Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 - The Destruction of Islam's City of Tolerance (38 page)

Sergeant Crocker grasped that the soldiers were preparing to kill MacLachlan. One of the Turks had fitted a bayonet to his rifle and was moving menacingly towards the American principal. ‘I jumped forwards,’ wrote MacLachlan, ‘and caught it [the rifle] with both hands.’ As the soldier reeled backwards, the bayonet detached itself and clattered to the ground.

MacLachlan was now deprived of his last possessions – a gold ring and his trousers – before being severely beaten with the soldiers’ rifles. He was still being assaulted when a Turkish officer rode up and, disgusted by the lack of discipline among the irregulars, ordered them to stop.

‘When he saw that they obeyed him,’ wrote MacLachlan, ‘he came forward and pulled my arm over the horse’s neck so that I could support myself, for I was completely exhausted.’

The arrival of the officer in full military uniform had an extraordinary effect on the
chettes
. They melted away, enabling the American soldiers to come to the rescue of MacLachlan and Crocker. The two men were carried back to the American International College, where their wounds were dressed by the college doctor. Both men knew they had had an extremely lucky escape.

As the afternoon wore on, the owners of the city’s smaller bars and brasseries began to close their doors, although the larger establishments remained open – among them the Grand Hotel Kraemer Palace. At some point that afternoon, the hotel found itself receiving a most distinguished guest. Mustafa Kemal entered the foyer and asked for a table. No one recognised him at first and he was told that the bars and restaurants were full. But when hotel staff were informed of the identity of their guest, a table was quickly made available. Kemal ordered a raki – a Turkish liquor – and asked the staff: ‘Did King Constantine ever come here to drink a glass of raki?’ When he was informed that the Greek king had never set foot in the hotel, he replied: ‘In that case, why did he bother to take Izmir [the Turkish name for Smyrna]?’

Although the Grand Hotel Kraemer Palace continued to do business for the rest of the day, all of the other establishments now decided to close. Shutters were securely fastened and all external doors double-locked. The wide boulevards – which had hitherto remained lively – suddenly emptied of people. But for many of the refugees there was nowhere to hide. The quayside, courtyards and public gardens remained crowded with displaced people.

By mid-afternoon, discipline had completely broken down in Kemal’s regular army and commanders found themselves with little or no authority over men brutalised by years of war. Some of the troops – their passions fuelled by alcohol – were committing atrocities in full public view. British mariners stationed aboard the warships in the bay were witness to many shocking events on that Monday afternoon. Charles Howes was monitoring the violence through his field glasses and was sickened by what was taking place just a few hundred yards from his ship. ‘Two young women were seized by the Turks and, after being raped, their breasts were cut off and they were laid in the roadway outside the Oriental Works – a British business house where our naval force was headquartered and had its billet.’

Other corpses were thrown into the sea, whence they were carried by the current towards the British fleet. One seaman serving on the HMS
Serapis
recalled a dead body, floating in an upright position, repeatedly banging against the side of the ship. ‘[It was] tied in a sack, which was evidently weighted at the bottom.’ The captain ordered the corpse to be properly weighted, at which point it sank.

At four o’clock, a small group of senior American officials managed to secure an audience with General Noureddin, yet found him in no mood to discuss the deteriorating situation. Indeed, the good humour he had displayed towards MacLachlan had been replaced by an obstinate unwillingness to listen.

Among those present at the meeting was Major Claflin Davis of the American Red Cross. He pressed upon the Turkish general the absolute necessity of restoring order and helping the refugees return to their homes in the interior. Only this course of action, he said, could prevent a humanitarian disaster on a scale of which the world had never yet witnessed. There were by now several thousand refugees camped out on the quayside and at the mercy of the ill-disciplined Turkish troops. Elsewhere in the city, every public space thronged with hungry fugitives. Davis was convinced that the situation would deteriorate still further, as hundreds of thousands more people were reported as being en route to Smyrna.

General Noureddin was irked by Major Davis’s comments. ‘Take them away,’ he interjected. ‘Bring ships and take them out of the country. That is the only solution.’

Davis left the meeting with little doubt that a human tragedy of gigantic proportions was now inevitable. In a memo to Admiral Bristol, he warned that Noureddin had refused to guarantee the safety of a single refugee. ‘[I] believe this is a final decision [of the] Nationalist Government as [a] solution of [the] race problem,’ he wrote.

As dusk fell over Smyrna, George Horton was taken aboard the USS
Litchfield
in order to spend the hours of darkness in safety. The ship’s commander had watched the unrest move ever closer to the European quarter of the city and was no longer prepared to take any chances. He did not want Horton to become one of the Turkish army’s victims.

As Horton tried to relax in the ship’s wardroom, he listened to the two American journalists – Constantine Brown and John Clayton – reliving the terrible events they had witnessed that day. One of the men read aloud the page he had just typed before emitting a long sigh and tearing the sheet out of the machine. ‘I can’t send this stuff,’ he said to his colleague. ‘It’ll queer me at Constantinople.’

The men exchanged notes before agreeing that Admiral Bristol would be furious if he read such stories. He had made it absolutely clear that he wanted the world to be kept in ignorance about any Turkish atrocities that might take place in Smyrna, and Brown and Clayton had promised to protect American interests as a condition of their passage to the city. They put away their notebooks and decided instead ‘to get busy on Greek atrocities’.

Horton was horrified by what he was hearing. ‘It struck me as curious,’ he later wrote, ‘that men in the presence of one of the most spectacular dramas of history should think it their duty to hurry away in order to find something that would offset it . . . I don’t know what the game is, nor who is back of it.’

The stories that the two journalists filed that evening were at shocking variance with every other eyewitness account of that day. ‘The discipline and order of the Turkish troops have been excellent,’ wrote Clayton in a report that would be published in the
Daily Telegraph
. ‘When one considers they have just marched through a country laid waste by the Greek army, with thousands of Moslems slain, this is nothing short of remarkable.’

In an even more extraordinary phrase, he added: ‘The apprehension of fear-ridden Smyrna has turned to amazement. After forty-eight hours of the Turkish occupation, the population has begun to realise there are not going to be any massacres.’

Reverend Charles Dobson had every reason to disagree. Late that Monday night, a group of highly distressed women knocked on the doors of the Anglican church and begged him to follow them down the street. ‘[They] took me to show me carts in which were the bodies of women and babies and also of young girls who had patently been violated before being killed.’

Later still, another member of the clergy – the Armenian priest, Abraham Hartunian – witnessed an even more sinister development. ‘I saw with my own eyes the Turks taking bombs, gunpowder, kerosene and everything necessary to start fires, in wagonfulls here and there through the streets.’

He suspected that the Turkish military was planning to set the city on fire.

Tuesday, 12 September 1922

W
hen Rose Berberian awoke on Tuesday morning, she had to pinch herself to confirm that she was still alive. The previous twelve hours had been the most distressing of her life and she looked back on that black Monday with the feeling that she had had an extraordinarily lucky escape.

She had spent much of the afternoon and evening hiding in the coal cellar of the house that adjoined Mr Aram’s property. For hour after hour she had lain there in silence, listening to distant screaming and gunshots. There was no noise coming from next door and all that she could think about was what had happened to her mother, brother and sister. She feared that they had met the same fate as the hundreds of other Armenians who had remained in this quarter of the city.

At some point during the evening, her loneliness had turned to panic and she rashly shouted out her brother’s name. There was a long silence before she heard her own name being called back. It was her brother’s voice and it came from a nearby building. He too had escaped from the Turkish guards and was now hiding – along with his mother and sister – in the attic of the house on the far side of Mr Aram’s. The building had been temporarily abandoned by its Italian owner, who had raised his nation’s flag over the building in the hope that this would prevent it from being sacked.

Rose emerged from her hiding place under the cover of darkness and managed to clamber along the vine-covered trellis that bordered the terraces of all three houses. After much exertion, she was pulled in through the window for a tearful reunion with her family.

The Berberians had also passed a tense night in hiding, their fitful sleep troubled by the now-familiar sounds of looting and gunfire. After exchanging stories of what they had seen and heard, Rose and her mother crept down to the cellar of the building in order to draw water from the old handpump. As they made their way back upstairs, the front door of the house suddenly burst open and they found themselves face to face with several Turkish officers. The soldiers had come to make an inspection of the building, accompanied by the Italian owner. They wanted to be absolutely sure that he was not concealing any Armenians.

The Italian immediately protested his innocence and Rose’s mother had little option but to admit that they had broken into the building after being driven out of their own home. Rose – a headstrong and outspoken girl – added that they had done so because they had seen Turkish soldiers killing men and violating women.

Her words infuriated one of the officers, who slapped her so hard around the face that Rose began shaking uncontrollably. When one of the men asked her what was wrong with her, she told the man that she was sick. ‘I have no shoes, no clothes,’ she said. ‘Please let me go to my aunt’s house – it is just down the street – to get some clothes before you take me to the police.’ She did not have an aunt down the street but, quick-thinking as ever, she has an idea of how she might rescue her family.

Her ploy worked, possibly because the Turkish soldiers did not wish to appear too menacing in the company of the Italian man. The officer in charge ordered one of his colleagues to accompany Rose to her aunt’s house and then return immediately.

Rose was appalled by the scenes of carnage that greeted her. ‘It was the first time I had stepped outside for four days,’ she later recalled, ‘and when I saw the street, I was more terrified than before. Dead bodies, swollen, lay all about on the stoops and stairs of the houses and across the narrow streets. I had to step over them. If I had an aunt down the street, she would surely have been killed by now; the officer knew that. If I walk into a building, I thought, this soldier will probably kill me.’

Rose continued down the street, aware that her one hope of salvation lay at the distant junction. The walled compound of the American Collegiate Institute bordered the eastern edge of the Armenian quarter. If Rose could attract the attention of someone inside, she might yet be able to save herself and her family.

She approached the main gate – still accompanied by the Turkish officer – but saw that it was locked. She then rang the bell next to the side gate; when an American marine poked his head through an open window she shouted in English, ‘I’m a student here. Please let me in – quickly.’ The soldier retorted that he needed permission from Miss Mills, the acting head, and disappeared from view. Rose was about to give up hope when the gate suddenly opened and Miss Mills appeared in person.

‘Oh, Miss Mills,’ said Rose. ‘This man behind me . . . he is going to kill me. Please let me in.’ She quickly explained how her family were in a house down the street, adding that the Turks were certain to kill them and begging that an American sailor be sent to rescue them.

Only now did the Turkish officer realise that he had been duped by the young Armenian girl in his charge. He also knew that he was powerless to intervene. He could not lead Rose away, for he was being watched by American marines, yet neither did he wish to return to his commanding officer empty-handed. While he considered his options, the forthright Miss Mills took control of the situation. She despatched an American marine to the house where the Berberians were being held and told him to bring them back to the relative safety of the American Collegiate Institute.