accepted. But the revolutionists declared that such a force in so
central a location menaced the safety of the Armenian forces and
that they would never permit it to reach our premises alive. We
might have a guard of five. But Djevdet Bey would give us fifty or
none. Truly we were between the devil and the deep sea, for, if both
revolutionists and Vali kept their word, we should be the occasion
for the outbreak of trouble, if the guard were sent; if it were not
sent, we should have no official assurance of safety for the
thousands who were already preparing to take refuge on our premises.
We should be blamed for an unhappy outcome either way. On Monday,
when Dr. Ussher saw the Vali again, he seemed to be wavering and
asked if he should send the guard. Dr. Ussher left the decision with
him, but added that the sending of such a force might precipitate
trouble. It was never sent.
Meanwhile Djevdet Bey had asked Miss McLaren and Schwester Martha,
who had been nursing in the Turkish military hospital all winter, to
continue their work there, and they had consented.
WAR! “ISHIM YOK, KEIFIM TCHOK.”
On Tuesday, the 20th April, at 6 a.m., some Turkish soldiers tried
to seize one of a band of village women on their way to the city.
She fled. Two Armenian soldiers came up and asked the Turks what
they were doing. The Turkish soldiers fired on the Armenians,
killing them. Thereupon the Turkish entrenchments opened fire. The
siege had begun. There was a steady rifle firing all day, and from
the walled city, now cut off from communication with the Gardens,
was heard a continuous cannonading from Castle Rock upon the houses
below. In the evening, houses were seen burning in every direction.
All the Armenians in the Gardens—nearly 30,000, as the Armenian
population of the walled city is small—were now gathered into a
district about a mile square, protected by eighty “teerks” (manned
and barricaded houses) besides walls and trenches. The Armenian
force consisted of 1,500 trained riflemen possessing only about 300
rifles. Their supply of ammunition was not great, so they were very
sparing of it; used pistols only, when they could, and employed all
sorts of devices to draw the fire of the enemy and waste their
ammunition. They began to make bullets and cartridges, turning out
2,000 a day; also gunpowder, and after awhile they made three
mortars for throwing bombs. The supply of material for the
manufacture of these things was limited, and methods and implements
were crude and primitive, but they were very happy and hopeful and
exultant over their ability to keep the enemy at bay. Some of the
rules for their men were: Keep clean; do not drink; tell the truth;
do not curse the religion of the enemy. They sent a manifesto to the
Turks to the effect that their quarrel was with one man and not with
their Turkish neighbours. Valis might come and go, but the two races
must continue to live together, and they hoped that after Djevdet
went there might be peaceful and friendly relations between them.
The Turks answered in the same spirit, saying that they were forced
to fight. Indeed, a protest against this war was signed by many
prominent Turks, but Djevdet would pay no attention to it.
The Armenians took and burned (the inmates, however, escaping) the
barracks north of our premises, but apart from this they did not
attempt the offensive to any extent—their numbers were too few. They
were fighting for their homes, their very lives, and our sympathies
could not but be wholly on their side, though we strove to keep our
actions neutral. We allowed no armed men to enter the premises, and
their leader, Aram, in order to help us to preserve the neutrality
of our premises, forbade the bringing of wounded soldiers to our
hospital, though Dr. Ussher treated them at their own temporary
hospital. But Djevdet Bey wrote to Dr. Ussher on the 23rd that armed
men had been seen entering our premises and that the rebels had
prepared entrenchments near us. If, at the time of attack, one shot
were fired from these entrenchments, he would be “regretfully
compelled” to turn his cannon upon our premises and completely
destroy them. We might know this for a surety. We answered that we
were preserving the neutrality of our premises by every means in our
power. By no law could we be held responsible for the actions of
individuals or organisations outside our premises.
Our correspondence with the Vali was carried on through our official
representative, Signor Sbordone, the Italian consular agent, and our
postman was an old woman bearing a flag of truce. On her second
journey she fell into a ditch and, rising without her white flag,
was instantly shot dead by Turkish soldiers. Another was found, but
she was wounded while sitting at the door of her shack on our
premises. Then Aram said that he would permit no further
correspondence until the Vali should answer a letter of Sbordone’s,
in which the latter had told Djevdet that he had no right to expect
the Armenians to surrender now, since the campaign had taken on the
character of a massacre.
Djevdet would permit no communication with Miss McLaren at the
Turkish hospital, and would answer no question of ours concerning
her welfare, though after two weeks he wrote to Herr Spörri that she
and Schwester Martha were well and comfortable. Dr. Ussher had known
the Vali as a boy and had always been on the most friendly terms
with him, but in a letter to the Austrian banker who had taken
refuge on the German premises, the Vali wrote that one of his
officers had taken some Russian prisoners and cannon and that he
would cause them to parade in front of “His Majesty Dr. Ussher’s
fortifications, so that he, who with the rebels was always awaiting
the Russians, should see them and be content.” This letter ended
with the words: “Ishim yok, keifim tchok” (“I have no work and much
fun.”) While he was having no work and much fun, his soldiers and
their wild allies, the Kurds, were sweeping the countryside,
massacring men, women, and children and burning their homes. Babies
were shot in their mothers’ arms, small children were horribly
mutilated, women were stripped and beaten. The villages were not
prepared for attack; many made no resistance; others resisted until
their ammunition gave out. On Sunday, the 25th, the first band of
village refugees came to the city. At early dawn we heard them
knocking, knocking, knocking at our gate. Dr. Ussher went out in
dressing gown and slippers to hear their pitiful tale and send the
wounded to the hospital, where he worked over them all day.
THE MISSION’S FIRST-AID TO THE INJURED.
Six thousand people from the Gardens had early removed to our
premises with all their worldly possessions, filling church and
school buildings and every room that could possibly be spared in the
missionary residences. One woman said to Miss Silliman: “What would
we do without this place? This is the third massacre during which I
have taken refuge here.” A large proportion of these people had to
be fed, as they had been so poor that they had bought daily from the
ovens what bread they had money for, and now that resource was cut
off. Housing, sanitation, government, food, relation with the
revolutionist forces, were problems that required great tact and
executive ability. The Armenians were not able to cope with these
problems unaided. They turned to the missionaries for help.
Mr. Yarrow has a splendid gift for organisation. He soon had
everything in smoothly running order, with everyone hard at work
at what he was best fitted to do. A regular city government for
the whole city of thirty thousand inhabitants was organised with
mayor, judges, and police—the town had never been so well policed
before. Committees were formed to deal with every possible
contingency. Grain was sold or contributed to the common fund by
those who possessed it, most of whom manifested a generous and
self-sacrificing spirit; one man gave all the wheat he possessed
except a month’s supply for his family. The use of a public oven
was secured, bread tickets issued, a soup kitchen opened, and
daily rations were given out to those on our premises and those
outside who needed food. Miss Rogers and Miss Silliman secured a
daily supply of milk, and made some of their school-girls boil it
and distribute it to babies who needed it, until 190 were being
thus fed. The Boy Scouts, whom thirteen year-old Neville Ussher
had helped organize in the fall, now did yeoman’s service in
protecting the buildings against the dangers of fire, keeping the
premises clean, carrying wounded on stretchers, reporting the
sick, and, during the fourth week, distributing milk and eggs to
babies and sick outside the premises.
Our hospital, which had a normal capacity of fifty beds, was made to
accommodate one hundred and sixty-seven, beds being borrowed and
placed on the floor in every available space. Such of the wounded as
could walk or be brought to the hospital came regularly to have
their wounds dressed. Many complicated operations were required to
repair the mutilations inflicted by an unimaginable brutality and
love of torture. Dr. Ussher, as the only physician and surgeon in
the besieged city, had not only the care of the patients in his
hospital, the treatment of the wounded refugees and of the wounded
Armenian soldiers, but his dispensary and out-patients increased to
an appalling number. Among the refugees exposure and privation
brought in their train scores of cases of pneumonia and dysentery,
and an epidemic of measles raged among the children. Miss Silliman
took charge of a measles annex, Miss Rogers and Miss Ussher helped
in the hospital, where Miss Bond and her Armenian nurses were worked
to the limit of their strength, and after a while Mrs. Ussher, aided
by Miss Rogers, opened an overflow hospital in an Armenian
school-house, cleared of refugees for the purpose. Here it was a
struggle to get beds, utensils, helpers, even food enough for the
patients. Indeed all this extra medical and surgical work was
hampered by insufficient medical and surgical supplies, for the
annual shipment had been stalled at Alexandretta.
DARK DAYS.
At the end of two weeks the people in the walled city managed to
send us word that they were holding their own and had taken some of
the government buildings, though they were only a handful of
fighters and were cannonaded day and night. About 16,000 cannon
balls or shrapnel were fired upon them. The old-fashioned balls sunk
into the three-feet thick walls of sun-dried brick without doing
much harm. In time, of course, the walls would fall in, but they
were the walls of upper stories. People took refuge in the lower
stories, so only three persons lost their lives from this cause.
Some of the “teerks” in the Gardens were also cannonaded without
much damage being done. It seemed the enemy was reserving his
heavier cannon and his shrapnel till the last. Three cannon balls
fell on our premises the first week, one of them on a porch of the
Usshers’ house. Thirteen persons were wounded by bullets on the
premises, one fatally. Our premises were so centrally located that
the bullets of the Turks kept whizzing through, entered several
rooms, broke the tiles on the roofs, and peppered the outside of the
walls. We became so used to the pop-pop-pop of rifles and booming of
cannon that we paid little attention to them in the daytime, but the
fierce fusillades at night were rather nerve-racking.
A man escaping from Ardjish related the fate of that town, second in
size and importance to Van in the vilayet. The kaimakam had called
the men of all the guilds together on the 19th April, and, as he had
always been friendly to the Armenians, they trusted him. When they
had all gathered, he had them mown down by his soldiers.
Many of the village refugees had stopped short of the city at the
little village of Shushantz, on a mountain side near the city. Here
Aram bade them remain. On the 8th May we saw the place in flames,
and Varak Monastery near by, with its priceless ancient manuscripts,
also went up in smoke. These villagers now flocked into the city.
Djevdet seemed to have altered his tactics. He had women and
children driven in by hundreds to help starve the city out. Owing to
the mobilisation of the previous fall, the supply of wheat in the
Gardens had been very much less than usual to begin with, and now
that 10,000 refugees were being given a daily ration, though a
ration barely sufficient to sustain life, this supply was rapidly
approaching its limit. The ammunition was also giving out. Djevdet
could bring in plenty of men and ammunition from other cities.
Unless help came from Russia, it was impossible for the city to hold
out much longer against him, and the hope of such help seemed very
faint. We had no communication with the outside world; a telegram we
had prepared to send to our embassy before the siege never left the
city; the revolutionists were constantly sending out appeals for
help to the Russo-Armenian volunteers on the border, but no word or
sign of their reaching their destination was received by us. At the
very last, when the Turks should come to close quarters, we knew
that all the population of the besieged city would crowd into our
premises as a last hope. But, enraged as Djevdet was by this
unexpected and prolonged resistance, was it to be hoped that he
could be persuaded to spare the lives of one of these men, women and
children? We believed not. He might offer the Americans personal
safety if we would leave the premises, but this, of course, we would
not do; we would share the fate of our people. And it seemed not at
all improbable that he would not even offer us safety, believing, as
he seemed to believe, that we were aiding and upholding the
“rebels.”
Those were dark days indeed. Our little American circle came
together two evenings in the week to discuss the problems constantly
arising. We would joke and laugh over some aspects of our situation,
but as we listened to the volley firing only two blocks away, we
knew that at any hour the heroic but weakening defence might be
overpowered; knew that then hell would be let loose in the crowded
city and our crowded compound; knew that we should witness
unspeakable atrocities perpetrated on the persons of those we loved,
and probably suffer them in our own persons. And we would sing:
“Peace, perfect peace; the future all unknown!
Jesus we know and He is on the throne,”
and pray to the God who was able to deliver us out of the very mouth
of the lion.
On Saturday forenoon a rift seemed to appear in the clouds, for many
ships were seen on the lake, sailing away from Van, and we heard
that they contained Turkish women and children. We became a “city
all gone up to the housetops,” wondering and surmising. Once before
such a flight had taken place, when the Russians had advanced as far
as Sarai. They had retreated, however, and the Turkish families had
returned.
That afternoon the sky darkened again. Cannon at the Big Barracks on
the plain began to fire in our direction. At first we could not
believe that the shots were aimed at our flag, but no doubt was
permitted us on that point. Seven shells fell on the premises, one
on the roof of Miss Rogers’ and Miss Silliman’s house, making a big
hole in it; two others did the same thing on the boys’-school and
girls’-school roofs. On Sunday morning the bombardment began again.
Twenty-six shells fell on the premises before noon.
When the heavy firing began Dr. Ussher was visiting patients outside
and Mrs. Ussher was also away from home at her overflow hospital, so
I ran over from our own hospital to take their children to the
safest part of the house, a narrow hall on the first-floor. There we
listened to the shrieking of the shrapnel and awaited the bursting
of each shell. A deafening explosion shook the house. I ran up to my
room to find it so full of dust and smoke that I could not see a
foot before me. A shell had come through the three-feet-thick
outside wall, burst, scattering its contained bullets, and its cap
had passed through a partition wall into the next room and broken a
door opposite. A shell entered a room in Mrs. Raynold’s house,
killing a little Armenian girl. Ten more shells fell in the
afternoon. Djevdet was fulfilling his threat of bombarding our
premises, and this proved to us that we could hope for no mercy at
his hands when he should take the city.[29]
DELIVERANCE.
In this darkest hour of all came deliverance. A lull followed the
cannonading. Then at sunset a letter came from the occupants of the
only Armenian house within the Turkish lines which had been spared
(this because Djevdet had lived in it when a boy) which gave the
information that the Turks had left the city. The barracks on the
summit and at the foot of Toprak-Kala were found to contain so small
a guard that it was easily overpowered, and these buildings were
burned amidst the wildest excitement. So with all the Turkish
“teerks,” which were visited in turn. The Big Barracks was next seen
to disgorge its garrison, a large company of horsemen who rode away
over the hills, and that building, too, was burned after midnight.
Large stores of wheat and ammunition were found. It all reminded one
of the seventh chapter of II. Kings.
The whole city was awake, singing and rejoicing all night. In the
morning its inhabitants could go whither they would unafraid. And
now came the first check to our rejoicing. Miss McLaren was gone!
She and Schwester Martha had been sent with the patients of the
Turkish hospital four days before to Bitlis.
Mr. Yarrow went to the hospital. He found there twenty-five wounded
soldiers too sick to travel, left there without food or water for
five days. He found unburied dead. He stayed all day in the horrible
place, that his presence might protect the terrified creatures until
he could secure their removal to our hospital.
On Wednesday, the 19th May, the Russians and Russo-Armenian
volunteers came into the city. It had been the knowledge of their
approach that had caused the Turks to flee. Some hard fighting had
to be done in the villages, however, before Djevdet and his
reinforcements were driven out of the province. Troops poured into
the city from Russia and Persia and passed on towards Bitlis.
Aram was made temporary governor of the province, and, for the first
time for centuries, Armenians were given a chance to govern
themselves. Business revived. People began to rebuild their burned
houses and shops. We re-opened our mission schools, except the
school in the walled city, the school-house there having been
burned.
THE TABLES TURNED.
Not all the Turks had fled from the city. Some old men and women and
children had stayed behind, many of them in hiding. The Armenian
soldiers, unlike Turks, were not making war on such. There was only
one place where the captives could be safe from the rabble, however.
In their dilemma the Armenians turned, as usual, to the American
missionaries. And so it came to pass that hardly had the six
thousand Armenian refugees left our premises when the care of a
thousand Turkish refugees was thrust upon us, some of them from
villages the Russo-Armenian volunteers were “cleaning out.”
It was with the greatest difficulty that food could be procured for
these people. The city had an army to feed now. Wheat—the stores
left by the Turks—was obtainable, but no flour, and the use of a
mill was not available for some time. The missionaries had no help
in a task so distasteful to the Armenians except that of two or
three of the teachers of the school in the walled city, who now had
no other work. Mr. Yarrow was obliged to drop most of his other
duties and spend practically all his time working for our protégés.
Mrs. Yarrow, Miss Rogers and Miss Silliman administered medicines
and tried to give every one of the poor creatures a bath. Mrs.
Ussher had bedding made, and secured and personally dispensed milk
to the children and sick, spending several hours daily among them.
The wild Cossacks considered the Turkish women legitimate prey, and
though the Russian General gave us a small guard, there was seldom a
night during the first two or three weeks in which Dr. Ussher and
Mr. Yarrow did not have to drive off marauders who had climbed over
the walls of the compound and eluded the guard.
The effect on its followers of the religion of Islam was never more
strongly contrasted with Christianity. While the Armenian refugees
had been mutually helpful and self-sacrificing, these Moslems showed
themselves absolutely selfish, callous and indifferent to each
other’s suffering. Where the Armenians had been cheery and hopeful,
and had clung to life with wonderful vitality, the Moslems, with no
faith in God and no hope of a future life, bereft now of hope in
this life, died like flies of the prevailing dysentery from lack of
stamina and the will to live.
The situation became intolerable. The missionaries begged the
Russian General to send these people out to villages, with a guard
sufficient for safety and flocks to maintain them until they could
begin to get their living from the soil. He was too much occupied
with other matters to attend to us.
After six weeks of this, Countess Alexandra Tolstoi (daughter of the
famous novelist) came to Van and took off our hands the care of our
“guests,” though they remained on our premises. She was a young
woman, simple, sensible, and lovable. We gave her a surprise party
on her birthday, carrying her the traditional cake with candles and
crowning her with flowers, and she declared she had never had a
birthday so delightfully celebrated in all her life. She worked hard
for her charges. When her funds gave out and no more were
forthcoming and her Russian helpers fell ill, she succeeded where we
had failed and induced the General to send the Turks out into the
country with provision for their safety and sustenance.
THE PESTILENCE THAT WALKETH IN DARKNESS.
Our Turkish refugees cost us a fearful price.
The last day of June Mrs. Ussher took her children, who had whooping
cough, out of the pestilential atmosphere of the city to Artamid,
the summer home on Lake Van, nine miles away. Dr. Ussher went there
for the week-end, desperately in need of a little rest. On Saturday
night they both became very ill. Upon hearing of this I went down to
take care of them. On Monday Mr. and Mrs. Yarrow also fell ill. Ten
days yet remained till the time set for closing the hospital for the
summer, but Miss Bond set her nurses to the task of sending the
patients away and went over to nurse the Yarrows. This left me
without help for five days. Then, for four days more, two Armenian
nurses cared for the sick ones at night and an untrained man nurse
helped me during the daytime. Miss Rogers had come down on Thursday,
the day after commencement, for the cure of what she believed to be
an attack of malaria. On Friday she too fell ill. Fortunately, there
was at last a really good Russian physician in town, and he was most
faithful in his attendance. The sickness proved to be typhus. Later
we learned that at about the same time Miss Silliman, who had left
for America on her furlough on the 15th June, accompanied by Neville
Ussher, had been ill at Tiflis with what we now know was a mild form
of the same disease. Dr. Ussher might have contracted it from his
outside patients, but the others undoubtedly contracted it from the
Turkish refugees.
Mrs. Yarrow was dangerously ill, but passed her crisis safely and
first of all. Miss Bond then came to Artamid, though Mr. Yarrow was
still very ill, feeling that the Usshers needed her more on account
of their distance from the doctor. Miss Ussher took charge of the
Yarrow children up in Van; Mrs. Raynolds managed the business
affairs of the mission.
Mrs. Ussher had a very severe form of the disease, and her delicate
frame, worn out with the overwork and terrible strain of the months
past, could make no resistance. On the 14th July she entered into
the life eternal.