Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 - The Destruction of Islam's City of Tolerance (39 page)

Rose’s sharp wits had saved her family from almost certain death. For the time being, the Berberians were safe.

The Berberians were not alone in finding themselves homeless and dependent on others. By mid-morning on Tuesday, Smyrna was housing as many as 150,000 refugees – most of them from the war-torn countryside around the city. The last of the Greek evacuation ships had set sail three days earlier. Now, flight from Smyrna was impossible for all except foreign nationals. The 500,000 Greeks and Armenians left behind had fallen into a dangerous trap.

What made a difficult situation even worse was the fact that refugees continued to arrive in their tens of thousands. There was no longer anywhere for them to find shelter; they had to camp out in the streets and pray that they would not become victims to the lawless elements of the Turkish army.

‘Pitiable objects,’ wrote the American officer, Lieutenant Commander Knauss, in his daily report. A guard of the American sentry headquarters, he was increasingly concerned by the ever-growing numbers of refugees. ‘For two days they have been huddled in small heaps,’ he wrote, ‘never stirring except when one of their number approaches with a guard for fresh water. If the Turks come through, their faces express more than fear. They are terror-stricken and as I feared a stampede would ensue in case of panic, I made all preparations for running down the iron screen promptly.’

Their sense of panic was fully justified; Knauss watched in disbelief as a band of Turkish soldiers grabbed a man and dragged him away. ‘Today, I have seen during my rounds over a hundred dead and four people killed in cold blood.’

If the situation was tense at US headquarters, it was even more critical at the YWCA. More than 500 women and children had already sought refuge there and many more were asking for asylum. ‘They were jammed in there so tight there wasn’t an inch to move,’ recalled Melvin Johnson, an American sentry. ‘But then more of ’em would push up against the doors – crying – and, well, we weren’t supposed to but we’d let them in.’ At some point that morning, Johnson and a colleague stepped outside in the hope of finding a bakery. ‘That’s when we saw the victims. They were lying all over in the sun, swelling up with the heat. Two of ’em was women. We couldn’t take but one look.’

Refugees sought shelter wherever there was an American, Italian or French flag, aware that these three nations were favoured by Kemal’s Turkish army. Thousands of Greeks and Armenians had pitched camp outside the American consulate, while the American International College and American Collegiate Institute were other points of refuge. By midday on Tuesday, at least 1,500 people were being housed in the latter institution. Eight babies had been born in the previous two days and an increasing number of inmates were falling sick. All were terrified that the Turkish army would force the gates and take them prisoner.

‘This day, there was a rumour that there would be an attack upon the College,’ wrote the Armenian priest, Abraham Hartunian. ‘This night, there was another, that in a little while Turkish officials would enter the building and take all the men away for deportation.’

George Ward Price had spent the morning trying to secure an interview with Mustafa Kemal. His persistence eventually paid off; Kemal agreed to meet him and talk about his terms for a lasting peace. ‘He talked for half an hour in fluent French,’ wrote Ward Price, ‘quickly, but with emphasis. One gold medal on his khaki tunic was the only decoration he wore.’ Ward Price asked him whether the war against the Greeks was now over. ‘There is nothing to fight about any more,’ responded Kemal, ‘and I earnestly desire peace. I did not want to launch this last offensive but there was no other way of persuading the Greeks to evacuate Asia Minor.’ When Ward Price pressed Kemal on his territorial demands, he was told that the nationalists claimed ‘all the areas of our country that are principally populated by the Turkish race’. This included all of Asia Minor, parts of Thrace and Constantinople.

This latter demand was of special interest to Ward Price, since there were still some 7,000 British troops in control of the capital. Ward Price asked Kemal what he would do if the British refused to leave. Kemal did not mince his words. ‘We must have our capital and if the Western Powers will not hand it over, I shall be obliged to march on Constantinople. I would rather obtain possession by negotiation, though, naturally, I cannot wait indefinitely.’

Ward Price left the interview with the impression that Kemal was fully in command of the situation. The
Daily Mail
ran the interview in full and gave its support to Kemal, arguing that Britain would be wrong to oppose the nationalist army.

Kemal himself was increasingly confident that he could wrest control of Constantinople by a mixture of diplomacy and muscle. That afternoon, he ordered some of his troops to march northwards towards the neutral zone that surrounded the capital and was patrolled by British forces. Kemal wanted to call their bluff and see whether Lloyd George’s government was prepared to fight his army.

Ward Price reported Kemal’s bellicose comments to Sir Harry Lamb. Alarmed by what he heard, he too arranged a meeting with Kemal in order to obtain clarification. ‘Technically, Turkey is still at war with Great Britain,’ was Kemal’s response. ‘I should be entitled to intern all British subject in Smyrna, but I am not going to do so.’

When the admiral of the British fleet, Sir Osmond de Beauvoir Brock, learned this, he decided to send his chief of staff ashore in order to further quiz Kemal as to his intentions, although the British still refused to believe that Kemal represented a serious threat. Brock asked his colleague whether he intended to wear a sword for the meeting. ‘A sword for that fellow?’ replied the impulsive chief of staff. ‘I should think not. I shall carry a walking stick.’

Six miles away in Bournabat, Hortense Wood faced a long and lonely Tuesday afternoon. Her nephew, Fernand, had headed back to Smyrna, leaving her amidst charred and smouldering ruins. She was entirely alone and completely cut off from the outside world. ‘A cordon of secrecy is maintained all around Bournabat,’ she wrote in her diary that morning. ‘No trains run, no telegrams can be sent to town. We are quite isolated.’

Charlton Whittall and his family felt no less isolated. They had spent the previous two nights hiding in the flood drain, listening to the sounds of gunfire and looting. At one point they were joined by a Greek family, from whom they learned that more than 2,000 Greeks from Bournabat had been killed by the Turkish army.

The family’s young child cried for much of the morning, leading Charlton to decide that it was no longer safe to remain in their hiding place. He felt that this was the moment for the family to make their escape. When they at last crept out, crawling along on hands and knees through the shrubbery at the bottom of Herbert Octavius’s garden, they could see irregular soldiers ransacking the Big House. ‘The Whittall family house [was] all illuminated,’ recalled Willem, ‘with Turks moving about and one, dead drunk, trying to dance with a stuffed bear made up as a hat stand.’

Charlton and his family eventually made their way to Smyrna and were given refuge aboard the
King George V
.

The rest of the extended Whittall and Giraud families were trying to make sense of everything that had happened. Herbert Octavius and his children were by now safely aboard a British warship in the bay of Smyrna, but many of his brothers and sisters were still living at Edmund Giraud’s summer house on Long Island. Edmund’s wife, Ruth, was doing her utmost to cater for everyone during her husband’s temporary absence in England, although supplies were running short. When the larder was finally empty, the various uncles, aunts and cousins climbed onto the
Helen May
and headed back to Smyrna, where they took shelter with friends who had elected to remain in the city.

It was a frightening time for the youngsters. ‘I wish I could say that I felt courageous at this point,’ recalled Ruth’s daughter, Mary. ‘But the truth is, I was terrified . . . the uncles would drop in of an evening to post Mother with all the scenes of horror that they had witnessed, with no concern for little ears that were taking it all in. I know that I used to go to bed and shake with fright till Mother joined me in the double bed.’

Ruth Giraud repeatedly turned down the offer of sanctuary aboard one of the British warships in the bay, determined to remain in Smyrna, come what may. Yet Tuesday was a turning point for many who had vowed to stay behind. It was on this day that people realised the violence was no longer sporadic, nor was it going to die down. Mustafa Kemal’s army – which had entered the city with such discipline – was completely out of control.

Grace Williamson had long been an enthusiastic supporter of the Turks, but when she came to write her diary that Tuesday afternoon her sympathies were on the turn. ‘This day, I think, has been the worst,’ she wrote. ‘All day there has been a black cloud over us . . . you have read of atrocities . . . They are too bad to [be] spoken of and they are taking place all around. The Turk’s vengeance has been smouldering for three years and he is having his fling now. It seems they have spared very few houses in Bournabat.’

Grace began to be concerned for her own safety, although she resolutely refused to leave Smyrna. ‘Everyone advises us to clear,’ she wrote. ‘But I, at least, must stop behind. I gave my word to the staff that I would stick by them whatever happens.’ Although she no longer dared to venture outside, she did clamber onto the roof of the English Nursing Home in order to survey the city. ‘[Smyrna] looks dreadful,’ she wrote. ‘No end of dead and rubbish all together.’

This was the understatement of the day. When the Reverend Charles Dobson made a tour of the city that Tuesday afternoon, he was witness to a city that had been plunged into anarchy. ‘There was desultory shooting, looting and rape all over the place,’ he wrote. He saw corpses lying in doorways and alleys in every district, although the carnage was at its worst in the Armenian quarter. ‘I was particularly struck with one group consisting of women and babies; and a young girl, almost nude, shot through the breast and with clotted blood on her thighs and genital organs that spoke only too clearly of her fate before death.’

Dobson showed remarkable courage in the face of danger, making his way slowly through the city in order to compile a report on the atrocities. ‘There was constantly shooting in the back streets, followed by screams and panic-stricken running,’ he wrote. ‘The Turks were openly looting everywhere. One man was shot through both thighs, one of which was fractured, his screams were unheeded by the terror-stricken people.’

George Horton also compiled a report about the savagery that afternoon. ‘The loot was now being driven out of the bazaars and the Armenian quarter by the cartload,’ he wrote, ‘and cartloads of corpses, as of beef or sheep, were being sent into the country.’ What made these scenes so incongruous was the fact that tens of thousands of refugees were still camping out on the streets, alongside cadavers, dead horses and broken furniture.

In the midst of all the carnage, a most eccentric spectacle unfolded that afternoon on the quayside of Smyrna. A small group of British mariners, armed with antiquated swords and cutlasses, could be seen landing at the northern end of the quay. At their head was an officer in full dress uniform, including frock coat and cocked hat.

The officer in question was Duncan Wallace, formerly of the Royal Navy and a long-term inhabitant of Smyrna. He had been summoned to service aboard the
Iron Duke
by Admiral Brock, who realised that Wallace had local knowledge that might prove invaluable.

Wallace informed the admiral of everything he had seen and confided his fears for his elderly aunt, Alithea Whittall, who refused to leave the nursing home that she owned. He also expressed his concern for the safety of his Greek servants, who had chosen to remain in the family’s summer house, and asked whether he might be permitted to go ashore and rescue them.

Brock was reluctant to spare any senior officers or weapons, but he allowed Wallace to gather a small landing party and head to the port. Wallace knew that he could not hope to fight any Turks who might impede his way so he decided to make a psychological impact by dressing in the most extravagant uniform he could find. According to Wallace’s son, Ian, ‘this improbable force, with my father at their head, stepped onto the quay and marched through the burning town full of drunken Turkish soldiery and looters.’

Wallace reached his summer house only to find that all of the family’s maids had been butchered. The situation was less grim at the nursing home, where Alithea Whittall was busily caring for dozens of sick and wounded. Wallace informed her of the dangers of remaining in Smyrna and managed to talk her into leaving. Alithea’s only condition was that she could take her patients with her. ‘It was now getting dark,’ wrote Ian Wallace, ‘and the party . . . endeavouring to convey an impression of official importance and confidence to the expedition, and with Alithea Whittall shepherding her patients behind him, mercifully reached the British ships without being molested.’

The 5,000 Armenians still sheltering inside the prelacy were awaiting their fate in absolute silence. Ever since the grenade attack forty-eight hours earlier, there had been an expectation that the Turkish soldiers would soon return. ‘People [were] huddled together waiting for hostilities to start anew . . .’ wrote Hovakim Uregian, who was still inside the building. ‘Food was distributed – thank God we seemed to have plenty of that – and everybody had a good ration. Few, however, had the appetite to eat much during those days of terror and suspense.’

By Tuesday afternoon, there was growing consent among those taking shelter there that it was time to negotiate with the Turkish military. Conditions were becoming increasingly unsanitary and few people had managed to sleep. They were still discussing a plan of action when a Catholic priest named Don Scaliarini visited the prelacy, announcing that he had been in talks with the Turkish military and had secured permission to guide everyone to the quayside under the protection of twelve French sailors. The only conditions attached to the evacuation was that all weapons must be left behind and that every evacuee would be subject to an inspection as he or she left the building.