30 August 1922
Dumlupınar: the battle at Alıören
On the morning of 30 August Trikoupis's group reaches Çalköy and comes under Turkish artillery fire. By 11.00 it has 7,000 infantry fit to fight, with another 10,000 to 15,000 men disorganised and largely unarmed. Trikoupis turns west for Alıören and Banaz, but at 13.30 the road is blocked by the Turkish 14th Cavalry Division.
The Battle of Dumlupınar, relief by Zühtü Müridoğlu at Anıtkabir, AnkaraWikimedia Commons, Ail Subway, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Başkomutanlık Meydan Muharebesi Rölyefi.jpg)
The Greeks deploy to hold out until dark. The IV Corps presses from the east and south and the VI Corps from the north, and from 16.00 the Turkish guns hit the crowded Greek units hard. At dusk the western flank breaks, and at 20.30 the survivors march west, leaving their guns and their wounded. Kütahya is taken the same evening. The next day the Turks count more than 2,000 Greek dead on the field.
Sources
- Michael Llewellyn-Smith, Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor, 1919–1922 (1973).
- Andrew Mango, Atatürk (1999).
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Nutuk (1927).
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