Book Review: On the Quai at Smyrna by Ernest Hemingway

On the Quai at Smyrna is a short story written by Ernest Hemingway. The story succeeds in bringing forward a few horrific scenes from the battlefield. It is staged against the time of 1920 and there a war is going on between two European nations: Turkey and Greek. Probably Hemingway saw the deadly scenes as he was an ambulance driver in Italy during the WWI and later he worked also as a war correspondent. But this story, Hemingway is narrating he heard from one of his officer friends.

The irony of the story lies in the people present on and around the battle-affected field. There are children, women, cattle; and of course soldiers.

The soldiers perform duty at the harbor and on the pier grief-stricken women and children scream aloud at midnight and when the searchlight is made thrown at them they tend to keep quiet. One time a Turkish officer came to him and complained about the offensive remarks he received from a non-Turkish soldier. The officer knew that was nearly impossible since the soldier didn’t know conversing in the Turkish language. On the other hand, to make that Turkish officer feel significant, he instructed the fellow soldier to onboard the ship and be away for the whole day. Thereafter, both the officers became great friend.

There on the pier it was rather strange than dreadful to see the women holding the dead babies for six days exactly. For soldiers to clear off the pier was one of the most difficult things to do as these women were obstinate enough to give away their babies. Soldiers had to snatch the babies to clear the dead ones away. In the heap of dead, one woman was dead but her body was rigidly stiff and her legs were drawn up from the waist. The doctor hearing this could not believe the case. Medically it was not possible. The army there, from some other nation, on the pier was for peace-keeping. However, they showed minimum trust for Turks as they could come up with any tricks but they found Greeks nice as they cleared their cattle baggage by breaking the forelegs of the mules and then forcing them into the shallow water. Death and destruction are something inevitable and can be found around easily in the war so the officer points out that they saw many floating things in the water inclusive of dead bodies.

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