Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 - The Destruction of Islam's City of Tolerance (36 page)

‘For the first time in my life and, I trust, also the last, I was able not only to watch a battle in progress, but also with the aid of a good pair of field glasses, to study its developing phases from an exceptionally good point of vantage, viz: from the gallery windows of the College Chapel.’

The battle looked set to overwhelm the American International College. The Turkish cavalry attacked from the eastern and western sides of the campus, while their infantry attempted to pass to the south. The Greeks meanwhile pounded the advancing Turks with shells and high explosives with the aim of halting their advance.

‘The whole of the campus and all our homes were directly between the opposing forces,’ wrote MacLachlan, ‘and consequently in the direct line of their fire. We realised this rather unpleasant and yet excitingly interesting situation, as the shells whistled over our heads and when the rifle fire was cutting the leaves from the trees before our doors.’

The college was in the firing line of bullets and shells for the duration of the battle, ‘making our position on the campus an exceedingly uncomfortable one; for although no shells fell on our premises, many fell within a few yards of them, while hundreds of rifle bullets fell short of their mark and within our boundaries’.

At 3.30 p.m., the firing suddenly stopped. Dr MacLachlan and his colleagues surmised – correctly, as it transpired – that this last vestige of the vanquished Greek army had surrendered. The troops had realised that they were hopelessly outnumbered and would never reach the coast. Unwilling to fight to the death, they chose to lay down their arms. All were taken prisoners of war.

Less than half an hour after the battle at Paradise had come to an end, a Turkish military patrol drew up outside the offices of Metropolitan Chrysostom. Three men jumped out of the vehicle, entered the building and informed the church hierarch that he had been called to a meeting with General Noureddin. He was to be taken to the general’s headquarters immediately.

The Greek metropolitan was not unduly surprised by such a summons. He was Smyrna’s most senior cleric and – under the Ottoman system – recognised as the effective head of the city’s Greek population. He was expecting to be given instructions from the city’s new governor.

It so happened that a French military patrol was passing at the very moment when Chrysostom stepped into the awaiting Turkish vehicle. Among the French troops was a civilian visitor to the city who persuaded his comrades-in-arms to follow the Greek metropolitan to the Konak. In doing so, they became eyewitnesses to the momentous events that followed.

Several other witnesses were also at the scene. They were later interviewed by the Armenian bishop of Smyrna, Ghevont Tourian, who wrote a report on the proceedings of that Sunday afternoon.

According to the French observers, Chrysostom was driven to the Konak and led into General Noureddin’s office. The content of the two men’s conversation remains unknown; the only certainty is that the Greek metropolitan was dismissed after a meeting that lasted just a few minutes. As Chrysostom descended the steps of the Konak, the Turkish general is said to have appeared on the balcony and shouted to the mob: ‘If he has done good to you, do good to him. If he has done harm to you, do harm to him.’

Bishop Tourian recorded events somewhat differently. He said that General Noureddin had decided to imprison Chrysostom and assigned guards to escort him to the city’s jail. But as this group left the Konak, the crowd surged forward and physically assaulted the metropolitan.

Whatever the truth of Noureddin’s actions, the end result was the same. ‘The mob took possession of Metropolitan Chrysostom and carried him away,’ recorded the Frenchmen. ‘A little further on, in front of an Italian hairdresser named Ismail . . . they stopped and the Metropolitan was slipped into a white hairdresser’s overall. They began to beat him with their fists and sticks and to spit on his face. They riddled him with stabs. They tore his beard off, they gouged his eyes out, they cut off his nose and ears.’

The French soldiers were disgusted by what they saw and wished to intervene, but their commanding officer was under orders to remain strictly neutral. At the point of a revolver, he forbade his men from saving the metropolitan’s life. Chrysostom was dragged into a backstreet in the Iki Cheshmeli district, where he eventually died from his terrible wounds.

He was not the only senior figure to lose his life on that Sunday afternoon. As the French patrol made its way back to the European quarter of the city, the men were witness to another gruesome spectacle. Monsieur Jurukdoglou, the well-known director of the
Réforme
newspaper, was seen being dragged behind a car, his head dashed to pieces on the cobblestones. And when the French patrol passed close to the Armenian church of St Stephen, they saw the headless corpses of three young children.

At around 5 p.m. on that Sunday, it occurred to Alexander MacLachlan that he had received no word from Ray Moreman, one of his colleagues at the college. Moreman had gone to the suburb of Boujda more than forty-eight hours earlier in order to raise the American flag over the Greek orphanage. Since then, there had been no communication between the two men.

MacLachlan was so concerned that he took the college car and, accompanied by two friends, decided to drive over to Boudja. ‘As we entered the village, a place of some thirteen to fourteen thousand inhabitants, a strange feeling took possession of us that serious events were either expected or had just taken place,’ he wrote. ‘We could see no sign of human life anywhere in town. Doors, windows and shutters were everywhere closed.’

It soon became apparent that all was not well. As MacLachlan and his friends approached the orphanage, they found two corpses lying by the roadside, ‘and at once recognised the faces of Mr and Mrs Oscar de Jongh . . . whom I had known for more than thirty years’.

The sight of their lifeless bodies came as a great shock. Oscar and Cleo de Jongh were the first Levantine fatalities. The Turks later claimed that they had been killed by accident, trampled underfoot by the advancing cavalry, but a friend of the de Jongh family had examined their corpses within an hour or so of them being killed and came to a different conclusion. ‘The blood was still oozing from their gun-shot wounds,’ he wrote. The de Jonghs were buried shortly afterwards since there was a concern that the cadavers would be eaten by wild dogs. ‘They were buried in one grave, just as they were, without any further service, no clergyman being available.’

While this hastily arranged internment was taking place, Dr MacLachlan made his way to the Greek orphanage where Moreman recounted a woeful story of fighting and violence. The trouble had started when the Turkish infantry entered the main boulevard and were fired upon by Greek civilians. It was the signal for an all-out attack. ‘At once the troops took the law into their own hands and rushing about shot down anyone who happened to be in the street at the time.’

Dr MacLachlan tried to persuade Moreman to return to the American International College. ‘He refused, saying that he would rather take his chances with those who now looked to him as their protector.’

The news of the troubles in Boujda further unsettled the Levantine families who remained in nearby Bournabat, yet most of them still refused to abandon their homes. Charlton Whittall certainly had no intention of leaving his villa to the mercy of the Turkish army. He hung a large Union Jack from his gatepost – a most unwise thing to do – and then locked himself and his family inside the house. For the next hour or more, he stood guard inside the drawing room of his home, ‘his trusty shotgun across his knees . . . peering from behind drawn curtains’.

At first the Turkish soldiers were friendly and waved at the Whittalls cowering inside their house, but by midday, the mood was beginning to change. ‘An armed Turkish rabble passed, ugly looking, they stopped at our garden gate, tore down the Union Jack, spat on it in the dust.’ So wrote Charlton’s son, Willem, then a young boy. ‘One lot approached our gate. [They] tried to open it [but] it was locked and they commenced to break open the gate.’

The behaviour of these Turkish irregulars so frightened Charlton that he decided to move his family back into the safety of the covered flood drain, knowing that it was one place where they were most unlikely to be discovered.

Hortense Wood too had remained in Bournabat and was trying to put a brave face on the spiralling downturn of events. At some point in the afternoon, Dr Denotowitz called at her house to warn that Turkish soldiers had broken into at least one Levantine villa. He also brought rumours that several other houses – those owned by the Pagy and Lawson families – had been sacked.

Hortense did not have to wait long for confirmation of the fact that Bournabat was now gripped by violence. As daylight began to fade, she saw a huge fire take hold of a nearby mansion belonging to the Mancolo family, who had fled some days earlier to the relative safety of Smyrna.

‘Tremendous clouds of smoke,’ wrote Hortense, ‘in the midst of which flames lept [sic] sky-high and millions of sparks flew over tiles and fell into the garden.’ She had a very real fear that these cinders would set her own house alight. ‘At one time, it seemed as if the stables had caught fire,’ she wrote, adding that ‘the horses had been stolen that very morning by bashibouzouks [irregulars].’

One of Hortense’s neighbours, Dr Murphy, had also decided to remain in his home. It was to prove a fateful decision. Eighty-seven years of age, the doctor was seated in his drawing room with his wife and daughters when Turkish troops forcibly entered the house. Having wrecked furniture and valuables in the front rooms, they surged into the drawing room and attacked Dr Murphy. ‘Several vases were broken on the unfortunate man’s head, his wife was badly injured and the two daughters only saved from brutal molestation by their persecutors turning their attentions to the servants, all of whom were brutally outraged.’

Dr Murphy was shot, then stabbed several times and Mrs Murphy was also severely injured. The intruders then smashed the piano – along with all the remaining objets d’art – before leaving.

‘Dr Murphy . . . is dying,’ wrote Hortense Wood in her diary. ‘Mrs Murphy was horribly ill treated, beaten and her face covered with wounds. The girls were also ill treated. Everything has been stolen from them – their money, their silver, all they possessed.’

Dr Murphy and his wife were eventually taken to the English Nursing Home where Grace Williamson did all she could to keep the elderly doctor alive, although she did not hold out much hope of nursing him back to health. ‘Both had their heads banged by the butt end of a rifle and he was shot in the shoulders,’ she wrote. ‘I don’t expect the old doctor will live.’ She was right. He died the next day – the third Levantine casualty of the disaster.

Monday, 11 September 1922

C
harlton Whittall and his family spent Sunday night in hiding, concealed once again in the large flood drain at the bottom of their garden. They were unable to sleep, for intermittent gunfire continued throughout the early hours. During one lull in the fighting, Charlton crept back to the house and returned with a hunk of dry bread, the only food he could find. He wished he had heeded Herbert Octavius’s advice and left Bournabat while it had still been possible. Now, there was no chance of escape because the whole area was swarming with Turkish irregulars. The family spent a fitful few hours waiting for dawn, hoping that the soldiers would eventually tire of their pillaging and move elsewhere.

Hortense Wood had also spent a troubled night. She was defiant to the last, remaining in her house even though all her neighbours had fled. But the sound of shooting troubled her sleep and the flicker of burning buildings cast a sickening glow into her bedroom. It was not until dawn that the irregulars finally left Bournabat and Hortense managed to catch a few hours’ rest.

She was woken during the morning by a knock at the front door. At considerable personal risk, her ever-loyal nephew, Fernand, had ridden all the way from Smyrna in order to check on her well-being. He brought with him a dismal tale of looting and destruction. For much of the night, Turkish irregulars had occupied themselves with ransacking the great villas of Bournabat. Any item that could not be carried off had been destroyed and many of the houses had then been torched. It was a miracle that Hortense’s own house had been left untouched.

As he had ridden through the ruins of the Levantine colony, Fernand counted just seven houses that remained untouched.