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CHAPTER 2 – HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 
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extraordinary requisitions
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. On 14 August the Greeks began their march and on 23 
August battle was joined
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. 
The battle of Sakarya continued for three weeks until the Greek retreat on 13 
September. For the Greeks it was a fight of attrition on unfavourable ground against 
a tenacious enemy whom they did not have the strength, through a want both of arms 
and supplies, to dislodge. The duration of the battle produced the largest number of 
military casualties of the war with around 6,000 killed and 18,000 wounded on each 
side
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. There has been subsequent debate about how close run a thing it was, as in 
how anxious Mustafa Kemal truly was during the battle or how close he was to 
ordering a retreat around 27 August
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. On the Greek side, for obvious reasons, there 
has been a long running blame game revolving around the effect of the royalist 
personnel changes, with Venizelists and royalists each accusing the others’ partisans 
in the army over matters that range from tactical dispositions during the battle to the 
overall conception and planning of the advance on Ankara
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. The contentions on 
either side of these debates were weapons in later struggles over political authority. 
In the short term the confusion of aims which preceded the advance made it possible 
for the Greek government to blur the significance of the reverse before domestic 
eyes by pretending that the military purpose of the campaign had been fulfilled
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; 
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Gawrych, 150-157, Mango, 316-318 
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Llewellyn Smith, 232-233 
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Gawrych, 163-172; Mango, 319-322 
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Mango, 320 
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Llewellyn Smith, 177-178; Andrew, 10-17, 21-23, 66-75, 88-94, 168-171, 179-208. Andrew directs his 
venom particularly at Sariyannis and Plastiras, who were Venizelist survivals and openly so. The venom aimed at 
his commander in chief, Papoulas, may be explained, justification apart, that Papoulas had drifted towards 
republicanism by the time Andrew wrote his memoir. 
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Stratigos, 270-271 

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