Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 - The Destruction of Islam's City of Tolerance by Giles Milton

Author:Giles Milton [Milton, Giles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, General, War, History
ISBN: 9780340837870
Google: 5Oh1PQAACAAJ
Amazon: 034083787X
Goodreads: 6080102
Publisher: Sceptre
Published: 2009-07-14T23:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

Paradise Lost

Wednesday, 6 September 1922

Shortly after breakfast on Wednesday, 6 September, Hortense Wood – a venerable spinster who lived in the heart of Bournabat – was witness to a most alarming sight. From the window of her drawing room, she noticed a great column of soldiers shuffling through the village square. Intrigued by the spectacle, and curious to know where they were going, she made her way down the long drive towards the main gate of her property.

It did not take her long to realise that something catastrophic had happened to the Greek army in central Anatolia. ‘[I saw] endless streams of disbanded Greek soldiers,’ she wrote in a letter to her niece. ‘A miserable rabble, ragged, weary and wan; and with them were hundreds of refugees, both Greek and Turkish, plodding their way under a burning sun, through clouds of hot dust swirling in the air.’

Just a few moments earlier, Hortense had checked the thermometer hanging on the balcony outside her house. It was already thirty degrees in the shade and uncomfortably humid. She felt desperately sorry for these downtrodden and exhausted refugees.

‘It was a most pitiable sight,’ she wrote. ‘They looked like so many hopeless mendicants, not knowing whither they were going or what was to become of them: poor women dragging along small children – strangers with none to help or guide them. I can’t forget the sight of one of these women, sobbing as she went along, with three little children holding onto her torn skirts and looking frightened and bewildered at the scene around them.’

Hortense Wood was one of the first eyewitnesses to the fallout from the crushing defeat that had befallen the 200,000-strong Greek army in central Anatolia. For much of the previous year, these battle-hardened troops had clung to their perilous positions on the western bank of the River Sakaria. Desperately short of supplies – and subject to constant attacks by Kemal’s nationalists – they had nevertheless stood guard for almost twelve months over the eastern frontier of Greece’s empire in Turkey. Most knew that their situation was hopeless. Greece was almost bankrupt and the army’s guns and munitions were in an advanced state of decay. King Constantine had long since packed up his bags and headed back to Athens. In his place was a recently appointed chief of staff, General Hatzianestis, who was widely held to be mentally unhinged. There were days when he refused to get to his feet, believing them to be made of fragile glass. George Horton’s considered opinion was that he should be locked up ‘in a lunatic asylum’.

By August 1922, Greece’s only hope of an honourable exit from the crisis lay in the diplomatic negotiations taking place in London and Paris. Yet no resolution was forthcoming. The Turks wanted the Greeks off their soil; the Greeks could not bring themselves to abandon the Megali Idea. Kemal’s nationalists meanwhile bided their time. Their army was well trained and newly equipped with weaponry secretly supplied by the French and Italians.

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