by Lou Ureneck
Smyrna YMCA, 5, 18, 20, 73, 141, 180
Great Fire and, 198–99
Jennings’s assignment to, 27–28, 76–77
refugees at, 156–57
Smyrna YWCA, 20, 80, 140, 170, 180
Great Fire and, 202–4
refugee evacuations, 212–13, 212n
refugees at, 156–57, 165–66
Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City (Housepian), 234n
“Snows of Kilimanjaro, The” (Hemingway), 31n
Southern Methodist Church, 326
Souvla, 13
Spanoudakis, Haralambos, 196
Sparrowhawk, HMS, 87
Spindletop oilfield, 65–66
Standard Commercial Trading Co., 116, 275–77, 276n
Standard Oil of New York, 50, 80–81, 98, 205, 222, 231, 249, 263–64, 273
Steffens, Lincoln, 97
Stergiades, Aristides, 20, 44, 80, 85, 105–6, 117, 120, 153, 173
Stewart, Freddie, 140
Strauss, Oscar, 326
Suleiman the Magnificent, 124
Sulferino, 340
Summer Palace Hotel (Therapia), 58–59, 95
Sweeny, Charles, 133–34, 148–49, 181–82
Sweet Waters of Asia, 95
Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916), 11
Sylph, 109
Syria, 15, 16, 85, 126, 184
Talat, Mehmet, 125–26
Tbilisi, 97
Tchinarli Street, 200, 201, 202
Teagle, Walter, 245–46
Teapot Dome scandal, 245
Theophanides, Ioannis, 341–44, 346, 358, 375–77
Therapia, 58–59
Thesiger, Bertram, 144–45, 225
Thomas, Lucian Irving, 50, 52–53, 234, 249, 255, 273
Thomas, William Bailey, 55
Thrace, 103, 105–6, 117, 153, 160, 252, 330, 375, 386–87
Toronto Star, 132, 292–93
Townshend, Charles, 171–72
Treat, A. Wallace, 77–78
Treaty of Lausanne (1923), 393, 400n
Treaty of London (1915), 11, 401–2n
Treaty of Sevres (1920), 14–15, 16, 153, 245–47
Treaty of Versailles (1919), 15
Treaty of Versailles, SS, 293–94, 354, 360
Trebizond, 264, 295, 337, 389
Triantafyllakos, Nikolaos, 342–44
Tribune, HMS, 157
Trikoupis, Nikolaos, 43
Trueblood, Robert, 280, 283–84, 332
Tulsa Daily World, 326
Turkey. See also Ottoman Empire; Turkish War of Independence
alliance with Germany, 11, 13, 83, 125–26, 341
Balkan Wars, 82–84, 403n
Christians in. See Christians in Turkey
Kemal and birth of Turkish nationalism, 15, 97, 124–27
population exchange with Greece, 393–94
postwar partition of Ottoman Empire, 11–16, 245–46, 251
Turkish carpets, 24
Turkish First Army, 30, 33, 35, 146–48, 149, 172
Turkish National Bank, 243–44
Turkish nationalist movement, 15, 33
Turkish National Pact (1920), 127
Turkish Petroleum Co., 244
Turkish Quarter, 25, 26, 110, 146, 150, 271
Turkish tobacco, 24, 275–77
Turkish War of Independence, 57–58, 78–79, 133–34, 147–48, 192–93, 253–54, 268–69, 274–75, 295. See also Greek-Turkish War
Tyrwhitt, Reginald, 268, 274, 285, 315
Union Francaise, 118–19
Union Theological Institute, 72
University of Michigan, 39
U.S. Shipping Board, 116
Ushak, 43, 264
Utica General Hospital, 73–74
Utica YMCA, 21, 73
Van der Zee, Henri, 120
Vassar College, 260
Venezia, 87
Venizelos, Eleftherios, 12–13, 51, 403n
Von Sanders, Limon, 32
Vourla, 358, 378, 379, 383
Waldeck-Rousseau, 78
Washburn, Everett, 116–17, 118, 149, 235
Washington Nationals, 61
Washington Post, 62
Webster, J. W., 202, 211–12
Wellesley College, 80, 202
White, George, 176, 272
White Russians, 49
Whitman, Walt, 40, 215
Wilson, Woodrow, 11–15, 53, 61, 109, 129, 251, 261
Winona, SS, 213, 220–21, 230–31, 234, 239, 272, 294
Witherbee, Walter C., 99
World War I, 11, 245
Kemal in, 32–33, 125–26
Marsovan incident, 175–76
Near East oil’s role, 243–44
Noureddin in, 171–72
Powell in, 262, 263
U.S. enters war, 85, 344
Worsley Hall, SS, 293–94, 354, 360, 362
Yankton, USS, 260–61
Yantis, Edward M., 89, 273
YMCA. See also Smyrna YMCA
Jennings’s assignments, 21, 73, 74–75
York, Alvin, 264
Young Turks, 41–42, 82, 124–26
Yowell, F. D., 296
Zaharoff, Basil, 51, 134
Zimmerman Telegram, 334
PHOTO SECTION
Turkish soldiers on the Quay at Smyrna. The entrance of the Turkish nationalist army was orderly on September 9, 1922, but soon the troops fell into looting and killing Christians. (Izmir Ahmet Piristina City Archives and Museum)
A Greek priest hauls a sewing machine along the Quay. Fearing the Turkish nationalist army, Greeks and Armenians from the Anatolian interior fled to Smyrna with the household possessions they could carry on their backs or in carts. A sewing machine was a prized possession, and often it was a Singer sewing machine from America. (Thomas Kinkaid Collection, The Naval History and Heritage Command)
Turkish soldiers robbing refugees of money and possessions. The robbing was incessant and often ended in death. (Near East Relief, Rockefeller Archive)
The body of a victim of the murder and pillage that spread through the city. Christians—Armenians, in particular—were pulled from their homes and businesses, killed and left on the street. A British officer estimated that most of the city’s Armenian population of about 40,000 was slaughtered before the evacuation was complete. (Thomas Kinkaid Collection, The Naval History and Heritage Command)
This cabled message to the State Department quotes US Navy Lieutenant Aaron S. Merrill, an intelligence officer, attributing the fire to a Turkish plan to rid the country of Christians. (The Library of Congress)
A refugee woman with a child aboard a ship at Smyrna harbor. Most of the refugees were women and children. The men were taken out of the city and either imprisoned or shot. (Courtesy of the National Archives)
Smoke billows over Smyrna in this view from the southern end of the inner harbor. The fire could be seen for more than fifty miles out to sea, and within days the smoke had drifted hundreds of miles to Constantinople. (Courtesy of George Poulimenos)
Smoke obscures the Quay as the city burns. A British reporter described the fire as a series of volcanoes shooting smoke and fames into the sky. (Courtesy of A. Karamitsos)
The giant fire drove tens of thousands of people to the Quay, where many were crushed in the dense crowd. In the chaos, people jumped into the harbor to avoid the heat and many drowned. Some were shot as they tried to swim to Allied and American warships. (Thomas Kinkaid Collection, The Naval History and Heritage Command)
An American skiff near the Quay. (The sailor is bailing the boat with a bucket.) As the fire burned, American ships were under orders not to rescue refugees, who were subjects of the Ottoman Empire. The skiff was used to evacuate Americans. The boats in the background are being swamped by panicked refugees. (Thomas Kinkaid Collection, The Naval History and Heritage Command)
The Nationalist army was a mix of regular troops and irregulars called “chetahs,” backcountry bandits or loosely organized local militias. After
breaking the Greek line at Afyon-Kirahisar, the Nationalist troops drove the Greek army from Anatolia with astonishing speed. They were excellent cavalry, fighting with sword, lance and rifle. (Thomas Kinkaid Collection, The Naval History and Heritage Command)
The destroyer USS Edsall arrived at Smyrna on September 14 and took 671 refugees to Salonika, then returned to play a central role in the rescue. The ship was commanded by Lt. Commander Halsey Powell, a WWI hero from McAfee, Kentucky. (United States Navy Memorial Archive)
Lt. Commander J. B. Rhodes feeding refugee children aboard an American destroyer in Smyrna harbor. A Naval Academy graduate from Delaware County, Pennsylvania, Rhodes was a complex figure. His flaws as an officer with a serious drinking problem were overshadowed by his brilliance and empathy. (Thomas Kinkaid Collection, The Naval History and Heritage Command)
Sara Corning, one of two Near East Relief nurses at Smyrna, cares for refugee children on the pier during the evacuation. On the first day of the fire, Miss Corning helped bring refugee children through the burning city to the Quay, where they were placed aboard an American merchant ship, SS Winona. She was from Nova Scotia, Canada, and received a commendation from the King of Greece. (Thomas Kinkaid Collection, The Naval History and Heritage Command)
Two American sailors pull an Armenian woman dressed in an evening gown from the harbor. (Thomas Kinkaid Collection, The Naval History and Heritage Command)
Refugees sought safety from the Turkish soldiers by climbing aboard cargo barges in Smyrna’s harbor. A Turkish order prevented British attempts to feed them. (Thomas Kinkaid Collection, The Naval History and Heritage Command)
Before the fire, American citizens sought refuge in the Smyrna Theater, otherwise known as the American Theater because it was owned by an Armenian-American. It was from this theater that Americans were escorted to the whaleboats that carried them to the USS Simpson and then to Greece. The theater’s American flag survived the fire. (Thomas Kinkaid Collection, The Naval History and Heritage Command)
The gutted remains of Quay buildings and refugees running from the fire as seen from the stern of an American destroyer in the harbor. (Thomas Kinkaid Collection, The Naval History and Heritage Command)
Refugees await rescue on the Smyrna waterfront. Two weeks elapsed between the Nationalist army’s occupation of Smyrna and the start of the evacuation. In that period, the city was burned and soldiers and bandits freely killed and raped the city’s Christian population. (Thomas Kinkaid Collection, The Naval History and Heritage Command)
Refugees on the bow of an American destroyer. (Thomas Kinkaid Collection, The Naval History and Heritage Command)
A line of boys, probably from one of the Smyrna’s orphanages, salute American sailors as they come aboard an American destroyer. The sailors and officers of the USS Edsall pooled their money to provide for the care of orphans in Constantinople. (Thomas Kinkaid Collection, The Naval History and Heritage Command)
Asa Jennings at Mytilene, where more than a hundred thousand refugees were brought from Smyrna. At Mytilene, Jennings found the Greek naval captain who helped him get ships for the evacuation, and the island became the main staging area after Smyrna for the transport of refugees to other parts of Greece. (Roger Jennings)
Dr. Esther Pohl Lovejoy on the railroad pier on the Smyrna waterfront (right foreground in dark hat) where tens of thousands of weak and starving refugees were loaded on ships for transport to Greece. Dr. Lovejoy, a public health pioneer and women’s rights activist from Seabeck, Washington, delivered babies and cared for the sick in the final days of the September evacuation. She was also an outspoken critic of Admiral Mark Bristol. (Thomas Kinkaid Collection, The Naval History and Heritage Command)
American doctor Esther Lovejoy said the buildings that remained after the fire reminded her of tombstones. (Courtesy of A. Karamitsos)
Smyrna was a plain of destruction after the fire. The fire began in the Armenian Quarter and spread west and north, taking with it churches, homes, businesses, hotels and warehouses. The value of the losses reached billions of dollars in today’s terms. American tobacco companies lost millions of dollars. The number of dead has never been firmly established. (Courtesy of A. Karamitsos)
Smyrna, in better times. This postcard from the early 1900s shows Smyrna during the Belle Epoch, a period of prosperity and mostly tolerant multiculturalism. The Sporting Club was one of several private clubs along the Quay. (Courtesy George Poulimenos)
The campus of International College in Paradise. The college preparatory school was built largely with a gift from Louise Kennedy, widow of an American railroad magnate. Its faculty came from America’s best universities. (Izmir Ahmet Piristina City Archives and Museum)
The USS Scorpion, Admiral Bristol’s retreat and flagship. It was the scene of regular parties and formal luncheons for Bristol’s officers and guests. It was typically moored at Therapia, a resort on the Bosphorus. (Thomas Kinkaid Collection, The Naval History and Heritage Command)
Admiral Mark Bristol (third from right), with Mrs. Bristol to his right, leading one his outings with his Constantinople set, in this instance to a town near the mouth of the Danube on the Black Sea. To the far left, Lt. Commander Henry E. Knauss of the USS Simpson and to the far right Charles Sweeny, soldier of fortune, New York World reporter, and reputed French spy. Ernest Hemingway was among Sweeny’s admirers, and Sweeny was a pallbearer at Hemingway’s funeral. (Thomas Kinkaid Collection, The Naval History and Heritage Command)
The Jennings family in 1931: Willard, Bertha, and Asa W., standing left to right, and Amy and Asa. Jennings’s ill health led to a heart attack and early death, at age fifty-five. (Roger Jennings)
Professor Caleb Lawrence of International College in Paradise. Lawrence, born in Wilton, Maine, was chairman of the American Relief Committee in Smyrna. He had long service in Turkey and served with the YMCA in France during WWI. (Caleb Lawrence Papers)
E.O. Jacob was the YMCA director in Smyrna who had opposed Jennings’s transfer to the city and pushed him aside during the relief operation.
Halsey Powell as a Navy cadet. He entered the Naval Academy in 1900 at age sixteen and had studied Greek and Latin at Centre College in Kentucky. (U.S. Naval Academy)
Latife Hanum, an ardent Turkish patriot who provided a home for Mustapha Kemal in Smyrna and later married him. They were divorced two years later. She was a cultured woman from one of Smyrna’s leading Moslem families, spoke numerous languages, played the piano and had attended the Sorbonne. (Izmir Ahmet Piristina City Archives and Museum)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A former Nieman fellow and editor in residence at Harvard University, LOU URENECK is a professor of journalism at Boston University. He was a deputy managing editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer and editor of the Portland (Maine) Press Herald. Ureneck’s writing has appeared in numerous publications including the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, Boston Globe, and Field & Stream. A former Fulbright Fellow, Ureneck is the author of Backcast, which won the National Outdoor Book Award for literary merit, and Cabin—Two Brothers, a Dream, and Five Acres in Maine.
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ALSO BY LOU URENECK
Backcast
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COVER DESIGN BY SARA WOOD
COVER PHOTOGRAPH © BY CHRONICLE / ALAMY
COPYRIGHT
THE GREAT FIRE. Copyright © 2015 by Lou Ureneck. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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*The writer in Ernest Hemingway’s short story “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” said it was the first time he had seen “dead men wearing white ballet skirts and upturned shoes with pompons on them.” The work of Hemingway is dotted with references to the Greek-Turkish War though he did not arrive in Turkey until after the war was over in late September 1922, and even then he spent most of his time in a hotel room suffering from malaria. The aftermath of the Greek-Turkish War made Hemingway’s career as a newspaper correspondent and informed his work for the rest of his life.
*Pronounced Sev-dee-kyu-ee.
*Nancy Horton, at 102 years old, was living today in Athens as this book was written. She was interviewed several times.
*This summary of the life and experiences of Dr. Hatcherian, and those that follow, are taken from An Armenian Doctor in Turkey—Garabed Hatcherian: My Smyrna Ordeal of 1922. Dr. Hatcherian’s diary was a family heirloom, discovered by his granddaughter Dora Sakayan in 1991. Professor Sakayan, a scholar of applied linguistics, first published it in Armenian and subsequently in English (Arod Books, 1997). It is a rare and astonishing document.
*The building is now called the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
*Gasoline Alley, the popular comic strip, began in the Chicago Tribune in 1918 and featured a group of guys talking about cars.