“I am too close to all this misery and suffering to talk much about it, my mind is all a daze. I have
thot nothing, dreamt nothing it seems for weeks . . . but poor, starving, sick miserable humanity.”
Amid speaking engagements and shoe sales (yes, Orie was selling shoes
again), Middle East relief work was ever on Orie’s mind and agenda,
even as his passion for Russia was rekindled. Having won the confidence
of Major James H. Nichol in Beirut and NER General Secretary C. V.
Vickery in New York, Orie was helping recruit young Mennonites for
NER work in Syria and Turkey. In recruitment, Orie was careful, and in
the case of one young couple, immovable. Nellie Miller, who was already
serving in Constantinople, was eager to have Cleo Mann, her fiancé, join
her in Beirut. C. W. Fowle, NER managing director of Beirut District, sent
an urgent request for Mann to New York, Scottdale, and Akron. Cleo was
eager to serve, but Orie believed him too young and refused to bend, to
the great disappointment of both Nellie and Cleo.
Never a “Cause in Which I So Thoroughly Believe”
In the spring of 1920, Orie returned from a long business trip in time to
travel with Elta to Johnstown, Pennsylvania, to attend meetings of the
Mennonite Board of Missions, and then to Scottdale for a meeting with
the Mennonite Relief Commission for War Sufferers. At both meetings,
Orie urged leaders to make Russia a priority.
From Scottdale, Orie wrote about his future with Miller Hess. To his
brother Ernest he wrote that he had his partners’ “reluctant permission”
to take a four-month leave and that his job would be secure.9 But a day
later, Clarence wrote that an extra salesman for the next season was absolutely
necessary and asked Orie to declare his intentions. Orie responded:
“It does not seem possible to open Russia work now unless I stay by my
promise” (to be available for service there). “Does your wire mean my
acceptance would sever my past relations with the firm or would you
endeavor to secure a temporary salesman?
“Think of Us as Your Servants”
On,Wednesday, September 1, 1920, Elta Wolf Miller once again watched
Orie disappear over the Atlantic horizon. She, Clarence and Gertie Hess,
and Levi Mumaw, secretary-treasurer of MCC, traveled with Orie to New
York Harbor where Orie boarded the SS Providence.36 His companions
were Arthur Slagel, a member of the Hesston College music faculty from
Flanagan, Illinois; and Clayton Kratz, a Goshen College student from
Perkasie, Pennsylvania. Kratz was a campus leader and an excellent student.
He was president-elect of the Young Peoples’ Christian Association,
the most active of student organizations. Kratz interrupted his college
training to accept the call to service in Russia.
In Constantinople
On September 27, 1920—the day the MCC board was meeting for the
first time in Chicago—the Providence steamed through the Dardanelles
and into the Sea of Marmara, then into the Bosphorus Strait to dock at
Constantinople, the former capital of the great Byzantine Empire. Named
for Emperor Constantine, the city spanned the strait to occupy the continents
of both Europe and Asia. The grand city of Emperor Justinian, who
built the world-famous Hagia Sofia, the Church of Holy Wisdom, had
strategic access to the Black Sea on the north, and the seas of Marmara,
the Aegean, and the Mediterranean to the south.
The Dreadful Specter of Starvation
On the northern shore of the Black Sea lay the object of their mission.
Like much of Europe, the Russian Empire had suffered the ravages
of World War I, the folly of vainglorious royalty . . .
This was the heartrending, chaotic crucible that Orie Miller, Clayton
Kratz, and Arthur Slagel entered in October 1920. The “dear brethren
from abroad” were trying to bring food and clothing, but the advance
of the Red Army was threatening the effort. When Miller and Kratz
crossed the Black Sea, the Soviet Reds controlled most of Russia. The
White Army, the armed forces of South Russia under the command of
General Pyotr Nikolayevic Wrangel, struggled to hold what was left of
the Ukraine and the Crimea, where most of the Mennonite colonies were
located. Wrangel’s coalition government welcomed the relief efforts of the
American Mennonites, but a Red victory would close the door to Russia.
By October 1920, a White defeat was
The Blighting Effects of War
On October 10, in the trade city of Melitopol on the Molotschna River,
Dr. Monastery hired a “rickety” carriage to take them the three miles to
Jacob Neufeld’s mills. Neufeld had also been appointed a member of the
Studienkommission but had been denied a visa. Along the way, Miller and
Kratz began to see the suffering they had come to relieve, though not yet
at its worst. Orie recorded the scenes in his diary:
I never saw a poorer looking town. A few Wrangel motor cars and trucks
lumbered along on the poorly paved street. 90 per cent of the people
outside of the army and even most of these seemed to be literally in rags.
Windows in buildings were broken and not replaced. Horses are skinny
and few, and the poorest kind of harness. On the way down we met a
bunch of Bolshevik prisoners, mere boys, with their coarsely woven gray
uniforms. Probably one woman out of four had shoes that at least looked
like leather, the rest had none or cloth ones. Children are mostly barefoot.
The Abduction of Clayton Kratz
The road to Alexandrovsk, their next destination, ran parallel to the
battlefront. Destruction was visible everywhere. They saw hundreds of
the reported twelve thousand dead horses, some partly consumed by
dogs. There were “hundreds and hundreds” of graves of fallen soldiers,
and mass graves in trenches. They stopped for the night in a German village
where they heard more stories of deprivation and suffering caused
by occupying armies. Eleven times the village had been occupied by
one army or the other, each time soldiers taking what they wanted. The
people were “all extremely sad and pessimistic, and felt utterly hopeless in
their misery.” They were “in constant fear of plunder, robbery and rape.
Roving bands on horseback under a Father Maknov [sic] were the special
terror of many.”67 Thousands had died here the winter before from the
typhus spread by soldiers. The next day, Orie, Clayton Kratz, and Dr.
Monastery drove four more hours to Alexandrovsk by the Dnieper River,
in Chortitza Colony.
“Mountains of Work” in Constantinople
While to P. C. Hiebert, Orie’s worked appeared efficient, Orie was becoming
impatient. He wished for Slagel’s return and for A. J. Miller’s arrival
to share the load. To Elta, he registered his frustrations: “So many more
things could be done right now so terribly necessary if only personnel
were here. Three months gone already and still [I have] no help. I want to
come home by February 1. . . am ready to turn the work over to someone
else, but plainly can not leave now until a proper person arrives to take it.
I am tired and have lived under severe strain for the past two months, and
just long for a little let up, but none is in sight.”
Contact s with European Mennonites and Quakers—and Aid to Russia
Orie left Constantinople on February 9, 1921. He apologized to Elta for
his indefinite return plans—he had not been sure when he could leave
Constantinople, and MCC had insisted he consult with Swiss, German,
and Dutch Mennonite leaders on his way home. That would take an
additional ten days. “In a short time . . . we can talk over these misunderstandings
together and they will probably clear up.” At least he
hoped so!
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