About six months after Grandmother Helen had returned to Smyrna there was a major battle fought between the guerilla armies of Mustafa Kemal (later given the title of Attaturk) in a valley called Dumlupinar against the Greeks that had occupied Smyrna in 1919. Their occupation had been legitimized under the Treaty of Sevres in 1920, for five years, but from there they had decided to extend their domination over the parts of Anatolia that had been populated by Greeks since the first Aeolians had arrived in the 11th Century BC and had later been superceded by the Ionians in the 7th Century BC. Kemal Pasha had aroused the nationalist spirit amongst the Turks against the degenerate Sultanate and had made his headquarters in the interior at the small town of Ankara, later to become the capital city of Turkey. As the Greeks marched to extend their hegemony in the interior, by brilliant tactical manoevres, Kemal trapped and massacred most of the army at the end of August 1922, the remnants of which fell back on the large western city of Smyrna with its predominant Greek population. The major powers that had signed and endorsed the treaty of Sevres, sent their navies into the port to safeguard their nationals as they realised the seriouness of the situation.

One September afternoon as Grandfather Henry Chasseaud, was in his garden actually pruning his roses , he was abruptly called up by a young Royal Navy Officer and told to come urgently with his wife on board HMS Lion a battleship anchored in the harbour. All the foreign nationals were being collected onto their respective ships as the sound of gunfire could be heard in the hills surrounding. By nightfall the Turks had swarmed into the city, setting fire and butchering anyone that they could see. The poor greek inhabitants who dominated the population had no where to go and were massacred in their thousands. Grandfather said that the following morning the sea stretching from the ships to the shore was red with blood and the bodies floating in the sea were so thick that one could almost have walked to the shore across them. Of course our house on the waterfront was looted but fortunately not completely destroyed and a lovely painting of a Bandit by one of the de Kramers miraculously survived and is now in New Zealand with my sister Helen. After this violent episode the Doctor changed his house and surgery to a more modest establishment in the district of Alsanjak in the now renamed city of Izmir, which for ever after has remained completely Turkish as has all the surrounding countryside. All the industrious Greek farms and smallholdings had to be abandoned and from that day onwards there has been a perpetual antagonism between the two neighbours. Largely it must be said ,tragically through the Greeks trying to overplay their hand, and being repulsed by a proud people , who though normally so quiet, polite and dignified, become violent and unbelievably savage when their land as in Cyprus years later is at stake.

Mother whilst in London before she got married had become very friendly with Latiffe who was to become Kemal’s wife. After he had taken control of Turkey and declared a republic, and things had settled down, Mother with her 5 year old son Hugh in 1925 paid her a visit to their summer holiday home on an island in the Bosphorous. Hugh to this day can still remember being bounced on Kemal’s knee as the great man played with him gently and kindly. Kemal was the only dictator in the twentieth century to have done lasting good. He westernized the land, abolished the Arabic script, and adopted the normal Roman lettering, he made the country into a secular state, and whilst doing all this, he consolidated Turkey and avoided any external ambitions and wars.

One small amusing detail from his rule was the abolishment of wearing the arabian Fez or red hat. This he considered un-western and after a suitable warning on the due date, all policeman on duty were issued with scissors to cut the offending headgear on sight. The Turks accepted this and much more, so much so that he is revered as a God with his photograph in resplendent evening dress can be seen in every office, shop or restaurant to this day, as the very embodiment of the nationalist spirit of Turkey.

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