The Great Fire (24 page)

But the Turkish soldiers had begun pulling the refugees out of their hiding places, including churches, and marched the Greeks and Armenian men they collected out of the city to face firing squads or beheadings.
As for the women, “Armenian women were to be seen in groups being guided towards the Turkish quarters,” according to a British account. “What became of them? At the last day it shall be known.” Near the Anglican church at the Point, Rev. Charles Dobson reported that he saw two hundred Christians kneeling and sitting on the road guarded by Turkish soldiers: “I afterwards learned from an absolutely unimpeachable source that these men were subsequently butchered. The method of killing, my informant told me, was by steel to avoid rifle fire.”

At the American Girls’ School, Knauss arrived to find that a band of Turkish soldiers was attempting to break down an inner door. They had gotten past the outer door by claiming they wanted to deliver a Greek priest to the school. When the door finally gave way, American sailors met them inside with lowered rifles. They backed out. Knauss also received a report from one of the sailors who witnessed a rape outside the school: “The Turks had taken a girl of fifteen from her father and mother into an alley. Her shrieks were plainly heard, then the Turks returned and one of them wiped a bloody knife on the mother’s forearm then led them down the street.”

Cabling Bristol, Hepburn reported that he could “not understand attitude (of) military authorities who could suppress disorder in two hours if so determined.” Davis was more direct. Explaining Noureddin’s decision to expel Christians from Turkey, he messaged his headquarters and Bristol, “Believe this is final decision (of) Nationalist Government as solution to race problem.”

The relief committee pressed Hepburn for evacuation of the most vulnerable Americans, the naturalized citizens and women and children—but Hepburn demurred. Horton had even suggested an interim plan worked up by him and Lamb at the British consulate—refugees would be moved to an old Ottoman fort just south of the city and housed and fed there until an evacuation from the country could be arranged.

Hepburn had two concerns that blocked his growing inclination to act. First, an American evacuation would be badly received by the Turkish authorities as a demonstration of a lack of American confidence in their good intentions, and consequently, Bristol would likely be opposed to it. Bristol had made a point of warning Hepburn in their talk before
his departure that Hepburn should be careful not to jeopardize the property and businesses of Americans in the city by antagonizing the Turks. Hepburn had another equally worrisome consideration as a military commander: the Turks might object to an evacuation of ethnic Greeks and Armenians who were naturalized Americans on the grounds that they had cooperated with the Greek administration and were therefore traitors, for which the penalty was death. In such case, Hepburn would be faced with a standoff. It would be impossible for him to hand over American citizens, even naturalized ones. (He and Merrill made the distinction between “natural born” and naturalized American citizens, treating the second group as less entitled to American protection.) American prestige—not to mention the American public—would not allow it. Hepburn desperately wanted to avoid a confrontation that would require military force, and he knew Bristol surely would disapprove if one were to arise.

The captain grew increasingly uneasy in his predicament. He was caught between the alarm expressed by the Americans with long experience in the city, toward whom he was being increasingly drawn, and the views of his superior officer in Constantinople with whom he was unable to communicate. His own judgment was in flux. He still had not sent his assessment of the relief supplies that were required in the city. The relief committee by now was unanimous in its view of evacuation, and Horton and others with the longest service in the country worsened Hepburn’s dilemma by pointing out to him that an evacuation would take time to accomplish, and if Hepburn asked for permission, negotiations would ensue and probably last at least a week. In the end, permission would likely be granted but on a person-by-person basis with a demand for names and papers—it would not be a general release for all persons. This would inevitably result in an impasse that would require either American force or capitulation.

Hepburn listened closely to the relief committee’s reasoning and then in his head ran through the arguments for and against evacuation. He decided that for now he had the stated, if not actual, cooperation of the Turkish authorities, and lacking an “emergency” involving Americans, he would maintain the current situation: no evacuation. If an emergency
arose, and he still thought it was unlikely, he would act to remove the naturalized Americans to American ships in the harbor. He gave no consideration to the evacuation of the city’s Ottoman Christian residents or refugees.

MEANWHILE THE RELIEF WORK
continued. The bakeries remained closed, food that had been brought on the
Lawrence
was running low, and the Turks had shut the water supply.

Nurse Evon had found her own way to deal with the lack of food. Each morning, she went to the YMCA, gathered a group of Armenian men, and led them through the Armenian Quarter to look through the rifled shops and homes for food that had been left behind. The American flag was her only protection, though she was easily recognized wherever she went by her big black-rimmed hat. The men collected sacks of beans, flour, and canned milk. Turkish civilians abused the men as they followed the American nurse, but they refrained from attacking them. After gathering the food, she led them to the YWCA, where they visited their wives and daughters, delivered the food, then returned them to YMCA. “They were, I think,” Miss Evon wrote, “the only living Armenians on the streets from Saturday to Wednesday, and the only Greek men I saw were gangs of prisoners, bound together, being driven through Turkish crowds that cursed and struck them.”

Misses Evon and Corning and Dr. Post also continued to move each day between the YWCA and the Dutch hospital in a car that had been supplied to them by the relief committee. Miss Evon walked ahead of the car with a cane, pushing discarded goods out of the way with a stick, and when she encountered a body, she and Post would carry it to the side of the street.

Jaquith cabled Near East Relief headquarters that no food was reaching the city and that seven hundred thousand people faced possible starvation: “Many deaths attributable starvation/typhus out broken and local hospitals overflowing/Appalling need doctors nurses medicines foodstuff/Deplorable conditions worsened by wailing pleading women babies be safeguarded.”

Then there came an odd and ambiguous warning. The Turkish command told Lamb that the foreign nationals in the city would be safe until the twelfth, Tuesday. After the twelfth, there were no guarantees. By making a submerged threat, the Turks had given him a deadline to remove British nationals. What, Lamb wondered, would happen on the thirteenth?

MONDAY
,
SEPTEMBER 11
, had been a long and trying day for Captain Hepburn, but it held one more surprise.

Throughout the previous week, George Horton had grown exasperated with the way the reporters in Smyrna had been reporting events to the outside world. They were reporting for both American and British papers. Generally, they conveyed a sense that the city had been swiftly and competently occupied by the Turkish army, and an expected massacre of Christians had not occurred. Violence was scattered and light, they reported, and mostly due to hooliganism. Typical of the reports was this from John Clayton: “The apprehension of fear-ridden Smyrna has turned to amazement. After forty-eight hours of the Turkish occupation the population has begun to realize there are not going to be any massacres. Apart from a few looters, who have been shot by the patrols, and a few snipers (who) executed Armenians, Greeks and Turks amongst the victims as a result of private feuds, there have been few killings.” After several days in the city, Ward Price, a correspondent for the
London Daily Mail,
filed a story that said, “There are rumors of considerable slaughter of Armenians, but, though there has certainly been some occasional killing and looting, inquiries made lead one to believe that the total has been much exaggerated by the panicky population of Smyrna.”

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.