#USS Litchfield (DD336)

[tin-can-sailor-blog]

Large newspaper clipping from The Evening World dated September 16 1922. Note McCormack should read McCormick and McLeish should read MacLeish in the photo caption. Twenty-one allied warships were in Smyrna harbour when Turkish troops entered it, eventually setting fire to the city. The ships included Litchfield (DD-336), Simpson (DD-221), and Lawrence (DD-250).  Among the ships to reinforce them were Edsall (DD-219) and MacLeish (DD-220). Edsall served as the flagship for the American squadron, which after quite a bit of political fumbling, eventually evacuated some of the refugees from the burning city. A scant few compared to the many in distress.

The fire has a very complicated history of conclusions surrounding it, though the general conclusion is that Turkish soldiers started it as Greek soldiers had evacuated five days before the fire started. Tens of thousands to possibly hundreds of thousands of Greeks and Armenians crammed the Smyrna waterfront. The estimates range from ten to a hundred thousand died in the flames and massacres occurring throughout the city. Yet more were deported into the interior of Anatolia and died there as part of the Armenian genocide.