MARCH OF DEATH IN THE SNOW.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3141, 30 October 1922, Page 7

MARCH OF DEATH IN THE SNOW.

A tragic picture of scenes in Anatolia during the mass deportations of Greeks by the Turks is given in a statement issued lately by the British Armenian Committee. "The whole thing was like a march of corpses, a, march of death across Anatolia," says the author of the statment, Miss Ethel Thompson, an American who did orphanage work for the Near East Belief. The heaviest winter weather, with a blinding snowfall, she declares, was the Turks' favorite time for driving on the Greeks. Ghastly lines of gaunt starving Greek women and children staggered through the city of Harpoot. says Miss Thompson, who worked in Anatolia from August last till the beginning of' June, but has now severed her connection witb tho Near East Relief.

She describes tho deportees' glassy eyes protruding from their heads, their bones merely covered with skin, skeleton babies tied to their backs. "Driven on without food supplies or clothing until they dropped dead, Turkish gendarmes hurrying them with their guns. During her stay in Samsoun, in the early part of July, the Greek villages round about were burned and the inhabitants deported, including the women and children. Her house was surrounded by these women, hammering at the doors, holding out their children, begging those inside to take the children if they could not save the women. "We crossed Anatolia under blazing sun, passing groups and groups of the old men of Samsoun and the inhabitants of other Black Sea ports walking on, God knows where, driven by Turkish gendarmes. The dead bodies of those who had dropped during the hard tramp were lying by the roadside. Vultures had eaten parts of the flesh." She found the city of Harpoot "full of starving, sick, wretched human wrecks" —Greek women, children and men. These people were trying to make 60up of grass, and considered themselves fortunate when they could secure a sheep's ear to aid it, the 1 ear being the only part of the animal thrown away in Anatolia. "The Turks had given them no food on the 500-mile trip from Samsoun. Those with money could bribe the guards for food or buy a, little on the way, until they were robbed. Those without money'died by the wayside

"In many places, thirsty in the' blistering sun "and heat, they were not allowed 1 water, unless they could pay for

"The Near East relief stations tried to give them bread as they passed Cesarea and Sivas, but the amount thtey could carry was small. It would have been more humane to give them a bullet than bread, because death would come in any ca.se sooner or later. When a woman with a baby died the baby was taken from her dead arms and handed to another woman, and the horrible march proceeded. Old blind men, led by little children, trudged along the road. The whole thing was like a march of corpses, a march of death across Anatolia, which continued during my entire summer. "The heaviest winter weather, when a howling blizzard was raging, during a blinding snowfall, was the favorite time chosen by the Turks to drive the Greeks on. Thousands perished in the snow. The road from Harpoot to Bfitlis was lined with bodies. I saw women with transparent lips who did not 100 khuman. They were like gaunt shadows. The roads over which women and children travelled were impassable for any kind of travel excepting pack mule."

Miss Thompson describes how she saw three hundred small children, who had been driven together in a circle, with 20 gendarmes cruelly beating them with their heavy swords. • When a mother rushed in to save her child, she was also beaten and driven out. The best looking girls were taken into Moslem harems by the Turks, who boasted openly of the number of women they had taken for tliis purpose. Some of the girls whom she knew in Samsoun disfigured their faces with dye to hide' their good looks, in the hope they would not be taken.