Robert E. Willson of Morning Sun, Iowa, spent several years as a missionary physician in Cilicia, the region around Adana and Tarsus in southern Turkey, before he took up relief work.
He was the doctor at Mersina (Mersin) on the southern coast, with four thousand refugees to treat. He caught typhus from them and died at Mersina on 3 May 1922. The Greek government awarded him the War Cross posthumously the following year.
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