Decisions at Smyrna: A Speech at the American Hellenic Institute

Robert Shenk

As most of you will know, I’m sure, immediately after World War I, dozens of American Near East Relief teams scurried throughout Turkey and Armenia, to help all the survivors of what now call the Armenian Genocide. American Navy ships were sent to Turkey as well, to help transport those relief teams, and to support other Americans in the area, which included many missionaries, teachers and doctors at mission stations that had been established throughout Turkey by the Congregationalist Church during the 19^th Century.

The American navy was headed up by Admiral Mark Bristol. Bristol was much less interested in the religious outreach or in the relief work to which so many Americans had committed themselves—although he supported both--than he was in the growth of American business enterprises throughout the Black Sea region. 

Over four years, some 40 or 50 navy destroyers served about six months’ duty apiece in the area. With a homeport at Constantinople (modern Istanbul) on the Bosporus Strait, they steamed throughout the Black Sea and Aegean, and called at major ports both in Turkey and in Southern Russia. The young officers and sailors aboard these ships were usually not much interested in relief work nor religion nor business either, but were fascinated by the novel opportunities of being able to drink while ashore (Prohibition had just begun in the States) and getting to know some of the beautiful young Russian and Greek women who they ran across in Constantinople and other ports. My own background is partly naval, as I’m a retired captain in the naval reserve as well as an English professor (I served on river patrol boats in Vietnam and on a navy destroyer), and like many modern naval officers, I had no idea that there had ever been an American Black Sea Fleet. Learning of a friend’s discovery of a newly discovered diary of a young officer who had spent 6 months in Constantinople--I began to study the period.

Upon reading the late Marjorie Housepian Dobkin’s fine book, Smyrna, 1922, I soon realized that the central crisis faced by the small American fleet in Turkish waters was the burning of the great city of Smyrna in September of 1922. The terrible suffering and great loss of life that was inflicted upon ethnic Greeks and Armenians at the hands of the Turks there eventuated in a great rescue, partly led by men and officers of the American navy, this despite Admiral Bristol’s opposition to his ships helping in any significant way. Although tens of thousands refugees, residents of Smyrna, and captured Greek soldiers lost their lives--probably somewhere between one and two hundred thousand died--still, 200,000 were eventually saved in that rescue . . . though many more could have been saved had the admiral been more of an even-handed, unbiased and charitable officer.

  Let me go into this issue about Admiral Bristol just a bit. As I’m sure you know, in 1919 and 1920, initially sponsored by the wartime Allies (Britain, Italy, France, and the United States), a Hellenic Greek army pushed its way into the middle of mainland Turkey, with the object under the Greek Premier Venezilos of establishing a kind of Greek empire by adding the more or less Greek parts of Western Turkey (Smyrna and surrounding regions) to Greece proper. When, after two years of warfare, the Turkish Nationalist army of Mustafa Kemal defeated the Greek army and began marching toward Smyrna, Admiral Bristol issued directives to his naval ships and officers that the Americans at Smyrna were to be utterly neutral. These directives handcuffed the admiral’s on-the-scene commander, Captain Japy Hepburn, prohibiting Hepburn from directly helping the many tens of thousands mainly ethnic Greek refugees who fled to the great port. Nor was the Captain Hepburn able to give much help to the citizens of Smyrna who also wanted out of the place.

“Be neutral. Protect only Americans. Don’t cooperate with the Allies.  Don’t lead the way.” So the Admiral ordered Captain Hepburn, who commanded the three destroyers and the officers and men the admiral had also sent to the port.  Why did Bristol so limit his on-the-scene commander, and effectively prevent any American-led humanitarian operations?  Partly because the admiral was all about promoting American business . . . and what American business needed was friendship with the Turkish authorities. The admiral had been courting the Turkish Nationalists since they first began to make noise in mainland Turkey in late 1919. Bristol also couldn’t stand the Greeks (one can find comments to this effect in his letters and war diaries), and had contempt for the British, too. For it was the British (with the French and Italians) who had taken charge of Constantinople upon the 1918 armistice and eventually occupied the city, and because America had never declared war on Turkey, would not let the Americans into the Allies’ inner circles there. 

Bristol had gone out of his way to help the White Russian refugees when in March of 1920, 150,000 of them evacuated the Crimea and fled across the Black Sea and down the Bosporus Strait to Constantinople (in one of the final cataclysms of the great Russian Revolution). The admiral had sent navy ships directly to assist in that evacuation. Now, though, despite the suffering and terror of several hundred thousand ethnic Greek and Armenian residents and refugees in Smyrna, Bristol directed his destroyermen only to help and evacuate the Americans who were living and working there.

Because of Bristol’s directives, when the three American destroyers arrived, their officers knew they were not to cooperate with the two dozen Europeans warships in the harbor, several of which dwarfed the American ships in size, gun capability, and manpower—the British had battleships in the harbor, for instance, each of which was manned with over a thousand sailors (whereas the three small American destroyers had only 100 men aboard). In the first week of September of 1922, while awaiting the first elements of the victorious Turkish army to reach Smyrna, these ships were all anchored in the harbor, observing the waterfront of that great city.

The waterfront was fronted by the great Smyrna Quai, a mooring spot and large boulevard stretching a mile and a half along the waterfront, roughly thirty yards in width. The beautiful, busy city that sported such a unique waterfront had a mixed population of Greeks, Turks, Armenians, Jews, and Levantines--indeed, at the time Smyrna was one of the most truly cosmopolitan cities in the world. It was a great commercial center, bringing in goods of all kinds from Europe and America and sending out the fine produce of the countryside. Besides doing business, Smyrna’s inhabitants also danced and partied galore; and it was customary for Smyrna’s citizens to wear their finery and stroll up and down the broad quay in the early evening, for instance.

Now that the Turkish army had crushed the Greek army, though, things were tense. Although not all of the Greek army got away from the Turkish army—thousands were captured—those Greek troops who had been able to flee the Turks had been evacuated by transports that had moored in or near Smyrna. Some Greek army stragglers were still nearby when, on September 9^th, the first Turkish cavalry troop entered the city and rode down the famous quay. It was the first cohort of many thousand Turkish Nationalist troops which would pour into the city over the next week. As days wore on, the Turks who came were more and more bandit groups that had joined Kemal’s army and submitted to some military discipline, but by their subsequent actions they showed they were more interested in murder, rape, and loot than in any genuine military activity.

It did not help, of course, that as the Greek army retreated (increasingly, that army had been abandoned by their officers), those Greek soldiers had burned down the villages they went through in order to slow the Turkish army’s advance. They had also forced the Greek villagers they ran across to abandon their homes and rush with them toward the Aegean. Two years of war, much Turkish propaganda, all those burning villages, and the several days of pillage traditionally allowed the members of a conquering army insured that terrible things would soon occur.

But no one took measures to prepare for what was to come; indeed, few military people seem to have recognized the potential catastrophe that was at hand. As for the American navy officials there, nothing the admiral had told him prepared Captain Hepburn and his destroyer captains for the horrors they all were about to witness. The admiral actually insisted that the Greeks and Armenians should be encouraged to stay in their homes and continue to live under Turkish rule . . . in which his guidance was the exact opposite to that of the long-time American consul at Smyrna, George Horton.

Indeed, not long after Bristol was issuing his “utter neutrality” orders to his officers, and was asserting that all the Christian minorities who lived in Turkey should stay there, Horton was cabling the State Department to this effect:  “There is one point which I wish to make very plain and to vouch for on my absolute knowledge and authority. These people can never return to their homes.” Horton knew the racial antagonisms and the Turkish modus operandi far too well to have any doubts. In the late 19th Century, for instance, Turks had massacred tens of thousands of Armenians, and the Armenian genocide directed by the Turkish government under cover of war in 1915-1916 had killed maybe a million and a half Armenians, and many ethnic Greeks as well. Now, in addition, there had been the two-plus years of the Hellenic Greek occupation of much of western Turkey (hugely resented by the Turks) and the smoke of all those villages just burned by retreating Greek troops.

In his cable to officials in Washington, Horton described the situation, and also quoted the brutal General Noureddin Pasha who had taken charge in Smyrna--who had told the Americans upon inquiry, “bring ships and take the refugees away.  We Turks certainly cannot feed them.” Consul Horton concluded, “Here is then the big humanitarian task in which there is no reason, political or otherwise, that America should not take a hand.” He went on to outline a plan for assembling the refugees fourteen miles outside of Smyrna as a staging place for their evacuation—a plan that had been drawn up by American relief workers at Smyrna, who manifested considerable prescience as well as human feeling, unlike the both unfeeling and naïve American admiral.

But Captain Hepburn turned his main attention to care for and, if need be, evacuate American civilians living and working in the region. Partly because he was handcuffed by his orders, and partly because he didn’t see the need for any such radical humanitarian action as Consul Horton recommended (Hepburn had only reported for duty in Turkey six months earlier, and had never been out of Constantinople himself), the captain did nothing toward setting up a wholesale evacuation or anything of the kind.

Meanwhile, as the Turkish army entered the city, what was going on in Smyrna?  Let me share with you some contemporary reports from American civilians and navy people.Though storefronts soon shut up after the Turkish cavalry column arrived, Hepburn thought the initial panic had subsided quickly. Late that afternoon, he sought out the senior Turkish officer, who assured him order would be established as soon as possible. However, Lieutenant Commander Harry Knauss, captain of the USS Simpson who was now heading up the navy’s shore patrol, found that the Armenian quarter had quickly become infested with “shooting parties,” Turkish civilians armed with rifles and shotguns. There, according to the destroyer captain, “the real killing” had already begun. “On nearly every street were lying bodies of men of all ages and conditions, most of whose wounds were from rifles and close ranged shots as they were invariably shot in the face or in the back.” Commander Knauss personally witnessed three executions that day.

Seeing such things, hosts of Greek and Armenian civilians and refugees began to push their way into every building that flew an American flag. By nightfall a thousand people had forced their way into the girl’s school called the American Collegiate Institute, and five hundred were at the YWCA (with its large courtyard), as two examples. The sailors guarding these places had their hands full just keeping additional refugees out. The Smyrna Theater became the American headquarters ashore, and it was also crowded with refugees.

Within a day or two, many more Turkish troops had arrived, and Vice Consul Maynard Barnes reported that both regular soldiers and officers were looting and killing. From the nearby Collegiate Institute on one of these early days, several people witnessed a woman who lived in a building across the street being surrounded by Turkish soldiers. The soldiers robbed her and tore her rings from her fingers. When they finished, one of the Turks stepped back and cut off one of her hands with his sword. She was never seen again.

That night, fewer shots were heard, and Americans who gathered at the consulate the next morning thought that order had been reestablished, but an investigation discovered that bayonets and knives had simply supplanted guns. By day, looting and killing continued, and now Americans reported that Greek and Armenian men were being collected in groups by military authorities and being marched out of the city to face firing squads. A sailor named Cahall told Commander Knauss about watching over the wall of the American Collegiate Institute and seeing a family detained. A girl of fifteen was taken from her parents into an alley, after which her shrieks were clearly audible. The Turks returned, and before leading the parents away, one of them wiped a bloody knife on the mother’s forearm.

As for Consul Horton, the day Navy Captain Hepburn came to Smyrna, he noted that Horton “had about reached the limit of his physical endurance.” Besides writing cables and trying to organize to protect Americans, Horton had been besieged for days by residents wanting visas and telling horrible stories. One old woman, for instance, came screaming to Horton, crying, “‘My boy! My boy!’ The front of her dress was covered with blood. She did not say what had happened to her boy, but the copious blood told its own story.” Although his strenuous efforts were credited with saving hundreds of lives, by this time the consul was near breaking down. Hepburn had Horton sent to Athens on the first ship.

On the Smyrna quay about this time, Vice Consul Barnes would see some awful things. Circulating among the terrorized refugees on the quay were four or five groups of Turkish civilians armed with clubs covered with blood: “I saw one of these groups fall upon an Armenian . . . and club him to death. The proceeding was brutal beyond belief. We were within ten feet of the assailants when the last blow was struck and I do not believe there was a bone unbroken in the body when it was drug to the edge of the quay and kicked into the sea. In this group were boys of no more than twelve or thirteen years of age, each with his club, participating in this horrible killing as heartily as did the more mature individuals.” Stunned by this, Barnes admitted in his report what he now found indisputable—that the Turk was capable of a “vandalism essentially medieval.” But he quickly added in his report that, of course, all Eastern races were capable of committing atrocities. Barnes knew that without some such qualifying statement blaming the Greeks and Armenians too, his report would be frowned upon by the admiral.

So much for just a few pictures of the first few days of Turkish occupation of Smyrna. On the 13^th, Americans sailors noticed fires being set in the Armenian quarter. The sailors believed they had been set to drive the thousand refugees sheltering there into the streets, thus offering further victims for attack and plunder.  With a strong wind blowing from the southeast toward the quay and the rich European areas (and away from the Turkish district), the fire grew quickly. By 5:00 p.m. the blaze had become such a holocaust that it was clearly destined to reach the foreign consulates at the water’s edge. Every living thing fled to the waterfront—Greek peasants from the interior, local Greek and Armenian merchants, European residents, frantic horses and mules, and herds of sheep. From there the refugees began to plead with anyone in the consulates or with sailors out in the warship anchorage (the USSLitchfield’s stern was not far away) to save them from the fire. But each country was busy saving its own.

On the early evening of the 13th, this was the spectacle as it appeared to Captain Hepburn on the stern of the Litchfield: “The broad waterfront street appeared to be one solidly packed mass of humanity, domestic animals, vehicles and luggage. Beyond, still separated from the crowd by a few short unburned blocks, the city was a mass of flame driving directly down upon the waterfront before a stiff breeze. Mingled with the noise of the wind and flames and the crash of falling buildings were the sounds of frequent sharp reports, such as might have been made either by rifle fire or the explosion of small-arms ammunition and bombs in the burning area. High above all other sounds was the continuous wail of terror from the multitude.”

Those refugees who found a way to get out of the city toward the east were forced back into the inferno by Turkish soldiers. One source reports that the Turks set up machine-gun nests at each end of the long quay to ensure refugees did not leave the area.

The fire grew throughout the night. Admiral Bristol’s intelligence officer Lieutenant Merrill had taken a quick trip on a destroyer to Constantinople and back. The following scene presented itself to Merrill and the American Navy people as their ship entered the harbor an hour before dawn: “The entire city was ablaze and the harbor was light as day. Thousands of homeless were surging back and forth along the blistering quay—panic-stricken to the point of insanity. The heartrending shrieks of women and children were painful to hear. . . . To attempt to land a boat would have been disastrous. Several boats tried it and were immediately swamped by the mad rush of a howling mob.”

Merrill thought those on the quay were lucky there was a sea breeze, or they would have been “roasted alive.” Four cars and two trucks parked at the doorway of the Smyrna Theater were, in fact, burned to cinders. Packs belonging to refugees caught fire, “making a chain of bonfires the length of the street,” and if the pack on a horse’s back began to burn, the horse would stampede at top speed through the mass, flinging injury and death, and raising terror to yet another level.

Many of the refugees ended up in the water. Some of them were out of their wits, while others were forced off the quay by all the push and shove. Most of them drowned, as few peasants could swim. Some refugees plunged in on purpose to swim out to the ships, though apparently not many actually reached them. Those who swam to American and British warships on the 13th often found themselves unwelcome. The British actually poured hot water down upon many swimmers to discourage them.

Turkish soldiers shot others. Horrified American relief workers on board an American ship saw a man fling himself into the water and swim out toward them, only to have his head blown off by a Turkish soldier who had fired his rifle over the shoulder of a British sailor standing on the pier. Small watercraft of all descriptions attempted to load refugees and help them escape the fire, but many were capsized when a clot of panicked people jumped on board; one of these capsizings of a vessel the size of a large cabin cruiser took place right in front of an American destroyer, and existing photos show the capsizing in dreadful sequence (Those photos are framed in the foreground by an oblivious sailor working in a small ship’s boat flying the American flag.)

According to one report, several hundred refugees crowded onto a lighter alongside the quay, hoping somebody would tow them out into the harbor--only to have Turks cover them with oil or kerosene and burn them all to death. This event might seem incredible, yet separate reports about it came from several witnesses, including Emily McCallam, who saw some of the charred bodies; from a young Armenian woman who witnessed Turkish soldiers pouring the kerosene, after which the “raft” with its human cargo became a blazing torch; and from an Italian who told of witnessing the event in a letter he wrote the American secretary of state, Charles Evans Hughes.

   The latter individual was Theodore Bartoli, a businessman from Smyrna. In his letter, which I found in the National Archives, besides describing the lighter’s burning, Bartoli also expressed his gratitude for the efforts of two American sailors who had helped him bury both his mother (who had been hit by a stray bullet while embarking on an Italian merchant ship), and his two sisters, who had committed suicide when Turks broke into their house, rather than be raped and killed. “What I saw, what I lived through during 25 days is horrible,” he wrote, “I saw young girls of 15 years to 20, have their throats cut at the seashore. I saw innocent adolescents have their eyes put out. I saw hundreds of refugees throw themselves into the sea, while they fled from the conflagration, finding a worse death. All this was accomplished before the eyes of the powers represented by officers and sailors of the battleships anchored close by.”

Equally bitter in later recollection was the young Armenian woman mentioned above who had seen the blazing raft. Not only did she notice the British pouring boiling water down on swimmers (she and her companions could see the steam rising), but, in addition, she saw that “the Americans were lined up on their destroyer decks, their movie cameras turning.” She was not the only person to react in utter disbelief at the latter sight.

Again, Captain Hepburn was stymied by his orders not to cooperate in arranging any kind of humanitarian endeavors. In the very midst of the fire, though, things were getting so bad that sailors were getting more and more upset at their officers’ failure to do anything. 

Before the fire, American relief officials including Major Davis of the Constantinople Red Cross had been doing their best to feed several groups of thousands of refugees. Now, watching in anguish from the decks of a destroyer, Davis and Mark Prentiss, a commercial attaché, began wondering what they could do – and here we begin to see the actions and initiative taken by American civilians rather than the American Navy, which was to become characteristic during events at Smyrna.  These civilians first asked Captain Hepburn to let them take a boat in. Perhaps they might move a large lighter over to the pier, put refugees on it, and tow a group to safety. Hepburn demurred; the Litchfield’s one motor sailor could hardly handle that lighter, and to put the small powerboat itself along the quay would merely invite disaster. Well, Davis continued, maybe Hepburn could get the French or British to send their many large boats to the rescue. (Again, those countries both had battleships present, not just dinky destroyers!)

Not unwilling, but no doubt keeping in mind Bristol’s desire that the Americans go their own course and not cooperate with the Allies (nor displease the Turks), Hepburn let Davis himself go to offer the British this “delicate proposition.” Major Davis had no luck with the French, and at first the British admiral Osmand Brock also refused to do anything. He had assured Noureddin of Britain’s absolute neutrality, Brock replied. “He could not—and would not—allow his men to take part in the rescue of Greek and Armenian civilians.” However, the British chief of staff argued with such vehemence that Admiral Brock eventually changed his mind.

When he did, there was nothing half-hearted about the British response. Navy man Hepburn found the subsequent action quite moving: “It was evidently a squadron signal for ‘Away all boats,’ and the manner in which it was performed made a stirring spectacle. In spite of the lateness of the hour—well past midnight—it was only a few minutes after Davis’s return on board that the first boats came sweeping in, all pulling boats large enough to be of service as well as power launches, crews in uniform, and boat officers of all ranks from Captain to Midshipman.” The British “pulling boats” (oared launches) and powerboats began making a regular run between the ships in the harbor and the pier, taking refugees aboard and carrying them to safety. Throughout the night and far into the morning, exhausted oarsmen would stop by the USS Litchfield for rest and coffee before resuming their ferry work. They would put almost seven hundred refugees on the destroyer Litchfield itself and others on the American merchant ship Winona, but they would load many more thousands aboard European ships in the harbor till the latter could literally take no more. Together, they saved thousands; Dobkin estimates twenty thousand.

Even with the British effort, the rescue had barely dented the black mass of refugees ashore. The next day, as the fire continued to rage, Hepburn transferred his seven hundred refugees to the USS Edsall (another American destroyer just arrived from Constantinople with thirty tons of flour) and sent them on to Salonika, hoping they would find a welcome there. At the plea of reliefer Jaquith (note again the initiative being taken by American reliefers rather than Navy officials), Hepburn agreed to a further deviation from strict neutrality and he put hundreds of orphans and various other refugees who had been under the protection of American agencies aboard the steamship Winona, whose captain had signaled that his ship could take even more. This vessel would eventually sail for Piraeus with almost two thousand refugees.

The same day, through glasses, Hepburn himself saw a man in civilian clothes apprehended by a squad of Turkish soldiers, handled brutally, searched, bound, thrown over the seawall, and shot. The impression of Americans ashore who talked to the captain was that every “able-bodied” Armenian man was being hunted down and killed.  On the other hand, some rumors were exploded. Two sailors contradicted accounts about Turks using machine guns to drive the refugees toward the flames. They had been surprised to see some Turkish soldiers leading refugees to safety on the “Konak grounds,” bringing them water and treating them kindly.

In their official reports and discussions with the news media (both at the time and later), Americans attempted to assess the cause of the fire. Several noted then or later that ethnic Greeks or Armenians had beforehand threatened to burn the city, were the Turks ever to take it, but no American seems to have witnessed them acting on such threats. Several Americans (and several locals) did report seeing Turkish incendiaries. About noon on the 13th, a bluejacket at the Collegiate Institute drew Minnie Mills to the window to watch Turks setting fires in nearby houses. Together they watched regular Turkish soldiers in sharp uniforms carrying tins of petroleum into house after house. Soon after they left each building it would burst into flames. That night, two American sailors stationed in the Armenian quarter (they were serving as chauffeurs) witnessed Turks running down the street throwing oil-soaked rags in windows.

 I need not go into this in further detail, but before Dobkin’s book there were many arguments as to who set the fire. Turks? Armenians and Greeks in great anger at what was happening to them? (Indeed, Dobkin had written her book to answer that very question.) Vice Consul Barnes at the time wrote the Admiral he thought the Greeks had set the fire. Barnes thought it illogical to conclude that Smyrna was destroyed by the Turks. And even if individual soldiers had contributed, “surely it was not fired by the order of the authorities or with their cognizance,” he would argue.

I think Marjorie’s book makes clear that the Turks set the fire and did so very much on purpose. Really, my view is that, besides all the witnesses who saw Turks setting the torch, in the face of the Turks’ overwhelming power in Smyrna, especially after several days of brutal Turkish occupation, the notion that an organized body of Greeks or Armenians could have found the freedom to start, restart, and spread the fires (still sometimes argued in print and often on the Internet) seems simply absurd. As Captain Hepburn reported at the time, the Turks could have established order in a couple of hours had they wanted to; they had all the authority.

Before the fire and after it had burned itself out, sailors from every nation represented by those warships in the harbor worked to evacuate their own citizens, and maybe a few non-citizens. If you could speak just a few words of French, the French would take you, for instance.

But not the Americans. Captain Hepburn was still attempting religiously to adhere to his orders—only Americans.  A few examples will suffice. By now, Hepburn had decided to evacuate not only native-born Americans, but also naturalized Americans (in those days, a great distinction was made between these two groups). Again, though, bound by Bristol’s orders to be neutral, “restricting naval activity to the protection of American lives and property,” he was still holding the line there: only citizens. An American teacher named John Kingsley Birge reached the USS Simpson by boat and Hepburn invited him aboard, but finding the man had brought along some female Armenian students and teachers, the captain ordered all the latter sent back. A subordinate officer insisted that he would be sending these women to their deaths, and Hepburn finally gave in. He had the women sent below . . . and they eventually got out of Smyrna.

A bit later, ashore at the theater, Hepburn personally stood in the way of Birge’s wife Anna, who had brought along with her, besides her own three children, eight male Greek and Armenian students from the American college south of the city, orphan survivors from earlier massacres who Anna had been looking after for three years. When Captain Hepburn argued that these boys could not all be her children, and insisted that only American families could be evacuated, this determined woman convinced eight families standing nearby to “adopt” one lad apiece. With such bold defiance in the face of the navy captain, she managed to get her boys out to the USS Simpson and to collect them there. That destroyer soon got under way toward Athens, and Birge’s orphan boys also survived.

Another group was not so lucky. Even though he had allowed exceptions before, after the fire burned down, Hepburn was back to insisting that only American citizens could be evacuated. Hence it happened that when a truckload of male Armenian students from the American college were brought along (the officials at the college believing that no one would have the heart to leave these young men behind), an angry Hepburn had them all sent back on the same truck. Survivor accounts agree that in most cases involving such groups of non-military minority men left behind, one in ten or even fewer would survive.

Some Greek or Armenian men attempted to disguise their sex; most of these men were discovered at the barriers the Turkish army had set up to examine all refugees enroute to a ship. They were quickly sent inland to a mysterious death.

As for the rest of the refugees—the old men, women, and children, that is—they remained clustered along that mile and a half stretch of the great Smyrna Quai. The place had become was a reeking sewer—refugees had stayed there for nearly a week already, and some would stay for two weeks more. There were no toilets; and there were all the many hundreds, maybe thousands, of decaying human corpses there in the harbor water. Dr. Esther Lovejoy, was that, at one place, over a hundred carcasses of horses floated near the quai. Many older refugees just died from stress, and were simply cast into the sea. Families were broken up; hundreds of children were lost; dozens of lost grandmothers would eventually be rounded up. Turks appropriated good-looking young women for their harems. It was particularly terrible at night. Then Turkish bandit groups would come to rip away for rape or other use all the young women they could. The great crowds screamed, and the only thing that would stop those terrible shrieks was the play of lights from the ships in the harbor; then the Turks would shrink back into the shadows. 

And still there was no rescue in the offing. Occasionally, a British merchant ship would come to the harbor and take away a couple of thousand -- but that hardly dented the massive crowd. Finally, a few days after the fire burned itself out, Captain Hepburn and several American civilians traveled back to Constantinople, to tell the admiral what they had seen. Hepburn had himself finally come to the conclusion that a massive international evacuation was the only answer, and he laid out his case to the admiral. Admiral Bristol eventually agreed that his destroyers would start a shuttle, carrying refugees out of the city to Mytilene or Constantinople–-but after a trip or two with maybe a few hundred refugees, Bristol found other things for his ships to do. And despite there being hundreds of thousands still frantic and dying on the pier and no solution in sight, he didn’t even let Captain Hepburn return to Smyrna. Let the Allies handle these things, he seemed to say.

And so American command in Smyrna passed to the next senior naval officer present, the commander of Edsall, Commander Halsey Powell. On the 17th, the day after Hepburn left, Powell found that the Turks were openly acknowledging that they had sent many Greeks on death marches inland.

Meantime, such disorder was taking place on the streets away from the sight of the quay that it was often not safe for Americans to go into the city, even under guard. The suffering and the dying continued. Those on the quai were weeping, praying for ships—and all the great warships in the harbor, the sight of which had so comforted Smyrna’s citizens while the Turkish army was on its way—“How could the Turks do anything terrible with all those great ships in the harbor?”—those great warships ships did little or nothing. Indeed, their officers had dress dinners and made formal calls from one ship to another; their ship band played far into the night, and if not their bands, their victrolas were always playing. Caruso singing Pagliacii might keep you from hearing the terrible cries from the Smyrna quay.

And so it was that the initiative for dealing decisively with the disaster was taken not by any naval figure, but by an American civilian who really did find the refugees’ predicament “heartbreaking.” The story that follows has been told before, but deserves telling again.

Asa Jennings was a YMCA “boys’ worker” who had arrived in Smyrna with his wife and two boys only a month or so before the fire. He only stood five foot two but was “a bundle of nerves and energy.” Although he had only been working in Turkey a short time, he immediately understood the dangers the Armenians faced. When he found an Armenian YMCA worker who was frantic about the Turks’ approach, Jennings hired this man as a servant for his family, and in this way enabled him to escape. More significantly, during the fire and afterward, Jennings took the initiative to protect some of the most helpless among the refugees. For instance, as the fire burned itself out, Jennings gathered into a house on the quay the many refugee women who were about to give birth.

Initially, Commander Powell worried that Jennings’ project would antagonize the Turks, particularly as the American sailors guarding the house were acting, as Powell called it, “irresponsibly.” The enlisted men there had allowed two Greek priests being chased by Turkish cavalry to enter the house for asylum. (Lieutenant Commander Knauss happened to be present, and he had the two doff their gowns and hats and duck out the back way.) However, eventually even Powell became infected by the American sailors’ sympathy, and later spoke approvingly of Jennings having gotten as many as four hundred refugees into that building.

Several of the latter were young Armenian or Greek women that American bluejackets or their officers had rescued from Turkish soldiers leading the girls down the street. Years later, Red Condon was to recall as a young American naval officer escorting fifty young Armenian women to a safe haven in Smyrna, probably to this very house. To protect them while en route, Condon and his fellows had the girls fashion their hair and dress as if they were children of eight, though they were, in fact, close to fifteen, and hence in substantial danger. The naval party succeeded in getting the girls to safety.

As the days wore on, though, and transports did not arrive (the British brought two ships in on the 19th that would take away a few thousand, but that just tantalized the great throng), Jennings found his soul increasingly tormented. “I have seen men, women and children whipped, robbed, shot, stabbed, and drowned in the sea, and while I helped save some it seemed like nothing as compared with the great need. It seemed as though the awful, agonizing, hope-less shrieks for help would forever haunt me.”  A religious man, Jennings frequently prayed, but he also acted. At one point, when a young woman was seen swimming near an American destroyer whose sailors would do nothing to save her—they explained that they could not act without orders, and their officers would not issue any (a prime example of the utter enfeeblement created by Bristol’s insistence on neutrality)—Jennings erupted: “Well, I’ll order it: push off that boat!” The sailors quickly rescued the girl.

On the 20th, a week after the fire, and still nothing happening, Jennings awoke, determined to do something. Seeing a French ship anchored out in the harbor, Jennings decided to ask that vessel to take on some refugees and got Powell to give him a boat. The French captain refused. So Jennings climbed aboard an Italian ship called the Constantinopoli, which was moored at a wharf. Though this captain was also reluctant, shortly Jennings offered a sum (probably from relief funds) and the captain agreed to take a group. Now, would the Turks allow the evacuation? Yes, they would, he was told, but no draft-age males. Jennings and others worked all night. In the morning the Americans found a squad of Turkish soldiers delegated to scan the refugees as they boarded the vessel. Some minority men who had disguised themselves were detected right on the dock, and the grief of the families as the men were marched away was heartrending—a story that would be repeated a multitude of times during and after this episode. However, as Jennings later pointed out, “It was either play the game as the Turks said, or not play it at all.”

The ship sailed the following afternoon with two thousand refugees. To help ensure all of them could be landed at nearby Mytilene, the ship’s captain had insisted that Jennings ride the ship there. Upon boarding, the relief worker could hardly make his way through the crowd. “They fell at my feet in gratitude. They kissed me. Old men got on their knees, kissing my hands and feet, tears steaming down their faces.” Jennings fought his way on to his cabin, fell onto his berth, and wept. Then he got down on his knees and prayed.

But the great rescue had not yet begun. About midnight, when the slow steamer finally sighted, the astonished passengers began cursing. There in the harbor, just a few hours’ steaming from Smyrna, lay some twenty Greek passenger ships, all riding high. These were the vessels that had recently transported most of the retreating Greek army away from the Turkish coast. After he landed the refugees, Jennings approached the Greek general Frankos who was present, described the terrible need, and asked if those Greek ships could return to Smyrna. The general wanted assurance that the ships would be protected. After all, the Turks had no navy. Would the Turks commandeer the vessels and then sail them off to capture all the Greek islands? The American’s assurance was not enough for the Greek general, so, boarding Litchfield (which Powell had ordered to go pick Jennings up), Jennings sped back to consult with Commander Powell and returned a few hours later with a written authorization from the American commander. Not only had the Turks authorized the Greek ships to come, but American destroyers would accompany the ships into the harbor.

Frankos was still reluctant. Jennings again promised to ride the ships. But on Jennings pressing the issue—“Will you, or won’t you, give us these ships?”— Frankos still waffled.Jennings stomped out, convinced the general would never agree. Then he noticed in the harbor what looked like an American battleship. And indeed it was . . . or once had been. Years before, America had sold the old Mississippi to the Greeks, and now the renamed and reflagged Kilkis stood anchored before him. With faith that somehow God would make things come right, Jennings found a boat to take him out to the warship. The ship’s captain agreed to help Jennings send a message to Athens. American citizen Asa Jennings had decided to appeal directly to the Greek government.

The response of Athens to his initial message explaining the situation and asking for ships was, quite naturally, who on earth was Asa Jennings? “The head of American relief at Mytilene,” Jennings signaled back. And perhaps he was, though he was also the only American at the place. Another message from Athens announced that even though the cabinet was not in session, Jennings’ request had been submitted to the prime minister; a later reply said the prime minister would consult the cabinet at 9:00 a.m. the next day. In those messages and in the cabinet’s eventual response were several questions to which the answers were, in fact, quite uncertain. What protection would be offered the ships? Would the Americans fight if the Turks tried to take the vessels?

The Greek cabinet (only a few days from its own fall) seemed even more cautious than the local general. Jennings negotiated back and forth by coded signal until four on the afternoon of the 23rd, but found himself increasingly frustrated.

Finally, recollecting all “those poor folks awaiting certain death there on the quay,” Jennings decided to try the last: an ultimatum. Unless the cabinet ordered the vessels to Smyrna, he threatened to wire openly without code to whoever might listen, that despite many American guarantees, the Greek government had refused to release their own ships to save tens of thousands of ethnic Greeks facing certain death.  It was an astonishing bluff. But at about six that evening, he received this wire back: “ALL SHIPS IN AEGEAN PLACED YOUR COMMAND REMOVE REFUGEES SMYRNA.” Asa Jennings had just effectually been made an admiral in the Greek navy and placed in charge of a fleet of some fifty transports.

With such authorization, the problems that arose afterward were soon disposed of. Jennings agreed to several conditions, including the stipulations that the ships be escorted into the Smyrna harbor by an American destroyer, that the Greek ships not fly their flags, and that Jennings himself would ride the first ship (even though the only thing he knew about ships was “to be sick on them”). Jennings also got the governor of Mytilene to agree to accept the refugees, to open a hospital and a warehouse, and so on—providing Jennings could provide the refugees food.

 Once they checked all these issues, several of the Greek merchant captains announced they had developed engine trouble or needed more sailors or required additional provisions. So the Greek captain of Kilkis threatened to inspect every ship and prepare court-martial charges for any captain who was misrepresenting his vessel’s condition. In the end, ten vessels got under way on the 24th, with Jennings riding the lead ship. Having first stowed their Greek flags, they steamed toward Smyrna under escort of USS Lawrence.

Well, I don’t need to spend much time telling what happened then. The ships reached the harbor to great rejoicing from the refugees, and eventually docked alongside the railroad pier at the far end of the quai. Soon they began loading refugees. Over the next several days, the Turks oversaw the long lines of refugees, set up five Turkish examination barriers for the refugees to pass through (so as to make sure that military-aged males didn’t get through), and incidentally robbed the refugees of whatever they still possessed even at those barriers. The Americans did all the necessary coordination with the Turks, and took the refugees from the last barrier to the ships, and there, far away from the Turks who hated them, British sailors stowed the refugees below decks.  

This process, with Jennings’ ships loading and then offloading usually at Mitylene, from which the refugees were to be transported further on to Athens, took 7 days. A total of over 190,000 were evacuated, although there were many deaths even during the loading, and then more on the ships themselves. The American navy men helped the refugees, carrying babies and children and putting sick and aged on stretchers, and their officers coordinated with the Turks. Then, Jennings’ ships began transporting other refugees from ports throughout the coasts of Turkey, which evolution continued for months. For after Smyrna, the Turks insisted that all Greek and Armenians still living in Turkey leave the country – or else they would “be deported to the interior”—which death threat caused hundreds of thousands more—to flock to the sea. Greeks and Armenians left their homes and everything they had behind, and walked for days, even weeks to the coasts of Turkey. Historians say that tens of thousands of more deaths occurred because of this forced, final exodus at the hands of the Turkish Nationalists.

Once they got to the ports, the American navy men sometimes observed these evacuations, and occasionally helped coordinate them. But it was Jennings’ ships or other transports that took the refugees on to Greece. Greece eventually took them all the refugees in, Greek and Armenian alike, I’m told. But you know much more about what happened in Greece than I. What I can say for sure is that after these events, Americans, at least, before long forgot that there had ever been such a thing as an American Black Sea Fleet, and over the years, very few have wondered whatever happened at Smyrna, and why.

Note:  A much more complete and carefully footnoted account of the events at Smyrna and of the forced exodus afterwards can be found in Chapters 10 and 11 of my recent book, America’s Black Sea Fleet: The U.S. Navy Amidst War and Revolution; that book was published by the Naval Institute Press, and is available at various outlets online.  I have drawn on many sources in research for my book, which narrates the larger story of the small Black Sea Fleet in detail.  I drew often on personal accounts discovered in diaries, letters, journals, articles and book-length memoirs, and of course also on many official American reports and on scholarly works of all kinds.

-- Robert Shenk, University of New Orleans.