Pantelis C. Karatasakis, Diary of a Soldier in the Asia Minor Campaign, 1919-1921

This short, poignant account of an ordinary soldier's experiences at the front during the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1921 is well worth reading. Pantelis Karatasakis manages to evoke both the valiant spirit of the Greek troops and the awful hardships they were forced to endure. Even though this lively account ends a year before Greece's defeat, the conditions the author witnessed were an omen of what was to come: hunger and freezing cold, haphazard military operations, scorched earth tactics...