Testimony: Ethel Thompson
We crossed Anatolia under a blazing sun, passing groups and groups of the old men of Samsun and the inhabitants of other Black Sea ports walking on, God knows where, driven by Turkish gendarmes. Dead bodies of those who had dropped during the hard tramp were lying by the roadside. Vultures had eaten parts of the flesh, so that in most cases merely skeletons remained.
Upon arriving in Malatia we found the remainder of a group of young men who had been deported from Samsun in June. These men told us that the balance of their party had been killed. Upon arriving in Harput, we entered a city full of starving, sick, wretched human wrecks—Greek women, children, and men. These people were trying to make soup of grass, and considered themselves fortunate when they could secure a sheep's ear to aid it—the ear being the only part of the animal thrown away in Anatolia. The Turks had given them no food on the 500-mile trips from Samsun. Those with money could bribe the guards for food or buy a little on the way until they were robbed. Those without money died by the wayside.
In many places, thirsty in the blistering sun and heat, they were not allowed water unless they could pay for it. The Near East Relief stations tried to give them bread as they passed Cesarea and Sivas, but the amount they could carry was small. It would have been more humane to give them a bullet than bread, because death would come in any case sooner or later.
When a woman with a baby died, the baby was taken from her dead arms and handed to another woman, and the horrible march proceeded. Old blind men led by little children trudged along the road. The whole thing was like a march of corpses, a march of death across Anatolia, which continued during my entire summer.
The heaviest winter weather, when a howling blizzard was raging during a blinding snowiall, was the favourite time chosen by the Turks to drive the Greeks on. Thousands perished in the snow. The road from Harput to Bitlis was lined with bodies. I saw women with transparent lips who did not look human. They were like gaunt shadows. The roads over which women and children travelled were impassable for any kind of travel excepting pack mule.
Note: Miss Ethel Thompson of Boston worked with the Near East Relief in Turkey.