If anyone was wrong, they would have thought they were the brave Senegalese tirailleurs of the French colonial troops in the First World War.

And yet, these are Greek soldiers of the 2nd Army Corps of the 5th Division (commanded by Lieutenant General Ioannis Trilivas) of the Greek Army at the front in Asia Minor. The soldiers belong to the 43rd regiment, that is, they are Cretans from East Crete, from the prefectures of Heraklion and Lassithi.

We are between August 14 and 16, 1921, when, after the July victories of the Greeks at Eski Sehir, Keutahia and Afyonkarahisar, the army is aggressively advancing through the Salt Desert to capture Ankara, the center of the Turkish national movement, the supply infrastructure and the mechanisms of ideological organization.

The place depicted in the photograph is the Greek “dressing station”, on the “front line”, where first aid is hastily provided to the seriously wounded and crippled, whose wounds were often fatal.

The largest theater of operations is the Calais Grotto, a rocky elongated wall 7 kilometers long and 1450 meters high. The terrain is mountainous, rugged, completely arid and rocky. In the morning the sun is hot, and in the evening it is very cold.

The attack of the Greeks is carried out by parts of the Cretan regiment, often covered by artillery, and on the mountain passes they are supported by combat-ready small cavalry divisions.

Turkish positions are heavily fortified with several rows of trenches, with artillery and machine gun cover. The Turkish defense is furious to close access to Ankara.

The terrain is mountainous, rugged, completely arid and rocky. In the morning the sun is hot, and in the evening it is very cold.

As long as there is light, the Greek sections climb the steep slopes of the mountain and at night are barely sheltered in the folds of the earth. Digging even very shallow trenches is impossible. There is almost no food either.

The battle was called “titanomachy” because of the conditions in which the attacking Greeks faced and because of the militancy they displayed.

Tired from the many days of marching through the Salt Desert, many with breathing problems due to the desert dust, hungry and thirsty, rushed to try to capture the hilltops. 210 dead, officers and soldiers, is a presumption of obsessive attacks, as if this is a question for the fighters, and not for the top leadership. The young officers of the Evzonic units who supported the Cretans spoke of scoundrels, whose blood inspired them with courage and madness. In addition to high casualties, very often the glory of each battle remained mythical and because of the personal attitude that the combatants acquired in the conflict.

Finally, the hill is occupied, and other Greek divisions are participating in the last attacks. However, Ankara, which is several dozen kilometers away, is not occupied, and inequality reigns at the front. The army of the Greek campaign had exceeded its limits.

The 2nd Army Corps, advancing on the Calais Grotto, crossed the Sangarios River and in a few days walked 300 kilometers through the absolutely dry terrain of the Salt Desert with unbearable heat, blinding sun, thick dust, with little water and food.

Despite local success, in the coming days the Greek army will begin to retreat, having now exhausted the creative military efforts of the Greeks in the land of Ionia. Along with this, economic weakness will gradually come and relations with allies will collapse. In other words, the impasse of the campaign will be visible, which none of the state and political leadership wanted to see. An element usually dominant in armies, peoples and states, whose ideology, military operations and foreign policy are guided by national traumas, and not by reality and method.

* Mr. Thassos Sakellaropoulos is the historian in charge of the Historical Archives of the Benaki Museum.