The Great Fire (34 page)

Hepburn finally had concluded he had the information he needed and decided to return to Constantinople on the
Litchfield
early that night to report back to Bristol. As he prepared to leave, Jaquith and Davis came to him with a request to evacuate Armenian orphans who had been left behind by the
Winona
. The children had spent three nights on the Quay. (They were not among those under Jennings’s care.) Turkish soldiers, Jaquith said, had already taken some of the orphan girls from the group. It was imperative, he argued, that the children be evacuated to save their lives.

Hepburn did not want to evacuate anyone without Turkish permission—in fact, he was reluctant to evacuate anyone under any circumstances. He had made exceptions on the night of the fire and the morning afterward, but he was not inclined to make yet another. Bristol was adamantly opposed to bringing orphans to Constantinople. Jaquith and Davis assured Hepburn that they had secured Turkish permission (with bribes), and Jaquith said the Near East Relief would pay for their support. Hepburn played the issue back and forth. The dreadful events of the previous week had softened his attitude, and, while it would be impossible to keep the news of it from Bristol, he agreed reluctantly to take them along.

At about 5
P
.
M
., just before Hepburn’s departure, the
Simpson,
with Knauss in command, returned from Athens where it had delivered the American evacuees including Consul Horton. It anchored near the north end of the Quay, almost opposite Jennings’s safe house at 490, where it could keep watch over a new and temporary consulate in a mansion that had been the home of an Armenian family before their departure. Powell brought the
Edsall
in front of the new consulate as well. No doubt the presence of the two warships in front of the string of safe houses gave Jennings some comfort. The
Lawrence
was anchored in front of the Standard Oil pier, where ten sailors remained ashore as guards. At 6
P
.
M
., Jaquith arrived, at the place where the
Litchfield
’s whaleboats had tied up at the Quay, with the orphan children—nearly five hundred of them, more than twice as many as he had asked Hepburn’s permission to bring along. Nonetheless, they were all put on board the
Litchfield,
and Hepburn departed. Also on board were Aaron Merrill; Irving Thomas and Miller Joblin of Standard Oil; Yantis, the tobacco agent; Harold Jaquith; Myrtle Nolan of the YWCA; and Mark Prentiss, the publicist.

On the way back, Prentiss wrote another story for The
New York Times,
which he cabled to New York from Constantinople. He blamed the violence in Smyrna on Greek snipers, who “exasperated the Turks beyond their officers’ control,” and the role he ascribed to himself in the relief effort outshone any of the other Americans, including Jennings, who did not get a mention in the story. Prentiss’s reports continued to play down Turkish actions. “I made a personal investigation,” he wrote in the
Times
story, “and could find nothing resembling an organized massacre by the troops on the Quay.”

AS HEPBURN AND THE
LITCHFIELD
passed Pelican Point on the way back to Constantinople, Halsey Powell became the senior American officer in Smyrna.

His first act was to answer an invitation to go aboard the French vessel
Jean Bart
for another meeting of the discordant admirals: Pepe of Italy; Levasseur of France (representing Dumesnil, who had departed); and Tyrwhitt of Britain. Each of the officers had been ashore, and each
had witnessed the suffering. The French still had five thousand protégés gathered around French-owned buildings at Cordelio who awaited French help in departing. The Italians continued to have problems gathering and removing their nationals and affiliates.

Powell was not caught in the crosscurrents of competing national interests, as were the Allied officers, all of whom outranked him, and he cultivated a working relationship with all of them. He was the trim, practical, and straight-talking Yank. The British in particular took a liking to him. The officers decided among themselves that the only acceptable path forward was evacuation of the refugees and that Admiral Pepe should approach Kemal with a request to allow Greek ships into the harbor to remove the people. It was a bold plan—simple and straightforward: bring in Greek ships, and take away refugees. It was the idea that Powell had raised in the
Edsall
’s wardroom back in Salonika. At the meeting on the French ship, the officers decided to inform their home governments of their decision rather than to seek their permission. Of course, no arrangements had been made to obtain Greek ships. The naval officers would cross that difficult bridge when they got to it.

Powell included the French summary of the meeting in his naval diary. It read, in part:

The Italian admiral had been the obvious choice among the officers to approach Kemal. Italy’s policy was the most favorable toward the nationalists. (In a few days, the
Times
of London would report that Russian agents were in Italy purchasing arms for the nationalists and had placed an order with Fiat for armored cars, trucks, automobiles, and machine guns. In other words, the Italians were assisting the Turks prepare for
what soon might be war with the British.) No timetable was set for the meeting with Kemal. It would be up to the Italian admiral to work it out. There was yet more waiting.

That night, some of the fires flared up again, but for the most part the city appeared burned out.

OVER THE NEXT SEVERAL DAYS
, Powell attempted to assess American property losses and intercede with the Turkish military on behalf of the relief committee. The losses were big. The fire mocked Bristol’s reassurances about the safety of American property. Horton’s proposal for American mediation to ensure an orderly occupation was beginning to seem prescient.

The fire had destroyed or damaged millions of dollars of inventory and buildings owned by the big American tobacco companies. All the big tobacco companies bought tobacco in Smyrna: the American Tobacco Co., Liggett & Myers, and R.J. Reynolds. Most American cigarettes were made with a blend of Turkish tobacco. It was crucial to the American tobacco industry.

In 1900, before the widespread introduction of Turkish tobacco, Americans consumed two and a half million cigarettes each year. In 1920, when nearly 85 percent of American cigarettes were blended with Turkish tobacco, the consumption grew to more than fifty billion cigarettes per year. The luxury brand was American Tobacco Co.’s Pall Mall—made from 100 percent Turkish tobacco.

The American companies had their own buyers in the city; they also purchased tobacco through agents such Alston Tobacco Co. or Standard Commercial Trading Co., which was owned by Ery Kehaya, an Ottoman Greek born in Turkey who had lived an astonishing life. As a young man trained for the priesthood, Kehaya made his way to America, where he had become a citizen and a waiter at Greek restaurant in New York. One day some of his customers, who happened to be in the tobacco business, learned that Kehaya had been born near Samsun, one of Turkey’s rich tobacco-growing areas, and soon one of those customers asked him to help sell a load of tobacco. Kehaya made the sale and used the commission
to go into business for himself. That was in 1912. Ten years later, he was one of the largest tobacco dealers in the world, and R. J. Reynolds was a principal customer. Young Kehaya built a fortune and an international company, married the daughter of a prominent North Carolina cigarette manufacturer, listed his company on the New York Stock Exchange, and sent his son to the St. Paul’s School and Yale.
^*
Such was the money to be made in tobacco.

Standard Commercial had lost two of its five warehouses and about $900,000 worth of tobacco in the fire. (A million pounds of leaf were in the two warehouses, and Smyrna tobacco was selling for about 90 cents a pound.) The local American manager for Standard American, William P. Dortch, had quit after the fire and refused to leave the
Edsall
. A Standard Commercial manager, E. P. Rogers of Richmond, Virginia, who had been on his way to Macedonia, diverted to Smyrna, hired an armed Turkish guard, and went to inspect the warehouses. He found Turkish bandits sifting through the ruins for loot. Gary Tobacco, which had twenty-seven warehouses in the city and supplied Liggett & Myers, the makers of L&M and Chesterfield cigarettes, lost about $1,000,000 worth of leaf. The American Tobacco Co., manufacturer of Lucky Strike, lost about $500,000 in stock, but its agent had wisely advised the company to buy insurance coverage that protected it against losses due to war or civil insurrection. Also hard hit was MacAndrews & Forbes, whose stock, warehouse, and offices were destroyed.

Some of the big warehouses were on the unburned edge of the fire line, near the northerly industrial section of the city, and Roger Griswold and Jehu Archbell, both members of the relief committee who were living at the American consulate, quickly formed a shipping agency, hired workers, and began soliciting ships to carry away undamaged tobacco. It was a chance for them to make some money. By September 17, they already had six million pounds of undamaged tobacco ready for shipment. American Tobacco sent away 1,400,000 pounds on a French steamer;
Standard Commercial sent away 900,000 pounds.

But not all tobacco dealers were so lucky. Several days after the fire, Turkish authorities showed up at Socrates Onassis’s home in Karatash and arrested him as an enemy of Turkey. He was taken to the prison in the Turkish Quarter to await trial. Aristotle, his son, had been present when his father was arrested but the Turkish authorities had left him behind, possibly because of his youthful appearance. His small stature and smooth face made him seem younger than his age of eighteen. By this time, one of the uncles and his favorite, Alexander, who had been in the countryside on business, had been hung, and two others had been arrested and were being held in deportation camps. The Turkish officer who had arrested Socrates took the Onassis villa as his residence, and Socrates managed to persuade the man that he needed Aristotle to maintain the big house. Aristotle cadged whiskey from around town and took it to the general along with good tobacco, making himself indispensable. Soon, Aristotle had a Turkish pass to move freely through the city, including to the jail. The father told him where he had hidden a substantial amount of money, and Aristotle retrieved it. Next, he needed to find a way to gain his father’s release through bribes to the right people. It was a tricky affair that could end with both their deaths.

ON THE MORNING OF SUNDAY
, September 17, Powell came ashore at a landing place that he had established on the north end of the Quay, near Jennings’s safe houses, and, as he did each day, he walked the length of the Quay to the Konak, where he called on Turkish military and civilian governors. On this morning, he found that there was yet another military governor at the Konak, Nadja Bey, and Powell noticed that he was meeting with a man who wore a French officer’s kepi, the raised cap with a short visor. It was General Maurice Pelle, the French high commissioner from Constantinople. His appearance was a significant diplomatic contact. General Pelle, former commander of the French army, was in the city to negotiate the removal of the Allied ships from Smyrna. It was obvious that the French were working at cross-purposes with the British.
Powell transacted his business with the governor’s assistant and departed.

On the Quay, Powell passed refugees sitting among their belongings, saw shootings, and heard gunfire in the streets behind the broken and burned walls of the Quayside buildings. Turkish soldiers patrolled the Quay and shook down refugees who appeared to them to still have valuables. He also saw refugees being marched in work battalions into the city’s ruins. “Bodies can be seen daily floating around the harbor,” he wrote in his ship’s diary after one of the walks. “The smell of burning flesh is at all times noticeable.” On the block behind the new consulate, corpses had been stacked for transportation by the work crews to graves and pyres.

It was during his walk on Sunday that Powell encountered Jennings for the first time. Until then, Powell had been dealing with the leaders of the relief committee—Davis, Jaquith, Jacob, and Griswold, who was particularly adept at getting results through bribes to the Turkish officials. Powell had met with these men at the American consulate relocated since the fire—now in a Quayside mansion that was owned by the Spartali family, wealthy Armenians who had departed the city. By September 17, Jennings had filled the several vacant mansions along the north end of Quay with women and children and in some cases their fathers or brothers who had managed to escape Turkish capture. Jennings’s first house at 490 was two blocks north of the relocated American consulate; another one of his houses was next door to the consulate. Powell saw the refugees packed tightly around the entrances to the safe houses, and he noticed also that Jennings had become a favorite of the American sailors and junior officers who had come ashore as guards. He joshed with them, and they lent him a hand when he asked for their help. Powell had probably seen him earlier but had not stopped to take notice.

Walking up and down the waterfront, the little man with the hunched back, peculiar gait, and straw boater on his large head had become a fixture on the Quay, tending to injured refugees and greeting the young sailors with a smile and a hello. “I must say the Navy crowd was exceedingly kind in every way,” Jennings later wrote. “In my attempt to save people from drowning and many other of my activities, my friends of the Navy simply let me go. I was not even restricted in giving
orders.” In one instance, he directed a sailor to save a drowning refugee. The sailors had orders not to engage in rescues, but Jennings insisted on it and the sailor complied. But most of Jennings’s orders were more in the nature of getting the young American swabbies to help him bring injured women he found on the streets to his shelters. It was work they were happy to do.