Robert Whitney Imbrie

His memoir—Behind the Wheel of a War Ambulance by Robert Imbrie, New York: Robert M. McBride & Co.,1918.

In late 1915 Imbrie enrolled as a volunteer driver in the American Ambulance Field Service, in service to the French Army.[7] He served in France from December 1915 until October, 1916, when he transferred to the Army of the Orient in Macedonia. He served there until April 1917, when the United States entered the war.

Imbrie received the following medals for his wartime service—the Croix de Guerre, the White Rose Croix de Guerre, the Ambulance Medal, the Field Service Medal, and the Medal of Recognition for serving six months or more at the front.[8] He was one of the longest-serving volunteer ambulance drivers in the war.

Because of his age and a recent bout with typhus, Imbrie could not enlist in the U.S. military; instead he joined the U.S. Consular Service and was sent to Petrograd. He arrived in November, 1917, in the midst of the Russian Revolution.[9]

With the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk about to be signed, ending the war between Germany and Russia, the American legation moved north in late February, 1918. In April Ambassador David Francis sent Imbrie back to Petrograd, where he stayed for five months as the primary and at times the sole U.S. representative in the city.[10] On August 30, Imbrie learned of his imminent arrest. With the help of the Norwegian embassy, he secured false papers and transportation out of the country.

In early 1919, Imbrie, now based in Viborg, Finland, began tracking the movement of the northern division of the White Army as it prepared to seize Petrograd and Moscow from the Bolshevik Red Army.[11] In addition, Imbrie worked to provide food relief to thousands of Russian émigrés.[12] After the fall of the White Army in the north, he left Finland in June 1920. By then he had been tried in absentia by the Bolsheviks and sentenced to death.[13]

Imbrie was next posted to Crimea, where the southern division of the White Army was active; however, when he arrived in December, 1920, he found it, too, had collapsed. Instead, he was assigned to Constantinople under Admiral Mark Bristol, who headed the U.S. military and diplomatic missions in Turkey.[14] After traveling extensively throughout the region doing reconnaissance, Imbrie left Turkey in July, 1921.

Returning to Turkey in March, 1922, Imbrie became the only U.S. official observer in Angora (Ankara), the seat of the new government of modern Turkey. There he met Katherine Helene Gillespie (1883–1968), an American relief worker caring for orphans of war and genocide. They married on December 26, 1922.[15] Imbrie continued his reconnaissance work, befriended Mustapha Kemal, the new president of Turkey, and tracked American commercial interests in the area. In 1923, after Imbrie learned that a $40,000 bounty had been placed on his head, he and Katherine returned to the United States.[16] On the way they stopped in Switzerland so Imbrie could brief the U.S. representative at the Lausanne Peace Conference regarding oil concessions in Turkey.[17]

Imbrie’s next post was to Tabriz, Persia (Iran); however, before assuming that duty, he was temporarily reassigned to Tehran when Consul Bernard Gotlieb went on leave.[18] Imbrie immediately immersed himself in this new post as Persia struggled with both internal strife, involving politics and religion, and external pressures, including oil interests and foreign entanglements.[19]

In early 1924, there had been several outbreaks of anti-Bahai violence in Tehran. On the morning of 18 July, Imrie went to visit a well in central-Tehran where it was alleged, a member of the Bahai faith had become blind after drinking water from this well after refusing to make an offering in the name of the Shia Iman's; with his sight being miraculously restored after he repented and made the required offering. It is presumed that Imbrie was investigating in his capacity as consul but he took a camera with to take photographs for the National Geographic Society and expected trouble, as he brought a bodyguard from the consulate with him too.[20]

The Imbrie grave marker at Arlington National Cemetery. Photo by Jane Nelson.

After taking photographs of people at the well, Imbrie and his bodyguard were falsely identified as Bahai by a 17-year-old mullah who accused them of having poisoned the well. The crowd attacked Imbrie and the bodyguard but they managed to escape in their carriage. The mob caught up with them when the carriage was detained by a policeman and they were pulled from the carriage and beaten by the crowd. As the incident happen close to the Tehran police headquarters, after a period of non-intervention - the police eventually drove back the crowd that had grown to 2,000 allowing the badly injured Imrie and bodyguard to be taken to the medical facilities inside the police headquarters where Imrie died that afternoon. It became apparent that many of the mob who had attacked them, were members of the Pah1avi regiment of the Cossack Brigade, billeted opposite the police headquarters. [21]

Imbrie's body was shipped home aboard the USS Trenton, the first U.S. battleship to enter the Persian Gulf,[22][23] Among the notables attending his funeral services was President Calvin Coolidge.[24] Imbrie and his wife Katherine are buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.[25]

Immediately after Imbrie's death, Prime Minister Reza Khan, soon to be Reza Shah, declared martial law.[26] This murder was instrumental in Reza Khan's consolidation of power in Iran. According to Major Sherman Miles, a United States Army General Staff officer sent to Tehran to investigate, the murder was deliberate. Miles concluded that the anti-Bahai rioting in Tehran was intended by the Iranian government to end in the death of a foreigner. Reza Khan wanted a foreigner to die "so that he could declare martial law and check the power of the Mullahs.[27]