Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 - The Destruction of Islam's City of Tolerance (40 page)

Don Scaliarini’s initiative had been prompted by his desire to help fellow Christians; he felt sure that they would all be massacred if they remained in the prelacy. His offer was put to the vote and the overwhelming majority of Armenians decided to chance their luck on the quayside. Uregian thought they were making a terrible mistake and feared for everyone’s safety once they were outside its walls.

The gates to the prelacy were soon opened and the refugees began filing out. As they left the building, a group of Turkish soldiers frisked and searched them. ‘At first they pretended to look for arms,’ wrote Uregian, ‘but if they found a watch or some other valuable object, they would try to pocket it while the overseeing French sailor was looking in some other direction.’

The situation deteriorated when the Turkish soldiers were joined by a group of irregulars, who saw the evacuation as an opportunity to fleece the refugees of everything of value. ‘As the crowed in the Prelacy was getting less and less, the Turks were getting greedier, tougher and more violent and unreasonable,’ observed Uregian. ‘Even the shoes were now considered “potentially offensive weapons” and the last few to come out, I learned from eyewitnesses, were allowed through with barely their pants and shirt on.’

Once the refugees were assembled outside the building, Don Scaliarini attempted to lead them down to the quayside, but it quickly became apparent that the Armenians – having been relieved of their arms – were now considered fair game by the Turkish irregulars loitering in the streets. ‘On every corner and on every turn, armed Turks, looking like a pack of wolves, would start firing and menacing, asking for valuables and young girls.’

Don Scaliarini did his best to protect the refugees. ‘The poor
mon père
was running all around, reproaching the Turks and exposing himself to real danger in defence of a crowd who were not even his flock.’

Although a fortunate few managed to seek refuge in the precincts of the French and Italian consulates, which flanked the quayside, the vast majority had little option but to settle themselves on the cobbled ground, wherever there was space. ‘Any foreign flag or sign was a valuable symbol to hold above a group of people to discourage attacks by the continually harassing and marauding Turks.’

Uregian noted that by the time dusk descended on that Tuesday, ‘thousands of Christians were huddled against the walls of the quay, looking for boats to carry them to some foreign ship out in the bay.’ Their search was in vain. The local fishing skiffs had long since headed to the nearby Greek islands and the foreign vessels were still under strict orders not to take off any Greeks or Armenians.

Uregian had no intention of remaining with his compatriots on the quayside. He felt it would be safer to find a hiding place in the city – either in an abandoned building or one of the numerous enclosed courtyards. He discarded his hat, which betrayed him as an Armenian, and acquired a red fez, complete with a badge displaying Kemal’s photograph. ‘I still failed to look like a Turk, because the bone structure of my face was so very far from resembling the Mongoloid Turkish facial structure.’ With head bowed, he hurried off to the inner districts of the city.

‘I started to walk with a confident pace,’ he wrote, ‘determined to survive the night, no matter what happened.’ He eventually came across a crowd of refugees who were pouring into a courtyard. ‘There were old buildings all around and all the people were Greek. I mixed with them and nobody seemed to mind so I decided to spend the night in that courtyard.’

Only now did he realise that he had not eaten or drunk anything all day, but there was no food to be found and Uregian had to endure acute hunger and thirst. He snatched a few hours’ rest, reliving the terrible events of the last few days. Although haunted by what he had seen, he knew that his ordeals were shared by many others.

‘Thousands of people went through the same experiences . . .’ he wrote. ‘Night after night, people had to huddle together under walls or next to their bags, screaming whenever the Turks approached and struggling in vain when some girl was kidnapped. Many a father and mother met their death trying to defend the honour of their daughter.’

As the refugees tried to sleep, few noticed that the breeze had freshened and stiffened. It was no longer blowing off the sea, as it had been ever since the arrival of the Turkish army. By the early hours of Wednesday morning, it was blowing from the land. If a fire was to be started now, the Greek, Armenian and European areas of Smyrna would be in grave danger.

Wednesday, 13 September 1922

W
ednesday dawned clear and beautiful; it was to be another glorious day. Yet the autumn sunshine did little to mask the reality of the situation inside Smyrna. Mustafa Kemal’s victorious army was out of control and the city’s population – which had now swelled to 700,000 or more – was in imminent peril.

Sir Harry Lamb had seen enough bloodshed on the previous evening to convince him that it was no longer safe for any British nationals to remain in the city. Most had already heeded his advice and accepted sanctuary aboard one of the British ships in the bay. Nevertheless, 800 or more had stubbornly refused to leave and their lives were now at risk.

Sir Harry took his breakfast at the consulate, as was his custom, and then ventured outside in order to visit the British maternity hospital. He wanted to inform the nurses of his decision and he also hoped to meet the Reverend Charles Dobson. Lamb needed the vicar’s help in tracking down all the remaining British nationals in the city.

Dobson readily offered his services. He had already shown remarkable courage over the previous three days, roaming the streets in his efforts to care for the wounded and homeless. Now, he once again took his life into his hands and set out to visit all the addresses where he knew British nationals to be staying.

‘The narrower streets were choked by running masses of people carrying their children in their arms,’ he later recalled. ‘In one of the streets, a man was dragging himself across the road on his elbows. He was shot through both thighs, one of which was fractured. The panic was so great that nobody answered his appeals.’

Dobson picked his way through the streets, methodically bringing news of the impending evacuation to all the British nationals he could find. The remaining members of the Whittall family, the Girauds, the Wood family, the Patersons and Hadkinsons – all were informed that lighters would be despatched from the British battleships later that afternoon to take them to safety. All who wanted to leave would be collected from the quayside; it was their last chance to get out of Smyrna.

To this day, Alfred Simes remembers those last few hours in the city. ‘The consulate gave every British family a Union Jack to hang outside their home,’ he said. ‘It was supposed to offer some sort of protection against attack.’ Alfred also recalls his mother casting her gaze across the bay to the waiting battleships. ‘There were so many of them in the harbour . . . as a small boy I remember being particularly impressed by the huge turrets. I’d never seen ships like the ones gathered in the bay.’ As he watched the vessels from the roof of the family home, his mother hastily gathered together a few belongings. ‘We were told to bring jewellery and hand luggage. Everything else was to be left behind.’

The Brussalis family were also preparing their flight. ‘My father was well connected with the French community in Smyrna,’ recalls Petros. ‘He was well liked by the Catholic sisters who ran my school and through them he began making arrangements for us to be transferred to a French battleship.’ Petros’s parents spent much of Wednesday locking away their valuables; they were to leave the city that night.

Most European nationals in Smyrna – including the entire Levantine community – realised that it was time to get out while they still had the chance. But in Bournabat, Hortense Wood still refused to countenance the idea of abandoning her home. She was doggedly determined to protect her villa against any Turkish irregulars who dared to come near.

‘We have been very anxious [about] Hortense,’ wrote one of her sisters in a letter that Wednesday afternoon. She need not have worried; Hortense was more than capable of looking after herself, although her decision to remain in her own home was to have unexpected consequences over the days that followed.

The distressing scenes witnessed by the Reverend Dobson that morning were nothing to the carnage that had been seen by members of the Smyrna fire brigade. The firemen were a mixed company of Greeks and Turks whose station was partly financed by the London insurance firms. These firms had underwritten many of the most prestigious properties in Smyrna, so it was in their interests to protect these properties against fire.

The firemen had already answered several calls during the early hours of Wednesday morning. Now, at 10.30 a.m., a new blaze was reported on Suyane Street, in the Armenian quarter. One of those sent to tackle the flames was Sergeant Tchorbadjis, an old hand in the Smyrna brigade and someone who had seen many harrowing scenes during his long years as a fireman. But nothing prepared him for the horrors that were to greet him that Wednesday morning.

‘In all the houses I went into, I saw dead bodies,’ he said. ‘In one house, I followed a trail of blood that led me to a cupboard. My curiosity forced me to open this cupboard – and my hair stood on end. Inside was the naked body of a girl with her breasts cut off . . .’

When he stepped back outside, Sergeant Tchorbadjis found the streets awash with Turkish military. ‘There were plenty of armed soldiers going about. One of them went in where there was an Armenian family hiding and massacred the lot. When he came out, his scimitar was dripping with blood. He cleaned it on his boots and leggings.’

Reports of the ever-worsening violence were by now flooding into the American consulate, where George Horton was keeping a careful note of each new wave of attacks. The missionaries at the American Murray Institute were growing increasingly concerned for their safety, even though they had several marines guarding the building. ‘The looting and murder went on steadily under our eyes,’ wrote one. ‘Fierce chetas [irregulars] were breaking in doors of houses, shooting the poor cowering inhabitants, looting, etc.’

Although Horton was still under strict orders from Admiral Bristol not to evacuate American citizens, by noon on Wednesday he knew that he could no longer obey. American lives were now at risk and he had little option but to follow Sir Harry Lamb’s lead. He informed all American nationals that they were to start assembling at the main theatre on Smyrna’s quayside. At some point that afternoon, everyone was to be evacuated.

At the same time that George Horton committed himself to evacuating the American population of Smyrna, a teacher named Krikor Baghdjian – who was hiding on the roof of the Armenian Club on Rechidie Street – was witness to a most alarming sight. At the far end of the street, a band of troops was busily unloading what appeared to be large barrels of petroleum. ‘I did not see their content,’ he wrote, ‘but judging by their colour and shape, they were identical to barrels of the Petroleum Company of Smyrna. Each barrel was guarded by two or three Turkish soldiers and they were being carted all along Rechidie Street towards the Armenian Prelacy. I felt a chill on my spine as I realised the purpose of all these preparations.’

As he and his friends watched these disturbing events from their rooftop hideaway, they saw more and more barrels being wheeled into the Armenian quarter. ‘Each barrel was placed 200m apart, [and] when all the barrels were in position . . . I heard what I can only describe as “sounds of rain falling on a roof.”’ The Turkish soldiers were spraying the buildings with petrol.

‘We felt drops falling on us,’ wrote Krikor, ‘[and] soldiers in the street below threw up the walls a liquid with buckets. As soon as I got the smell of this liquid from my wet clothes, I had no doubt it was petroleum.’

Flames were spotted shortly afterwards. One of the first people to notice the outbreak of fire was Miss Minnie Mills, the director of the American Collegiate Institute for Girls. She had just finished her lunch when she noticed that one of the neighbouring buildings was burning. She stood up to have a closer look and was shocked by what she witnessed. ‘I saw with my own eyes a Turkish officer enter a house with small tins of petroleum or benzine and in a few minutes the house was in flames.’

She was not the only one at the institute to see the outbreak of fire. ‘Our teachers and girls saw Turks in regular soldiers’ uniforms and in several cases in officers’ uniforms, using long sticks with rags at the end which were dipped in a can of liquid and carried into houses which were soon burning.’

Just minutes after Miss Mills had made these observations, Mrs King Birge – the wife of an American missionary – noticed a thin column of smoke rising from the Armenian quarter. ‘I went up into the tower of the American College of Paradise and with a pair of field glasses could plainly see Turkish soldiers setting fire to houses.’

Numerous reliable witnesses would later testify to the role of Kemal’s troops in starting the fire. Claflin Davis of the American Red Cross saw Turks sprinkling flammable liquid along a street that lay in the path of the fire. Monsieur Joubert, director of the Crédit Foncier Bank in Smyrna, plucked up the courage to ask a band of Turkish soldiers what they were doing. ‘They replied impassively that they were under orders to blow up and burn all the houses of the area.’ Another senior French businessman – whose business interests required him to testify on condition of anonymity – said that all the shops of Hadji Stamon Street were set alight by soldiers acting under the direction of the former head of Turkish police in Cordelio, a man whose identity he did not reveal but who was known to him personally.