Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 - The Destruction of Islam's City of Tolerance (31 page)

In the first days of September – at least seventy-two hours before Hortense Wood sighted the first column of retreating soldiers – Herbert Octavius decreed to his family that it was time to depart – at least for the time being. They should escape while they still had the chance to save themselves and their most treasured belongings. He hoped that they would be able to return within a few weeks – if not days – but he was not prepared to take any risks. As effective head of the dynasty, he had a duty to protect everyone’s lives.

His decision was unprecedented. Never before – not in all the 113 years that the Whittall family had lived in Turkey – had they felt in such imminent danger. Never had they fled in the face of danger. Even at the outbreak of the First World War, when they were specifically targeted by the government, they had remained at their posts. Now, they were taking their temporary leave.

Not everyone agreed with Herbert Octavius. His younger brother, Charlton, was on holiday in nearby Phocaea when he learned the news of his decision. Charlton refused to countenance the idea of abandoning Bournabat; indeed, he did not even see any reason to break off his holiday. As far as he was concerned, Herbert Octavius was making a fuss about nothing.

The Giraud family was also inclined to stay put. Edmund Giraud was in England on business and out of contact but his wife, Ruth, one of Herbert Octavius’s many nieces, felt that the crisis was being overblown. She was spending a few days with her children at the family’s newly restored villa on Long Island when she heard what had happened to the Greek army. She determined to remain on the island for a few more weeks until the panic blew over.

Other scions of the extended family took the decision to move temporarily from their Bournabat country villas into the heart of Smyrna. Jessie Turrell, another of Herbert Octavius’s nieces, opened the doors of her town house to scores of relatives. ‘Granny Mary, Aunt Blanche, my mother’s eldest brother, Edgar, his wife, son and Greek maid had come away from Bournabat . . .’ wrote Jessie’s daughter. ‘The whole house became a dormitory but, somehow, there was a bed for everyone.’ The family remained there for just two days. As news from the interior grew increasingly menacing, they accepted the offer of sanctuary aboard the
Thalia
, a British hospital ship at anchor in the bay.

The British consul, Sir Harry Lamb, was so alarmed by the incoming intelligence reports that he encouraged everyone with British nationality to follow suit. Hortense Wood could not see what all the fuss was about. ‘All Bournabat has fled,’ she wrote, ‘fearing all sorts of dangers threatening them. I am sure nothing will happen.’ She resolved to remain in her house come what may, along with a handful of other stalwarts. Nevertheless, the evening of 6 September was a melancholy one. Hortense’s closest friends, the Charnauds and Reeses, had left earlier that afternoon and several of the great houses of Bournabat lay dark and silent. The only noise came from the constant shuffle of soldiers and refugees, passing outside the gates.

In the American colony of Paradise, there was also growing unease. Alexander MacLachlan, director of the American International College, had spent the day musing on how he should respond to the crisis. He was less concerned about the retreating Greeks than the advancing Turks, especially the
chettes
or irregular forces. Students of the college brought ‘disturbing rumours’ that a 5,000-strong band of
chettes
were approaching Smyrna from the south and would quite probably pass the college campus on their way into the city.

This particularly unsettled MacLachlan as the college was well known for its large population of Greek and Armenian students. He discussed the situation with a colleague and together they agreed a plan of action. The two men decided to meet the
chettes
if and when they approached, to ‘warn them that the college was an American institution and that any interference with it would not only be resisted, but would create serious complications for the Turkish government and also themselves’.

Pleased to have established some sort of contingency plan – although one that depended on bluff – MacLachlan then instructed his college students to head to Paradise station and hand out water to the thousands of newly arrived refugees.

Smyrna’s bishops and priests also spent much of Wednesday afternoon trying to work out how best to advise their flocks. The Reverend Charles Dobson, the Anglican vicar of Smyrna, paid a visit on Metropolitan Chrysostom – still the spiritual leader of the city’s Greek Orthodox population – ‘and found him in a state bordering on despair concerning the fate of his people’.

Metropolitan Chrysostom was one of the few people who thought that Kemal’s army would enter the city and massacre its Christian inhabitants. He asked the Reverend Dobson to send a telegram to the archbishop of Canterbury, begging him to inform Lloyd George of the gravity of the situation. ‘For Christ’s sake,’ read the last line of his message, ‘hasten to avoid the calamity which we feel is approaching.’

The metropolitan’s fears were temporarily mitigated by a meeting with consuls of two of the great powers. The French representative, Michel Grillet, told him that troops from France were due to arrive within days. The Italian consul gave similar assurances, adding that ‘as he had to defend 15,000 Italian citizens, he would be the defender of all Christians as the citizens of his country lived in all quarters of the city’.

But when Chrysostom went to see Sir Harry Lamb, he found that Britain’s consul was singing from a very different hymn sheet. He told the Greek metropolitan: ‘Why have you come to ask me to defend you and to provide military intervention? . . . How can British soldiers or the British Army be brought here for immediate defence when Greek soldiers are retreating in a disorganised manner? What army can resist an enemy that is advancing swiftly without hindrance with all the energy it can command?’

As dusk fell on the evening of 6 September, still the soldiers and refugees poured into the city. Charles Howes, a young British naval officer stationed in the bay of Smyrna, was shocked by the condition of the 50,000 Greek troops that had by now congregated on the quayside. ‘I do not hesitate in saying that they were the most dilapidated, filthy, untidy, slouching lot of humans I have ever witnessed wearing uniform.’

He learned that most had received no supplies of food for twelve days and were ‘haggard, hungry looking, some barefoot . . . no officers, no regulations, no marching, just sloughing along in twos and threes as fast as their stumbling legs permitted’.

As the inhabitants of Smyrna went to bed that night, there was a growing sense of unease. It was clear to everyone that a crisis – and perhaps a catastrophe – was just around the corner.

Thursday, 7 September 1922

W
hen Hortense Wood awoke on the following morning, refugees were still streaming past her gates. ‘They went on and on,’ she wrote, ‘and when asked where they were going, they invariably answered, “We don’t know.”’ Hungry for more information, she quizzed them about the Greek army’s defeat, but it was impossible to get any clear idea of the scale of the disaster. ‘All sorts of rumours are afloat,’ she wrote. ‘Those who come from the interior, from Alascheir, Magnesia and other towns, give different versions of what has happened.’

One group of refugees told her that Ushak had been reduced to ashes. Others told her that only the oil and benzine depots had been torched. ‘And so the days go by, enlivened with fanciful rumours or unreliable telegrams and newspapers. We must wait for some really authentic news.’

In the absence of any definite information, Hortense concerned herself with domestic matters. She was extremely worried about Cecil – one of her numerous nephews – who had just undergone an emergency operation on his foot. ‘Blood poisoning had set in,’ she wrote in a letter to her niece, ‘and things may have turned very badly for him if [Doctor] Denotowitz had not been called in time.’

Yet even this seemed of trifling importance when compared to the scenes taking place outside her window. She stepped onto her balcony several times before lunch and at one point noticed that the first storm clouds of autumn were billowing up behind the bulky flanks of the Nymph Dagh. ‘Rain would be a disaster now that so many thousands of refugees are homeless,’ she wrote. One of her neighbours brought her news that the number of people camping out on the streets of Smyrna now exceeded 100,000.

There was by this time considerable disquiet among the Levantine families who had decided to remain in their homes. Just a few days earlier, Charlton Whittall had poured scorn on his brother’s decision to leave the country. However, hearing more and more rumours of atrocities committed by the Greek army, he hastily cut short his holiday and returned to Bournabat.

‘We arrived to find the roads choked with refugees trudging along,’ recalled his son, Willem, many years later. ‘With difficulty, we penetrated to Bournabat to find that practically everybody had already left.’ Charlton still had no intention of joining the fugitives. He wanted to protect his property in the event of trouble.

Others displayed rather more caution in the light of the rapidly changing situation. Most members of the extended Whittall and Giraud families had already left Bournabat and moved into their Smyrna town houses. Now, they loaded their yachts with provisions and joined Ruth Giraud at her house on Long Island.

‘The descent of relatives and friends upon our island solitude was spectacular,’ wrote Mary Giraud, a young girl at the time. ‘Boats kept rolling into harbour and aunts and cousins arrived up at the house to take temporary refuge.’

Not all the Levantine families had the luxury of second homes in Smyrna or on Long Island. In the absence of anywhere else to go, many sought lodgings at the English Nursing Home. By Thursday morning, Grace Williamson was beginning to feel the strain of caring not just for Greeks and Armenians but for local friends as well. ‘[At] eight o’clock, the whole Pengelly family arrived,’ she wrote in her diary. ‘Next came Louisa Langdon and three babies, nurses and granny; bundles galore, baskets, boxes, etc. – crying children, distracted mothers . . . Fortunately, there is an eating house quite close and we did not have to provide meals, but the confusion was awful.’

The Pengellys soon decided to board the British hospital ship in the bay, even though Grace urged them to remain in Smyrna. ‘Oh! What they will suffer in that horrid little steamer, packed full. Of course, all the penniless – and people with very little brains – were on board.’

Grace was angered by the attitude of the British consulate, whose staff were urging people to leave. ‘Why should they scare the English so?’ she asked herself. ‘French and Italians are calm and not one [is] leaving.’

She certainly had no intention of abandoning the nursing home. ‘With us there is no choice, I am thankful to say. We have to stick by the clinic and our patients.’ Her principal concern was the lack of space to lodge the incoming tide of people; even the flower garden of the Anglican church was by now cluttered with tents and bedding. ‘Every mortal place is packed with refugees,’ she wrote. ‘We have given all we can.’

At some point on that Thursday morning, Grace surveyed the scene from her upstairs window and was suddenly struck by the scale of what was taking place. ‘It is very pitiful,’ she concluded, ‘and they will suffer more and more.’

Many families camping in the streets were pinning their hopes on the American and European warships in the bay. There was a general assumption that the American and other Allied powers would intervene if and when the Turkish cavalry decided to enter the city.

People might have thought differently had they known more about the personality of the man who was directing American policy towards Smyrna. Admiral Mark Bristol, the High Commissioner in Constantinople, was a patriotic American who had always believed in placing his country’s interests above any other consideration. ‘I am,’ he said, ‘for the US, first, last and always.’

His policy towards the disintegrating Ottoman empire had long been one of ruthless pragmatism, exploiting any path that would bring profit to America. He had been implacably opposed to his country taking a mandate over Armenia at the end of the First World War, arguing that it was a land that was ‘practically desolate [and] without natural resources . . . to use a slang expression, “we would be given the lemon”’.

Nor did he wish American investors to join forces with European and Levantine businessmen already working in Turkey. ‘It is a task worthy of America to stand up for the big idea of clearing up the whole of the Ottoman Empire by once and forever destroying all European influences and concessions.’

Admiral Bristol believed that the Greek occupation of Smyrna had been nothing more than a British plot to extend her sphere of influence into the richest area of Turkey. In one of his more controversial statements, he declared. ‘We fought to destroy the Prussian power; we may still have to fight to destroy the British power.’

His outspoken comments raised eyebrows in both Turkey and America. ‘I am even accused of being pro-Turk,’ he wrote to the president with more than a hint of indignation, ‘but such things do not bother me fortunately because I believe there is only one correct road to follow and that is the right road.’