The “Iron Duke” at the Smyrna Fire.

Hokitika Guardian, 18 November 1922, Page 4

The “Iron Duke” at the Smyrna Fire.

• BLUEJACKETS AND BABIES. , (By G. Ward Price in Daily Mail). SMYRNA, Sept. 25 In the courtyard of the British Con-sulate-General, a big stone-walled pln. e built with an eye to possible defensive purposes thirty years ago. 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 roars furiously a hundred yards 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 burn!” ! They had almost forgotten the-korse. She is a handsome chestnut mare with a little foal beside her in the loose-box. She belongs to a British officer. j So, with, ears pricked in alarm, the mare and her baby are led at the rear of the little party as it struggles through the pandemoniac confusion towards the quay. There the officer seizes o Turkish soldier. j “Take this horse,” ho orders, through, an interpreter, “to General Kiazim Pasha, commandant of the town. It is for him. He is expecting it and you will got into serious trouble if you fail to deliver it.” Thus, to her mystification, a big, gentle-eyed mare perhaps finds 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 the gigantic wall of flames that is consuming the city less than a mile away, stand groups of British naval officers in white mess-jackets silently watching the tremendous spectacle.

There, fierce destruction, wild confusion, terror, evidenced by the pitiful, unbroken screaming that comes over the blood-rod water; here, security, order, calm. The contrast shocks one for the moment. Then conics an order. “Call away all picket boats, the cutter, and til.' whaler. A guard with rifles and bayonets in each boat. The boats to go ill and save ns many as they can.” The transformation is instantaneous. A shrill piping ; a hollowing of orders, a trample of running feet. Half the white mess-jacketed officers disappear. In fhroe minutes they are on deck again in blue, 'mufflers round their necks, short truncheons in tlmir hands to beat hack rushes for tin* boats. The searchlights follow them as the boats scurry off over the lurid sea. No kinemn film in the world ever registered half such abject disaster as those beams fall on. One feels like a spectator at some colossal auto-da-fe: or it might be a picture of the Day of Judgment. There is not much heat as the boats near the quay, for the wind blows parallel with the shore. Cautiously they go in, how on : the dense masses of refugees packed nil the seafront are already heaving to rush them directly they are within jumping distance. Same’plunge into the water and swim alongside, being caught up by bluejackets and hauled over the side. Then the how touches the quay and. fighting, shrieking, wailing, a torrent of terrified humanity pours over it, while splashes and shrieks from either side mark falls into the sen. •'Women and children only!” roar the officers, lighting with fists and sticks to keep hack the men. It is as unavailing as pushin gat an avalanche. The only tiling to do is to hack out directly t-lio picket-boat is full to literal overflowing. •So Dip night goes on, till 2,000 hysterical Greeks and Armenians are huddled on the deck 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 iust where the quay is covered with burning debris,” the midshipman told me, pointing from the deck. “There were same refugees there, but they weren’t moving, and I wanted to see if they were dead. I got: up to an old man and shook him by the shoulder, pulling him towards the picket-boat. Tic 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 were dead, suffocated. They had dipped the blankets in the sea and crawled under them, when the fire suddenly broke out on the seafront along-

side and the smoke had choked them to death.” In the Iron Duke on the first morning after the fire the bluejackets in one mess-deck have collected 17 tiny children from among the refugees to give them breakfast. One of the ship’s surgeons comes along. “Wlmt are you going to give them

to eat ” he asks suspiciously, knowing the British sailor’s habit of feeding lus pels to death. “Well, sir, we’ve got 31 extra lashers of bacon for them to start with,”

is the hearty reply. Firm action by the surgeon saved those children’s lives, for one naval rasher of bacon, big cnough to provide breakfast for a small family, would certainly have brought about the death of any Greek baby who consumed it.