My book newly published

At the end of the year 2024, I have just published in Greek and with Stamoulis publishing in Thessaloniki, my essay on contemporary history: “The daily life of Greek soldiers during the First World War and the Greco-Turkish War in Asia Minor (1917-1922)”, a work in the series “Texts and Studies” under the aegis of the Philological Historical Folkloric Association FILOS of Trikala – Φιλολογικός Ιστορικός Λογοτεχνικός Σύνδεσμος Τρικάλων.

This is a research work undertaken for several years, when only a part was published through my scientific articles, including my contribution to the collective work commemorating the centenary of the unfortunate end of the Greek Campaign in Asia Minor in 1922: “The texts of the front, the Sisters of the Soldier and the other symbolic relatives and affinities of the Greek Campaign in Asia Minor: An anthropological approach”, in Greek Soldiers and the Campaign in Asia Minor, a painful experience, under the direction of Dimitrios Kamouzis, Alexandros Makris and Charalambos Minasidis, at ESTIA Publishing in Athens, (“Τα κείμενα του μετώπου, οι Αδελφές του Στρατιώτου και οι λοιποί συμβολικοί συγγενείς της Μικρασιατικής Εκστρατείας: ανθρωπολογική προσέγγιση”, στοΈλληνες στρατιώτες και Μικρασιατική Εκστρατεία Δημήτρη Καμούζη, Αλέξανδρου Μακρή και Χαράλαμπου Μηνασίδη, με το άρθρο του, Αθήνα, ΕΣΤΙΑ, 2022).

While waiting for a publisher to take charge of my essay in its French-language version, because it is also completed, apart from my thanks to the many French and Greek colleagues, who have encouraged me so much in this task, as well as to the Philological, Historical and Literary Association FILOS of Trikala and particularly to its President Theodoros Nimás, I would like to thank those in my family who surrounded me and thus accompanied me in their own way during the writing of this research.

In my family who surrounded me. Trikala, 1994

I dedicate this book to the memory of the participants, to this generation that has sometimes lost it after having lived and practiced this apocalyptic decade because often in the war in Greece, in the Balkans, and in Europe, going from 1912 to 1922.

And in particular, this essay is dedicated to the veterans of the period that I had the chance to meet and even interview between 1993 and 1995 in Thessaly, my homeland, including in Trikala and its region, Agathocles Papageorgopoulos and Charalambos Papavassilios from Kefalovrysso, Kóstas Iakovákis in Ellinokastro, Christos Balamótis, then Efthímios Tzéllas in Palamas in the district of Karditsa, as well as Georgios Parsélias on the island of Samothrace.

The publication of our essay is, let us note, welcomed by the press of Thessaly and by cultural organizations in Athens, and of course, the book is available in bookstores, for the moment only for a Greek-speaking public.

The publication, welcomed by the press of Thessaly. December 2024

The Philological, Historical and Literary Association of Trikala – FILOS, has just published its own press release, relating to the publication of the book.

The 1919-1922 Graeco-Turkish War in the Asia minor was an extension of World War 1 as well as of the Balkan wars (1912-1913). The defeat led to the arrival of two million refugees in Greece thus representing a major episode in Hellenic history. The present research describes the life and representations of the Greek soldier through direct sources such as letters from the battle-field addressed to war-time godmothers, gazettes, personal notes and photographs.

The different aspects of life on the front-lines is grasped, in particular sociability in combat. This work is also an interrogation on the possibility of comparing the Greek infantryman’s situation to that of French W.W.1 soldier’s. The study’s main goal : historize the battle and give an explanation of its extreme violence in taking for example into account the way Greek soldiers were put to death or submitted to multiple mutilations, as well as the fate of the wounded, of the prisoners and of the civilians in this context of “total engagement”.

Agathocles Papageorgopoulos, veteran of the period 1917-1922. Kefalovrysso, 1994

This conflict, resulting from the particular historical context of the two countries, was lived and “acted” by the Greek infantryman according to practices related to the dynamics and to the war culture of the 1912-1913 conflict. Through an ethnographic reading of the data and a constant dialogue with the works on WW1 soldiers by French historians, the aim of this dissertation is to enable a better comprehension of war events in Europe at the beginning of the century.

Kóstas Iakovákis, veteran of the period 1917-1922. Ellinokastro, 1994

Based on material from the front lines, this book is part of a larger research project in history on the cognitive representations of Greek troops during the period of war from 1912 to 1923. It focuses on how certain terms of kinship and affinity were “metaphorically” transposed to the field of warfare. The two most significant examples involve battlefield metaphors based on consanguinity and affinity, respectively : the relation between soldiers and their letter-writing “war sisters” in the rear and the similarity that soldiers drew between their relations with enemy prisoners and affinal relations.

Monument to those who died for the Fatherland 1912-1922. Tríkala, 2024

These metaphors, which aptly served to qualify relations with the outside, in particular with the enemy, can be interpreted as an attempt to bring, at least symbolically, the absolute violence on the front down to more acceptable, controllable proportions. By doubling lines of fracture and of aggressiveness and, too, lines of solidarity (enemy/affine, comrade/brother), Greek troops tried, through their metaphors, to reorganize combat and turn it into the more familiar, internalized kinship system.

In my family who surrounded me. In the Aegean Sea, 2016

* First photography: The daily life of Greek soldiers, Greco-Turkish War in Asia Minor. War Museum, Athens