evaluate the danger at
International College. The road passed through the Armenian Quarter, and the two officers saw streets littered with bodies. Hepburn counted thirty-five, including two old women, one of whom was still kneeling, though lifeless. They saw a man lying on the ground who had been shot in the back but was still alive. They did not stop. Turkish civilians and soldiers were looting Armenian homes and shops, often with the body of the shop owner lying across the doorsill or on the pavement just outside the shop. There was no attempt to hide the looting as the American officers drove by—it was being conducted casually and out in the open. Carts were being loaded with rugs, furniture, pots and pans, and bolts of cloth.

As the two American officers passed over the Caravan Bridge at the back of the city and entered the countryside, they saw empty carts tipped over without animals, unwanted goods scattered on the road, and the bodies, presumably of the owners, lying nearby. There was the body of a man who had been shot while trying to climb out of a steep ditch beside the road, and in a farm enclosure, they saw several Turkish boys throwing stones at a refugee man who had been shot in the head but had not yet died. And through all of this, the refugees continued moving along the road toward Smyrna.

At Paradise, about a thousand refugees had gathered inside the college grounds. Many more refugees were camped in a field adjacent to the college. Hepburn and Knauss passed through the college gate, where American sailors were posted with a machine gun and entered the college grounds as a church service was ending. Hepburn spoke to MacLachlan and the school’s staff and many of the town’s residents, including the Jennings family, in the central courtyard as gunfire popped in the nearby fields and hills. Turkish troops had passed by the college all night, and in the morning, Hepburn learned, the college’s staff had awakened to looting of some of the empty houses and closed shops in town. MacLachlan praised the American guards and assured Hepburn that the situation at the school was tense, but there was no need to evacuate. The American guard consisted of twelve men, eight from the
Lawrence
and four from the
Litchfield
. A twenty-nine-year-old chief gunnery mate named Louis Crocker from Everett, Massachusetts, was the lead
guard. Crocker had been particularly reassuring to the American wives and daughters at Paradise. “His name,” Hepburn noted, “seemed to be on the lips of every woman.”

The situation at the college soon would turn more dangerous, and MacLachlan’s confidence would prove misplaced.

On their return to Smyrna, Hepburn and Knauss heard more frequent rifle fire coming from the hills and fields between Paradise and the city and saw fresh bodies on the way back. They lay in groups of three or four along the roadside and in the adjacent fields. Knauss had been keeping count, reached forty, and then for the purpose of his ship’s diary gave up counting and concluded only that “great numbers” had been killed. The man whom they had seen on the way out—shot in the back but still alive—had been shot in the head and now lay dead along the roadside. They returned to Smyrna over the Caravan Bridge and upon entering the city managed to get lost in the maze of narrow streets. As they blindly navigated the Armenian district trying to find their way back, they heard more rapid shooting and saw that Armenians were no longer just being robbed and shot in the street. Turkish civilians and soldiers were breaking down doors, killing people inside their homes, and pulling out household goods. The bodies of families—victims of all ages, men, women, and children—had been dragged out of the houses and were strewn about the streets. Every shop had been broken into and where steel shades had been drawn against looters, the shops showed signs of battering and forced entry. Bales of rugs, dry goods, and store merchandise were lying along the street and sometimes blocked the officers’ car until a smiling looter pushed some of it aside for their passage. Hepburn and Knauss finally wended their way back to the Quay through the Turkish Quarter and the bazaar.