IRON DUKE AT SMYRNA

Evening Star, Issue 18136, 28 November 1922, Page 2

IRON DUKE AT SMYRNA

BLUEJACKETS AND BABIES,

Writing from Smyrna about tho middle of September to the ‘ Daily Mail,’ Mr G. Ward Price says: The last detachment of the British colony is being drawn up to march down under an escort of marines through the howling, terrified mob outside to the ships’ boats waiting by the quay. The fire was furiously raging 100yds away, and the scorching wind of it can be felt in the Consulate. “What about the horse, sir?” cries a marine to his officer as the party is about to leave. “We can’t leave it to bum!” They had almost forgotten the horse. She is a handsome chestnut marc, with a little foal beside her in the loose-box. She belongs) to a British officer. So, with ears pricked in alarm, the mare and her baby are led at tho rear of the little party as it struggles through the pandemoniac confusion towards the quay. There the officer seizes a Turkish soldier. “Toko tins horse,” he orders, through an interpreter, “to General Kiazim Pasha, commandant of the town. It is for him l . Ho is expecting it, and you will get into serious trouble if you fail to deliver it.” Thus, to her mystification, a big, gentleeyed maro perhaps find* herself at this moment a refugee among the little weedy country-bred ponies of the Turkish army. On the deck of the Iron Duke, lit up by tho gigantic wall of flames that is consuming the erty less than a mile away, stands groups of British naval officers in white mesd jackets, silently watching the tremendous spectacle. There, fierce destruction., wild confusion, terror, evidenced by the pitiful, unbroken screaming that comes over tho blood-red water; boro, security, order, calm. The contrast shocks one for the moment. Then comes an order. “ Call away all picket boats, the cutter, and the whaler. A guard with rifles and bayonets in each boat. The boats to go in and save as many as they can.” The transformation is instantaneous. A shrill piping; a bellowing of orders, a. trample of running feet. Half the white mess-jacketed officers disappear._ In Hire© minutes they are on deck again in blue, mufflers round their necks, short truncheons in their bands to beat back rushes for tho boato. The searchlights follow them as tho boats scurry off over the lurid sea. No kinema film in tho world ever registered; half such abject disaster as those beams fall ou. Guo feels like a spectator at some colossal auto-da-fe; or it might be a picture of the Day of Judgment. There id not much heat as the boats near the quay, for the wind blows parallel with the shore. Cautiously they go in, mow on; the dense masses of refugees packed on tho seafront are already heaving to rush them directly they are within jumping distance. Some plunge into the water - and swim alongside, being caught up by bluejackets and hauled over tho side. Then the bow touches the quay, and, fighting, shrieking, wailing, a torrent of terrified humanity pours over it, while splashes and shrieks from either side murk fails' into the sea, “Women and children only!” roar the otfioere, fighting with fiyts and sticks to keep back tho men. It is as unavailing as pushing at an avalanche. Tho only thing to do is to back out directly the picket-boat ra full to literal over-flowing. So the night goes on, till 2,000 hysterical Greeks and Armenians are huddled ou the dock of the Iron Duke, which has changed in an hour from the appearance of a steam yacht to that of a casual ward. “I went ashore just where tho quay is covered with burning debris,” the midshipman told me, pointing from tho deck. “ There were some refugees there, but they weren’t moving, and I wanted to see if they 'were dead. 1 got up to an old man, and shook him by the shoulder, pulling him towards the picket-boat. He only moaned, and pointed to what looked like a pile of baggage. I went up to it and pulled some blankets off. Underneath were a 'woman and two children. She was alive; they ware dead, suffocated. They had dipped the blankets in tho sea and crawled under them, when the fire suddenly broke out on tho fteafront alongside, and the smoko had choked them to death.” In the Iron Duke on tho first morning after the fire the bluejackets in one messdeck have collected seventeen tiny children from among the refugees to give them breakfast. One of the ship’s surgeons comes along. “What are you going to give them to oaT? * ho asks suspiciously, knowing the British sailor's habit of feeding his pots to death.

“Well, sir, we’ve got thirty-four extra rashers of bacon for them to start with," is tho hearty reply. Firm action by the surgeon saved thoaa children’s lives, for one naval rasher of bacon, big enough to provide breakfast for a small family, would certainly have brought about the death of any Greek baby who consumed it.