the north over the Cilician plain, telling heart-rending stories of
massacre or brutal treatment on the journey. Some mothers had given
all the money in their possession to save their daughters from being
violated. One said she had given 22 liras for a certain distance
only. Poor women had to leave their babies and young children by the
roadside; they were too exhausted to carry them any longer. The
suffering of some in childbirth cannot be dwelt upon. One such, not
of the poorest class, was thrust out of her house in —— when
deportation began, and cruelly forced along the road. She died after
two hours.
As long as I live I can never forget the camp I saw twice near
Geulik station, not far from Tarsus. Here there were 10,000 to
15,000 Armenians awaiting further deportation towards the desert.
They were in the broiling sun, with no shade or shelter save the
rudest arrangements—anything that came to hand thrown over poles or
sticks. There were all kinds of people and families of all ages,
crowded together within a certain radius, beyond which they might
not go. They looked scorched by the sun, their clothes were fast
wearing out, and there were poor little children, boys and girls,
taken from school, with simply nothing to do but await their fate,
which mercifully they could not realise as the adults could. There
was a stream of water a little distance off, and if only it had been
clean it would have been a boon. It was used for rinsing clothes as
well as drinking. There were no sanitary arrangements whatever, and
the air was impregnated with foul odours. We witnessed all this from
the train, which drew up at the station alongside the camp. The
Government would not allow any help in money, food, or medicine to
be given; if they knew of anyone so doing, they stopped it. In
Tarsus, Mrs. X., who was working among the refugees all the time,
trying to show sympathy and give help in any little way possible,
was stopped at last. But I must go back to Adana.
As the Armenian men of Adana were drafted into the Army or Labour
Battalions, and the Armenian shops were robbed at pleasure without
payment, great numbers of families did not know where to look for
food, and even the wealthier business men were beginning to see
destitution looming ahead.
I think it was at the end of April (or May) that some thirty picked
families (few of them particularly wealthy) were ordered to leave
their homes for an unknown destination. This looked like the
beginning of deportation; but owing, as we had reason to believe, to
pressure being put on the Government at that time by the American
Ambassador, who did his utmost to save Adana, Tarsus and Mersina
from deportation, all these families save a few young men were
allowed to return to their homes within three weeks. No one could
understand this strange transaction, but fresh hope awoke in
people’s hearts. It was short lived.
Circumstantial stories of all kinds of oppression and cruelty in one
place or another kept arriving day after day, but no one even then
could foretell what exactly was coming or what special fate was in
store for themselves. Gradually the people became hopeless. All
hearts were sorely tested, but those that knew their God proved
their strength and peace in Him. Some were enabled to go farther—to
cast themselves upon God’s will and accept this cup of suffering (so
imminent) as from the Father’s hand. Oh, those were terrible days of
suspense and heart-strain. In my house, in a Greek quarter, I was
able to give room to a family I had long known. The wife had been a
Bible Woman in the city for twelve years; the son was a graduate of
the college, and there were two daughters—one a teacher and the
other just graduated from the American school. The husband had care
of the Protestant church buildings, and he used to bring back the
news daily from the market. Many were the prayers which went up to
God from this dear woman and others who sought to comfort the
people. Never before had so many meetings been held in the poor city
homes among the women, who crowded outside the doors if there was no
room inside. Fifty, sixty or eighty were quite usual numbers. The
church services also were unusually crowded, and God granted new
life to many hearts, especially among the young men remaining.
Then the orders for the deportation of Adana came. The people, of
course, did not know what to do with their things, while those who
lived from hand to mouth had not the wherewithal to get food even to
start with, let alone other necessities. What could be sold was
sold, but the things went for a mere nothing, except in a few cases,
where goods were bought to befriend and help the sellers. The
Missionaries had not money to spare to buy, with all the numbers
beseeching help. Those who could sell nothing had to leave all their
belongings and stores save what they could carry with them. One
Armenian preacher who was constantly appealed to at this time, from
morning until night, by the distracted multitude—asking whether
their names were called yet, what was to be done, and so
on—expressed the situation thus: “It is as if the people were
drowning in a sea of trouble and each one were trying to catch at a
straw to save himself.”
To give an example of the stony-hearted attitude of the Government
official in charge of this work of deportation, I may cite the case
of a young man of good mental ability, who for many years had been
teaching and helping the blind in many ways. Through spinal disease
he had become very badly deformed and could not walk. He was taken
down to the Sarai in a bath-chair, hoping to elicit pity and not be
cast adrift with his deaf mother, whom he supported. The only answer
he received was: “Get out with you and be gone; the sooner the
better.” Some money was given to this crippled young man, but long
before reaching Aleppo he had spent all on conveyances.
Another instance of the inhumanity of man towards his fellows in
suffering, of which we have since heard and read over and over again
until our hearts can bear no more, was the treatment accorded to,
and pity withheld from, the Armenian people from all regions who
were being transported by railway during the great heat. They were
packed like cattle, and as train after train passed through Adana
station, the people cried out for water and thrust out their hands
beseechingly, but to no avail, although water was actually at hand.
No one must show them any mercy. This we heard from witnesses living
near the station, who said that they could not endure the sight, and
did not know how to remain where they were. When some of our special
friends were starting, at the station, one of our party, Dr. Z.,
tried to give a basket of grapes to a family, but was not permitted.
What happened to the crowds after they reached Aleppo we did not
then know. From our deported Adana people there came piteous
messages for money, as the little in hand was soon exhausted. Some
short letters came through from the Aleppo centre. One wrote:
“Better drown your girls than let them come here.” Another, well
known to me, wrote to his sisters, who were at the American school:
“Be thankful you have such a place to be in as the place where you
are, and that you are not here.”
It is computed that 20,000 were deported from Adana alone. We can
testify to the mercy which permitted our Cilician people to go _en
masse_, _i.e._, in families, save for those members already taken by
the Government, ostensibly for the Army or the Labour Regiments. As
far as we heard, those who were able to obtain means of transit and
continued their journey from Osmania (whither they went by rail) to
Aleppo, were not attacked or massacred on the way. How many were
left behind sick or died in Osmania cannot be said.
Circumstances obliged me and some other members of the Missionary
Circle to be away from the heat of the plain for part of July and
August, and it was during these weeks that the great deportation _en
masse_ of the Armenian population took place from Adana. Though
absent, one was straining for news all the time. When we were in the
hills above Tarsus, details of the refugees and their plight were
constantly being sent by Mrs. X. to her daughter and son-in-law, in
whose company I was. One could only write “farewells” before the
word to start was actually given, feeling sure that the order to
depart would be extended to all our friends without exception. Our
American friends said, in their kindness: “We are glad you were not
here; it was too heart-breaking to bear.” And, indeed, on our return
the whole atmosphere of the place, the empty houses and streets of
the city with scarcely an Armenian to be seen, spoke more of death
than the burnt, empty city after the massacres of 1909.
I conclude with quotations from a letter written by a fellow-worker
of many years standing. He and his wife and other members of his
family left with the crowd of Protestants in August, 1915. The
letter was given me about two weeks later by a relative. It reads
thus:—
“God _can_ shut again the mouths of lions. Do you know that God
_has_ shut the mouths of many lions for many years? We now
understand that it is a great miracle that our nation (the
Armenians) has lived so many years among such a nation (the
Moslems). Oh, how can men become such devils in so short a time? May
God restrain them. I am afraid they mean to kill some of us, cast
some of us into most cruel starvation, and send the rest into the
desert; so I have very little hope of seeing you again in this
world. But be sure that, by God’s special help, I will do my best to
encourage others to die manfully. I will also await God’s help for
myself, to die as a Christian.
“May this country see that, if we cannot live here as men, we can
die as men. May many die as men of God. May God forgive this nation
(the Moslems) all their sin which they do without knowing.... May
Jesus soon see many Mohammedan Christians as the fruit of His blood.
“May the war soon end, in order to save the Moslems from their
cruelty and savagery, for they increase in devilry from day to day,
and from their ingrained habit of torturing their fellow men.
Therefore we are waiting on God, for the sake of the Moslems as well
as the Armenians. May He soon appear.”
XVI.
JIBAL MOUSA.
_The villages on the southern and eastern slopes of Jibal Mousa are
included administratively in the Vilayet of Aleppo, and, like other
Armenian settlements in that province, were only given notice of
deportation at a comparatively late date—in their case, the 13th
July. Geographically and historically, however, they are intimately
connected with the Cilician highlanders. Jibal Mousa is a direct
southern continuation of Amanus, and Yoghan Oulouk and the other
Jibal Mousa villages are kindred communities to Dört Yöl and
Zeitoun. They are the southernmost outpost of the Armenian race
towards the Arabic world._
_By the time the summons was served on them, the Jibal Mousa
villagers had been watching for four months the deportation of their
Cilician kinsmen, and had realised to the full what this deportation
meant. They resolved to resist, and retired into the fastnesses of
their mountain, which rises north-west of the villages and on its
further flank falls steeply into the sea. The documents in this
section record their successful defence and dramatic rescue by a
French squadron—the single happy incident in the national tragedy of
the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire._
130. JIBAL MOUSA: THE DEFENCE OF THE MOUNTAIN AND THE RESCUE OF ITS
DEFENDERS BY THE FRENCH FLEET; NARRATIVE OF AN EYE-WITNESS, THE
REV. DIKRAN ANDREASIAN, PASTOR OF THE ARMENIAN PROTESTANT CHURCH
AT ZEITOUN.
_This narrative was written down after the arrival of the refugees
in Egypt, translated into English by the Rev. Stephen Trowbridge,
Secretary of the American Red Cross at Cairo, communicated by the
translator to the Editor of the Armenian journal “Ararat,” of
London, and published by him in his issue of November, 1915._
From the day that Turkey entered the war there had been much anxiety
among the people of Zeitoun as to whether the Turks would treat the
Armenians of those mountain districts with some new form of cruelty
and oppression. Zeitoun is—we must now say _was_—a city of seven
thousand inhabitants, entirely Armenian, and surrounded by many
villages also Christian, in the heart of the Taurus Mountains.
I have been serving for one year as the pastor of the Armenian
Protestant Church in Zeitoun, and the narrative which follows is one
of personal experience.
Early in the spring of this year (1915) the Government began to
assume a threatening attitude towards Zeitoun, summoning the elders
and notables of the city and commencing an inquisition with the
punishment of the bastinado. Absurd and impossible charges were made
against the Armenians for the purpose of extorting money. Meanwhile
some 6,000 regular troops were quartered in the barracks above the
city. An attempt to take the Armenian monastery by storm cost the
Turks some casualties and failed of its object. The young men who
were within stoutly defended themselves, and not until attacked by
field artillery was the monastery taken.
Fifty of the leading men in Zeitoun were therefore summoned to the
barracks “for a conference with the commander.” They were at once
imprisoned and their families were sent for. Everyone waited
anxiously for these people to return, but after a while it was
learned that they had been sent away to an unknown destination. A
few days later another and larger group of families were ordered to
the barracks, and were forthwith driven off with threats and curses
to a distant banishment. In this way three or four hundred families
at a time were sent off on foot, with no proper supply of food, by
devious routes through the mountains, some north-west towards Konia,
some south-east towards the hot and unhealthy plains of Mesopotamia.
Day by day we saw the various quarters of the city stripped of their
inhabitants, until at last only a single neighbourhood remained. In
addition to my duties as pastor I happened to be in charge of the
Mission Orphanage. The commanding officer sent for me one morning
and told me to make ready at once for departure. “Your wife is also
to go,” he said, “and the children in the Orphanage.” We made our
preparations hurriedly, for we were allowed to take but little with
us. As we were leaving I looked back with an aching heart and saw
our beloved church empty and lonely. The last company of our seven
thousand people was streaming down the valley into banishment! We
had seen massacres, but we had never seen this before! A massacre at
least ends quickly, but this prolonged anguish of soul is almost
beyond endurance.
The first day’s march exhausted all of us. In the dark, as we lay
down upon the open ground, Turkish muleteers came and robbed us of
the few donkeys and mules that we had. Next day, in forlorn
condition, the children with swollen and blistered feet, we reached
Marash. Through the earnest request of the American missionaries, an
order was secured from the governor for my wife and myself to return
to my home town of Yoghanolouk, near the sea, twelve miles west of
Antioch. The governor granted this permit on the ground that my wife
and I were not natives of Zeitoun. My heart was torn between the
desire to share banishment with some fragment of my congregation and
the desire to take my wife to a place of comparative safety in my
father’s home. But the order having once been issued, I had no
alternative but to obey.
At Aintab we found the large Armenian community in the utmost
anxiety, but at that time the order to leave had not arrived.
Rumours reached us that the villages by the sea were being
threatened, but we thought best to continue southward, difficult
though the journey was at such a time.
The last part of our way lay through a historic valley, the fertile
plain of Antioch. It was here that Chrysostom preached in the
fervour of his early ministry before he was called to Byzantium. And
it was to a secluded chapel on our own mountain side that he used to
withdraw for prayer and communion with God. As a boy I had often
looked with wonder and reverence at the massive stones of the ruins
of St. Chrysostom’s Chapel. It was in this very Antioch that
Barnabas and Paul laboured with such spiritual energy. And here they
set forth upon their momentous task of spreading the Christian
faith. The Roman road by which they walked from Antioch to Seleucia
can still be traced in the valley below my native town, and the
stone piers from which Roman ships set sail at Seleucia are not
entirely demolished by the storms and earthquakes of the centuries.
The city of Antioch, once so gallantly defended by the Crusaders,
has long been under the rule of the Turks, and the minarets of Islam
are ten times more numerous than the church belfries. In April,
1909, the Protestant and Gregorian congregations suffered one of the
most cruel persecutions in history.
The people of my own home town, Yoghanolouk, are simple, industrious
folk. For years past their chief occupation has been the sawing and
polishing by hand of combs from hard wood and bone. Many of our men
are also expert wood-carvers. In the neighbouring villages the chief
occupations are the culture of silk worms for producing raw silk,
and the weaving of silk by hand looms into handkerchiefs and
scarves. Our people are very fond of their churches, and since the
opening of schools by the American missionaries most of our children
have learned to read. Every home is surrounded by mulberry trees,
and many beautiful orchards cover the terraced slopes towards the
south and west. Travellers who have been to Southern Italy tell us
that the villages near Naples very much resemble ours. The broad,
rough back of Mousa Dagh (_i.e._, Mount Moses), known in Arabic as
Jibal-al-Ahmar, rises up eastward behind us. Every gorge and crag of
our beloved mountain is known to our boys and men.
I mention these facts about my village home so that you may feel
something of the quiet happy life which was so rudely and so
completely broken up by this last attempt of the Turks to
exterminate our race.
Twelve days after I had reached home an official order from the
Turkish Government at Antioch was served upon the six villages of
Mousa Dagh to prepare for banishment within eight days. You can
scarcely imagine the consternation and the indignation which this
order caused. We sat up all night debating what it would be best to
do. To resist the forces of the Turkish Government seemed almost
hopeless, and yet the scattering of families into a distant
wilderness, raided by fanatical and lawless Arab tribes, seemed such
an appalling prospect that the inclination of both men and women was
to refuse the summons and withstand the anger of the Government.
All, however, were not of this mind. The Rev. Haroutune Nokhoudian,
the pastor of the Protestant Church in Beitias, for example, came to
the conviction that it would be folly to resist, and that the
severity of banishment might possibly be modified in some way. He
was in favour of yielding. Sixty families from his own village and a
considerable number from the next village, agreeing with him,
separated themselves from us and went down to Antioch under Turkish
guards. They were shortly expelled in the direction of the lower
Euphrates. (We have lost all track of them now and may never hear of
them again.)
Our firm friends, the American missionaries, were cut off from us
120 miles to the north at Aintab. Communications with the outside
world being practically severed, we were thrown upon our own
resources, and we realised that our one hope was in the mercy of
God. Fervently we prayed that He would strengthen us to do our duty.
Knowing that it would be impossible to defend our villages in the
foot-hills, it was resolved to withdraw to the heights of Mousa
Dagh, taking with us as large a supply of food and implements as it
was possible to carry. All the flocks of sheep and goats were also
driven up the mountain side, and every available weapon of defence
was brought out and furbished up. We found that we had a hundred and
twenty modern rifles and shot-guns, with perhaps three times that
number of old flint-locks and horse-pistols. That still left more
than half our men without weapons.
It was very hard to leave our homes. My mother wept as if her heart
would break. But we had hopes that possibly, while we were fighting
off the Turks, the Dardanelles might be forced and deliverance come
to the country.
By nightfall of the first day we had reached the upper crags of the
mountain. As we were preparing to camp and to cook the evening meal,
a pouring rain set in and continued all night. For this we were ill
prepared. There had not been time to make huts of branches, nor had
we any tents or waterproof clothing. Men, women and children,
somewhat over five thousand in all, were soaked to the skin, and
much of the bread we had brought with us was turned into a pulpy
mass. We were especially solicitous to keep our powder and rifles
dry. This the men managed to do very well.
At dawn next morning all hands went to work digging trenches at the
most strategic points in the ascent of the mountain. Where there was
no earth for trench-digging, rocks were rolled together, making
strong barricades behind which groups of our sharp-shooters were
stationed. The sun came out gloriously, and we were hard at it all
day strengthening our position against the attack which we knew was
certain to come.
Towards evening we held a mass meeting for the election of a
Committee of Defence which should have supreme authority for our six
communities. Some favoured an election by show of hands, but others
argued that, as this was a matter of such vital importance, the
regular Congregational method of choice by secret ballot should be
followed, and they offered to get together enough bits of paper to
carry out the ballot! Our people have become very much attached to
these democratic methods taught by the missionaries. Without much
delay scraps of paper, more or less torn and wet, were gathered and
the ballot was cast. A governing council thus being established,
plans were at once made for defending each pass in the mountain and
each approach to the camp. Scouts, messengers, and a central reserve
group of sharp-shooters were chosen and were assigned their duties.
The summons from the Government had been served on the 13th July.
The eight days’ grace had now almost elapsed, and we were aware that
the Turks must have discovered our movements. The whole Antioch
plain is peopled with Turks and Arabs, and there is always a strong
military garrison in the Antioch barracks.
On the 21st July the attack began. The advance guard was two hundred
regulars, and their captain insolently boasted that he would clear
the mountain in one day. But the Turks suffered several casualties
and were driven back to the base. When they advanced for a more
general attack, they dragged up a field gun which, after some
experimentation, secured the range and wrought havoc in our camp.
One of our sharp-shooters, a lion-hearted young fellow, crept down
through the brushwood and among the rocks until he was in very close
range of the field gun, which was mounted on a flat rock. Having
made himself an ambush of branches, he watched for a good
opportunity. He was so near that he could hear the Turks talking to
one another as they loaded the gun. Then as one gunner stepped out
into view, the young man picked him off with the first shot. With
five bullets he killed four gunners! The captain thereupon threw up
his hands in dismay, and, not being able to discern our
sharp-shooter, ordered the gun to be dragged to a place of shelter.
Thus were we saved from a disastrous gun-fire for that day and
several days to come.
But the Turks were gathering forces for a massed attack. They had
sent word through many Moslem villages, calling the people to arms.
Army rifles and plentiful ammunition were handed out from the
Antioch arsenal, until the mob of four thousand Moslems thirsting
for massacre became a formidable foe. But the chief strength of the
Turks was in the three thousand regular troops accustomed to
discipline and inured to hardship.