The Turk Comes to Town: The Experiences of Mark O. Prentiss During the Fall of Smyrna

RECORDED BY JOHN BAKELESS

THIS is the story of the capture of Smyrna by the Turks, of the burning of the city, and of the new Odyssey of a quarter-million refugees — in a United States destroyer, a British tramp steamer, and such odds and ends of transport as could be commandeered — across the Ægean sea to safety in Saloniki and the islands. It is the story of one man, Mark Prentiss, American engineer and business man, who was in Smyrna when the city fell, who watched it burn from the deck of the destroyer Litchfield, and who organized the work of evacuating the refugees — scorched, wounded, exhausted, half insane with terror—from Smyrna and the country for two hundred miles to the east.

Because Mr. Prentiss is an engineer, concerned with doing things and not with writing about them, his story is told by another hand, which, during those days that in Asia Minor were so adventurous, was peacefully engaged at an editorial desk in Boston. Because it is a personal story, taken down from the lips of the man who lived it, there is no hesitation in using the first personal pronoun, which — naturally — refers not to the actual writer but to Mr. Prentiss himself.

I

In May 1919, the Greek army entered the city of Smyrna at the behest of the Supreme Council, and signalized its entrance by a massacre, over the circumstances of which there has been much dispute, but as to the occurrence of which there is no doubt whatever. For three years the Greek arms, in spite of the changes of régime in Athens and several military reverses, were in the main successful. In the summer of 1922 the Greeks held the allimportant railway centres of Eskishehr and Afium-Karahissar, and felt so secure that they detached 50,000 troops for a demonstration in Thrace against Constantinople. But all this time a new Turkish army was being slowly whipped into shape in the country around the Nationalist capital at Angora. On August 26 the Turkish offensive opened. With supreme selfconfidence the Turks in Angora had announced, long before opening their offensive, that they would be in Smyrna — three hundred miles away and at that time still firmly in the hands of the Greeks—by mid-September; and after their initial successes they made known the very day and hour of their arrival. They said they would enter Smyrna on September 9 at noon, and it was exactly 12:05 when I saw their advance cavalry riding down to the quay on the day appointed, just five minutes late — or rather, not late at all, for to reach the quay they had ridden through the city.

I reached Smyrna about September first, coming down from Constantinople as an unofficial civilian, but at the request of Admiral Bristol, American High-Commissioner in the Near East. The Greek forces were already retreating, half of them northward toward the Dardanelles, the rest westward to Smyrna. For a few weeks in the fall the city holds more riches than any other in the Near East. Into it, the chief seaport of Asia Minor, pour all the olives, figs, tobacco, poppy seed, and Oriental rugs that the peasants of the interior have produced during the whole year. It was not merely a city that the Kemalists were to take, not merely a victory they were to win, but the whole war, together with the concentrated wealth of the lesser Asia.

The Greek army was routed — a disorganized broken mass of men, fleeing in confusion and almost uncommanded, for many of the officers had deserted their men in order to save themselves. During a retreat of nearly three hundred miles the Greeks — soldiers and civilians together — had ravaged the country, burned the villages, slaughtered the Turkish peasants, and looted as they went. When, after the fall of Smyrna, I journeyed two hundred and fifty miles inland, to Ushaq and beyond, there was not a moment when I could not look through my glasses and see scattered bodies lying here and there. Men, women, and children, often horribly mutilated, lay everywhere, and this was the handiwork of the retreating Greeks, whether soldiers, irregulars, or the civilians who had followed the armies inland during the three years of Greek rule.

With the memories of these deeds in their minds and the dread of Turkish vengeance hot in their imaginations, the Greeks came pouring back, a broken, beaten army; and it was at the very beginning of this movement — just after the battered first line from Eskishehr to Afium-Karahissar had broken, as I learned later — that I reached Smyrna.

Defeat was in the air. Already the sound of the rear guard’s artillery, beating off the Turkish advance cavalry that hung on the rear of the retreating Greeks, was beginning to be almost audible in the city itself. Troops, bearing obvious signs of defeat, were becoming more frequent. The Greeks had retired to the Ushaq-Kestal line, the last defensive position — though in Smyrna, at the time, we had no means of knowing this. The Greek inhabitants, who had moved on into the country during the years when their armies held it securely, had been straggling into Smyrna for days, each man or woman carrying a rug and bearing in it such other goods as could be defended from looters. Ushaq fell on September fourth, and every man, woman, or child dwelling between it and Smyrna fled to the port for refuge. Fifty thousand refugees poured back into the city, adding to the frenzy of its population and choking it completely.

Into this chaos came the Greek army, without arms, without officers, without discipline, and with only one purpose — to put the sea between themselves and their pursuers as soon as might be. Every vessel in the harbor was seized. For three days the troops were embarking, new soldiers coming in from the front, transports sailing, and refugees clamoring to be taken too. It was a rout. A few civilians got away, and after that there were no ships to spare. The army took them all. Except for a few who fled southward the soldiers and the Greek officials sailed off—and Smyrna was left without defenders and without a government. There was not a policeman, not even a doctor, not a semblance or shadow of authority.

The buildings of the various quarters, stretching in a wide arc around the bay, were quite uninjured. There had been no shellfire. The Greek and Armenian refugees had the Turkish army and the country, which many of them had helped to devastate, behind them, and the sea in front. An Italian, a French, and an American destroyer lay in the harbor, together with a few neutral merchantmen.

The Turks were in no haste to enter, though their troops were concentrating outside the town. The authorities of the defeated side had gone, the conquerors had not yet come, and the city government consisted of a few firemen, supported by the neutral warships, and a few neutral Civilians like myself, mostly Americans sent there by Admiral Bristol — or living there to buy tobacco.

So long as the Greeks remained in the city, the people had retained their ordinary headgear. Straw hats, battered derbies, queer-looking caps swarmed in the streets, but scarcely had the last blue and white Greek flags dipped over the horizon when there was an astounding change. Almost every head bore a fez, and every wearer of every fez wanted to be thought a Turk. Whence so many fezzes were to be procured on such short notice is a mystery that I never succeeded in fathoming. Perhaps in the Near East every one keeps a fez laid by for emergencies, just as a prudent American takes out. life insurance.

II

Outside the city the Turkish troops were moving up. So far there was not a Turkish soldier in the city, but atrocities had been occurring for days. The Near East is a hotbed of racial and personal feuds. The Greek police had been first disorganized and then withdrawn. It was a time when old quarrels between individuals were easily settled in the bloody fashion customary in the East for uncounted generations, nor had the passage through the city of unofficered troops by the thousands added to the general tranquillity. Many a Smyrniote Turk paid dearly for the victory of the advancing Turkish army, while chalked crosses on the doors — some of which I myself saw being drawn — protected Greek shops and dwellings. When the Turks came in those chalk marks were still there.

The streets were deserted. The refugees, finding shelter here and there as best they might, kept out of sight and under cover. The city, which for days had been in uproar, was silent save for occasional scattered shots as the worthy citizens of Smyrna settled their private misunderstandings of some time past; and the tension was terrific. I was standing on the quay looking up a street which for a long distance, as streets go in the Near East, was straight. I could see for blocks. Not a soul was in sight. Two gobs from the destroyer Lawrence, who stood behind me, might have been the whole population of Smyrna. Then, suddenly, far up that silent empty street, lined with its rows of staring white houses, something stirred — something long and dark that glistened here and there and soon was stretching down the street. Then we caught the clatter of hoofs on paving. The Turk was riding into Smyrna.

It was a small body of cavalry, a hundred troopers at most, the advance party of the advance guard, reconnoitring along the route by which the army was later to march in. They were the first Turkish troops to enter Smyrna, followed in a few minutes by the rest of the advance guard — perhaps a thousand soldiers — and a little while after by more troops, and then by more and more for days and days.

We stood there, the two sailors and I, and watched them come. They rode along without especial precaution, as if they knew the city was clear, the major in command riding at the head with his adjutant. My kodak was in my hands. The temptation was too strong. It was the chance of a lifetime to photograph history in the making. As they drew abreast of us, I came to the salute and then shook my two hands vigorously together. It is not a graceful gesture, but as a means of registering congratulation and absence of hostility when you don’t happen to speak the other fellow’s language it is unsurpassed, and I had occasion to repeat it many a time during the days that followed. I motioned toward the kodak and held up one hand for the troops to halt.

He was a good-natured fellow — that Turkish cavalry major — and perhaps not averse to being photographed at the head of the first troops to enter the captured city. He shouted an order and the column halted. I made the exposure at my leisure, bowed, smiled, saluted, and stepped back. Another order. The troops rode on, and then, suddenly, from an upper window, a hand grenade came flying. It struck my accommodating major squarely on the head, knocked him off his horse, but failed to explode. A second grenade — this time an explosion. Two men down, their horses in pieces, and I found myself lightly sprinkled with hot horseflesh and with blood. Uninjured myself, I ran to help the officer, who lay where he had fallen in the street. Some of his subordinates also ran to help him. A search party were off their horses and into the house from which the bomb had come in less time than it takes to think about it. There was a little shooting inside, then silence, and presently the soldiers emerged with a little group of frightened Greek prisoners.

To be flat on the ground is the next best thing to a bombproof, and the dud bomb that hit him really saved the major’s life. His officers took him down to the koniak where his wounds were dressed. He was not seriously hurt and presently made a little speech in the anteroom, which was rapidly filling with officers and orderlies. It was in Turkish and I had to rely on a friendly interpreter, but I still like to think of what he said and the way he said it. Everything, he told his men, must be done according to the laws of war. There must be no violence to civilians, and he himself would set them an example. The men who had bombed him, now his prisoners, would be held for trial. There must be no indiscriminate killing.

Our period of waiting was over. The Turkish army was in possession. The first troops to come in were cavalry — it was days before we saw any infantry — and the first horsemen to appear were as trim and spruce as if they had come from a parade ground and not from three hundred miles of fighting. The men were even freshly shaven and spare horses were led along beside the column, while machine guns seemed to be everywhere. It was no makeshift army. As new troops moved in during the days that followed, officers of higher and higher rank kept arriving. Each time that I went to the koniak I found the city had a new commander.

The problem of food was becoming serious. Fortunately the stores of the Greek army had been left behind. As spoils of war these were now Turkish property, but when we appealed to the Turks on behalf of their enemy refugees they opened one entire warehouse and bade us take what we needed. From the remnants of the American colony we established a relief organization, called in some amateur bakers whose experience was small but whose good-will was enormous, and fed the hungry.

The relief committee consisted of some twelve or fifteen members, including Mr. H. C. Jacquith and Dr. Winfred Post, of the Near East Relief, with two nurses, and Major Davis of the Red Cross, — all of whom returned to Constantinople the third day after the fire,— myself, and some permanent residents of Smyrna. In order to provide food for the starving people the Turks decreed the exemption from arrest of the Greek bakers, — whom we put to work, together with our amateurs, wherever we could find places,— and even posted notices on the bakeries to protect them from molestation.

We had 10,000 refugees on the athletic field, where there were high walls all around, which gave the terrified people an odd sense of security, and 12,000 at the Aidin brewery, our biggest camp. The Turks, like faithful followers of the Prophet, promptly closed the brewery, and when, feeling doubtful of the quality of the water supply, I suggested reopening it, Noureddin Pasha, who had shown us every courtesy, smiled politely and regretfully shrugged, ‘Oh, anything but that.’ The brewery stayed shut.

The Turks also allowed us to fence off the large infantry barracks in the southern part of the town for use as a concentration camp, but it lay near the Turkish quarter of Smyrna and the frightened refugees could not be persuaded to approach it.

III

The day before the fire a group of us were sitting in the American Consulate, when a hastily penciled note was brought in, asking us to come at once to the Armenian Hospital. Dr. Post, with two nurses, a sailor, and myself, jumped into a motor and started out. As we rode through the narrow streets we passed perhaps ten bodies and once we had to stop the car to avoid running over one that sprawled, face down. squarely in the centre of the street. When Dr. Post moved the man, we found that he was not yet dead, in spite of dreadful gashes in his throat and abdomen; but he was evidently dying. The doctor lifted him out of the street, did what he could, said a few kind words, and we drove on. Then — as we found again and again in the trying days that were before us — the main thought had to be the greatest good of the greatest number. We had to let our desire to help at the hospital outweigh our pity for this one poor fellow.

At this time there were not many bodies lying in the street. Indeed, their total number has always been exaggerated, though bodies were only too common in the days that followed; Turkish military officials were never at any pains to remove them, possibly because they felt the dead served a useful purpose as warnings.

When we came to the Armenian Hospital, we found, as usual, that the refugees had made for the nearest walled-in enclosure. The hospital stood in the centre of a courtyard with stone paving and several piazzas with iron railings — a very queer-looking place, the whole surrounded by a high wall. We knocked at the gate, someone inside examined us carefully through a little wicket, and we were admitted. Inside we found perhaps two thousand refugees, every one frantic with terror. No one who has not seen them can conceive the awful state of mind of those people, nor imagine how dreadful it was to look about and see on every side faces of a sickly greenish white that spoke more clearly than anything else could of the stark fear that possessed them. The whole two thousand looked as if they were under the light from a mercury tube — not sunlight.

In the hospital proper there were about eighty desperate cases, attended only by a few nurses and a couple of men who appeared to be internes, though they were not medical men. Not a physician was left in the city. Every one had run. Dr. Post went through the hospital and did what he could. Then, as there seemed no more use for us, we were about to go when a squad of Turkish soldiers, commanded by an officer, appeared at the gate.

The officer was as trim a soldier as one could wish to see, but his men were a pretty rough-looking lot — quite the worst I had met. Dr. Post spoke in Turkish to the commander, who showed an order directing him to take immediate possession of the hospital. The Turks intended to send in some of their own sick and wounded, especially their officers. I asked permission to go in and get the people ready to come out. The officer replied that I might do as I wished, but added that he knew most of the Armenians were armed and intended to search every one in the compound.

‘Suppose I go in and tell them to send out their arms,’said I. The officer smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and bade me try. Inside the compound I went from group to group with my interpreter, begging them to send out their arms if they wanted to save their lives. There was a great screaming and weeping and tearing of clothes, but no arms were to be seen. I went out and reported to the Turkish officer, who was still smiling patiently at the whole proceeding. I went back in again and begged them to send out their arms, while they assured me with one voice that they had no arms. After a while, however, children began to come out of the gate, carrying old muskets, dilapidated rifles, and knives, together with about a bushel of cartridges. The Turk laughed and said, through the interpreter, ‘Well, that’s a beginning.'

All this had taken longer in the doing than it does in the telling. The Turks had been there most of the afternoon and were still waiting to carry out their orders, yet when I asked for one more chance, their commander acquiesced immediately. Billy Sunday himself never went through more dramatics than I did when I went back into the compound. I told the refugees I knew they had knives and bombs, and knew also that every one caught with arms in his possession would be shot. If they hoped to see to-morrow ‘s sun, they must give up all weapons. We got more arms this time. The girls and children carried out enough to load a wagon.

The officer had been there three hours and more soldiers had been sent down to him. He told us we might put the refugees wherever we wanted to — on the quay or in the empty houses — but the hospital must be cleared. I went into the compound again and found the poor devils there beginning to climb up the walls, dragging their families after them in a vain effort to get away from the Turks. This would never do, whereas, if they came out quietly and submitted to search, they would in all probability be safe enough. I picked out a big fellow who had been in the United States and told him to get them off the walls — by force if necessary.

I went outside again and at last they began to come out, a few at a time. Pitifully frightened, they would look around, see Americans standing near, and rush over to us. It was time to go. We had done all we could. If we stayed we should simply be crushed under the panic-stricken mass of the whole two thousand. I did not actually see the wounded Turkish officers being put into the hospital, but I know that orders had been given to put them there, in the district where the fire afterward broke out — to my mind good circumstantial evidence that the Smyrna fire was not started by Turkish authority.

While we were waiting outside the hospital compound that afternoon, I saw a curious contrast between Turkish brutality and Turkish chivalry. A little way from the gate sat a soldier on horseback. Down the street came an old woman — a terrible sight, her clothes all torn away, her gray hair matted with blood and hanging on one side of her face — scarcely able to move. As she staggered past the man on horseback, he turned his mount a little, thrust out his stirrup, and kicked the poor old creature savagely in the ribs. Down she went in a heap, then picked herself up, and began to struggle painfully along again. Now the horseman unslung his rifle and began to take leisurely aim. It must have happened in a minute. It seemed hours.

My hand was on the shoulder of the officer, who was standing so that he could not see them. For the sake of the helpless men, women, and children inside the compound, I dared not speak, for I dared not risk antagonizing him; but I let my fingers tighten on his shoulder. He turned swiftly, saw what was happening, yelled at the man, sprang toward him, struck him fiercely; then, taking the woman as though she had been his mother, helped her gently to the gate and put her inside — and that was the last we saw of her.

It was not the only time that a Turkish officer prevented murder. A little party of American sailors, commanded by Chief-Torpedoman L. E. Crocker, had been sent out to the International College — an American institution in spite of its name — at Paradise, just outside Smyrna, with strict orders from Captain Hepburn, Admiral Bristol’s chief-of-staff and the ranking American naval officer at Smyrna, to stand guard inside the college compound and keep everyone inside and out of sight until the time came to bring them into Smyrna.

A day or two after the Turks reached the city, a band of chettés (irregulars) began to pillage within sight of the college, and the President, Dr. Alexander MacLachlan, insisted on leaving the compound to restrain them. Dr. MacLachlan is a British subject who had lived in Turkey for years, and, I was told, the only member of the faculty who was not an American. Rather than let him go alone, Crocker went with him, leaving some of his sailors outside the walls but at a distance from the Turks. The moment the looters heard Dr. MacLachlan declare he was a British subject, they attacked him and stripped him of his clothing. When Crocker came up they disarmed him and ordered both men to run for the compound. Crocker refused to turn his back, picked up Dr. MacLachlan, and keeping his face toward the Turks began to retreat, shouting to his own eager men not to shoot. To open fire would have been an act of war involving the United States.

At that moment, when, as Crocker afterward said, he believed his last hour had come, a Turkish regular officer appeared at the top of the hill, spurring his horse to a full gallop. Riding up to the irregulars he ordered them away, and helped Crocker and Dr. MacLachlan to regain the compound. He had learned what was happening while passing at the head of his own troops a mile or two away, and had ridden to their aid. Before leaving he stationed a Turkish guard over the college and told Dr. MacLachlan that if he had not disclosed his British citizenship he would never have been attacked. It was one instance of bitterness toward Great Britain of which we had many.

A good deal of the killing in Smyrna, however, and even some of the looting, had been done before there was a single Turkish soldier in the city. Let me give a single case that came under my own eye. Just after the Greek troops left, I passed a Greek civilian, standing in a doorway with a rifle in his hand and his eyes fixed on a second-story window on the other side of the street. I almost brushed against him but he never saw me. He was as intent on that window as a pointer dog, and his face was not a pretty sight by any means. An hour later I came back. My Greek was still there with his rifle, and his eyes were still fixed on that window. Later in the day I passed once more. This time my Greek was gone, and there was a dead man hanging out of the window he had been watching so intently. Circumstantial evidence, of course, but I shall not hold the Turks responsible for that particular corpse — and there were a good many such in Smyrna.

IV

The fire that destroyed Smyrna broke out at noon on the thirteenth. Little fires had been breaking out for a week and during the last three days there had been an average of about five fires a day, far more than had ever been known before. The great fire was the work of incendiaries and broke out simultaneously at many different places in the Armenian quarter and especially near the Armenian Club and the Cassaba railroad station. The Turks assert — and I believe them — that all these fires were laid by an organization of Greek and Armenian boys and young men, determined to burn the city rather than leave it in Turkish hands.

Paul Grescovich, for fifteen years Fire Chief of Smyrna, with whom I went over the ground step by step after the fire, had no doubts about its incendiary origin. He had been born an Austrian subject, had held office first under the original Turkish régime, then under the Greeks, and now found himself again under a Turkish government. He was, therefore, as free from prejudice as anyone could be and certainly was in a position to know what had happened. With the precision of an engineer he showed me the various spots where the fires had been started.

His few remaining firemen had been shot and bombed, while lurking incendiaries slipped out, again and again, from alleyways and doors to cut the hose. Many of these men were shot down, but they did their work well enough to sacrifice the city. Armenians would throw open the doors of their houses, shoot at the firemen or the soldiers whom the Turks at last sent to help fight the fire, and shriek that they preferred fire to Turkish rule, then shut their doors and wait for death. The morning before the fire the Armenian priests were seen leading several thousands of their people from the churches and compounds where they had been staying for several days. Apparently they knew what was coming.

Breaking out at noon, the fire at first seemed unimportant. Even by the middle of the afternoon it was hard to believe that the city was threatened, but a southeast wind sprang up, something almost unknown in Smyrna, and drove the fire resistlessly across the city, to a standstill at the water’s edge.

I was in the office of Kiazim Pasha at the koniak that afternoon before the fire became serious, when British naval officers from H.M.S. Iron Duke appeared with a formal communication. Kiazim went to reply to this in person at four o’clock, making an appointment to take me to an execution at five o’clock. That afternoon I had been trying to convince him that nothing would do the Turkish cause so much good — especially in American eyes — as an occupation of the city without atrocities; but Kiazim frankly despaired of American public opinion, for, he said, ‘Your minds are made up about us, no matter what the facts may be.'

He explained that every Turkish soldier caught committing a crime was being punished. Indeed, that very afternoon some men were to be executed, three of whom were Turks. He would take me out to see the execution personally. I was to be allowed to take my own interpreter and find out from the victims themselves who they were and why they were being executed. But when five o’clock came we all — except, I suppose, the condemned men — were otherwise occupied.

The fire drove everyone down to the sea. With the burning city in their rear and the sea in front of them, the fugitives spread their rugs and waited. It was only by dipping the rugs in the sea and crawling under them that any survived. Many threw themselves into the harbor. Some of these were drowned. Others scrambled out again on shore. A few reached the little vessels that still were left; but along the quay next morning the sea was thick with a floating tangle of débris and bodies scattered here and there.

The American destroyer Litchfield, which had relieved the Lawrence, was in the harbor with orders to protect all fully naturalized citizens and all American property. There had been about two hundred American citizens in Smyrna, mostly naturalized Greeks, some of whom had not been in the United States for years, but all of whom were, nevertheless, entitled to the protection of the flag. With their families, these made up a company of about eight hundred. Beginning on Saturday, when the Turks came in, and during the days that followed before the fire, on Wednesday, they had all been gathered into the theatre and guarded by sailors.

It was heartbreaking work for the American Consulate to decide who was and who was not entitled to protection. Officially the Turks did not recognize American naturalization as releasing Greeks born in Asia Minor from their allegiance to Turkey. In Turkish eyes they were still merely members of a subject nationality. Moreover, they were all business men and all rich; of military age, too, almost every one — the choicest picking, so far as men were concerned, in the Smyrna capture; yet the Turks permitted us to load up and take away all who could prove American citizenship. Under such circumstances, the letter of the American law had to be strictly enforced.

Many had first papers, but that did not make them citizens. Still others — and this was almost tragic — had discharge papers showing honorable service in the United States Army during the war, and yet were not citizens.

One old lady was surreptitiously smuggled aboard by the sailors when they found that she had a picture of her son in undoubted naval uniform. That faded photograph was better than any passport. In the sailors’ minds the mother of a gob was a person who had to be saved, and saved she was.

Wednesday morning, before the fire had broken out, most of these left Smyrna on a Shipping-Board boat that had been in the harbor. General Horton went with them, leaving American interests in Smyrna in charge of ViceConsul Barnes and the naval officers.

When the fire grew worse, during the afternoon, the Litchfield was still lying at the quay, stern on; most Americans who were left went aboard her. As the crowd increased, the destroyer moved out into the harbor and anchored half a mile from shore, far enough to be safe, but close enough for us to see all that occurred on shore during that tragic night. As we looked back from the ship we could see that the sufferers on the quay had moved as far away from the fire and as near to the sea as they could. This crowding toward the edge of the quay left empty spots behind them, and in these we could see, through our glasses, dark figures moving, stooping, rising, moving on again. What were they doing? Robbing? Killing? Planting inflammables? There was much speculation on the destroyer, but we never learned. We could also see the signal light of a party of five from the Italian destroyer, who stayed in the cathedral tower, signaling reports on the progress of the fire until it almost reached them. The tower eventually fell in and they got away just in time.

When the flames reached the Greek quarter explosions began and continued for several hours — mute evidence that a fair-sized stock of arms and ammunition had been left behind, which can have come only from the stores of the Greek army. The harbor, reflecting the fire, became a fiery red. Long ribbons of burnished copper, shifting gently in the waves, seemed to run out to the ship from the city, dulled when clouds of smoke rose, brilliant again when the smoke cleared and fire rolled up once more into the sky. This was punctuated by blasting to clear areas of the city and so stop the fire. Sometimes, in the Greek quarter a hidden bomb or store of smallarms ammunition would be reached. The bombs threw columns of fire and dotted bits of black débris far into the air. Ash and burning cinders fell all around us, a half mile from shore. At times the popping of the burning cartridges was as incessant as machine-gun fire. Through our glasses we could look back across the copper-colored sea, with choppy waves rising and falling under the stiff wind that was driving the fire down to the water front, and could see the people huddled on the quay, crouching under their dripping blankets. From time to time a fugitive swam out and was taken on board, until at last the Litchfield was full to overflowing, and orders were given to take on no more.

A moving picture had been showing in Smyrna when the city fell, La Tango de la Mort, some lurid tale or other (for moving-picture tastes are much the same the world over), but no more lurid than the real drama beneath it. A huge gilt sign had been erected to advertise the film and now the brilliant light of the fire set the gold lettering aglow. Lifted high above that all too genuine Dance of Death, the tawdry tinsel letters, seen through the superheated air, seemed to quiver.

More heartening was the fate of the American flag that had waved, ever since the Turks came in, above the theatre that had been used as American Headquarters. All night long we watched this star-spangled banner tossing in the red glare of the burning city. The staff from which it was displayed was horizontal, and from the Litchfield we looked back at the flag almost edge on. In the occasional periods of calm, when it hung straight down, motionless, we could not see it at all. Then, as the breeze caught it, we could see its folds again, only to find them obscured by the smoke and fire and flying cinders all around it. Each time the smoke clouds shut down we held our breath, never expecting to see it again, and each time they cleared we could see, like Francis Scott Key on the British ship off Fort McHenry, that ‘our flag was still there.’

And there it stayed the whole night through, stayed until the fire burned out in the morning and a landing party of half awed and wholly reverent gobs brought it off to the ship — a little charred, a little scorched, but still the flag.

Mr. Prentiss’s adventures will be continued next month under the title, ‘Mustapha Kemal in the Saddled.'