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Leavened throughout
                By the blood
                Of zealotry.
    Kemal was small, wiry, and blue eyed with high cheekbones and a light complexion. Always attentive to his appearance, he wore knee-high black boots, jodhpurs, a khaki tunic, and the Turkish officer’s kalpak, a black lambswool hat. Robert S. Dunn, an American intelligence officer who had met him in Ankara in 1920, said Kemal first struck him as a “well-trained superior waiter.” In that meeting Kemal was dressed nattily in a slate-blue lounge suit, white pique shirt, and black bow tie, and his blond hair was combed straight back in the style of college men of the day. As Kemal spoke, Dunn’s impression changed. “The whole face was sensitive rather than cerebral, subtle and mercuric rather than domineering. I felt his power of concentration, ruthlessness with an instant grasp.” As a battlefield commander, Kemal dressed without adornment. His kalpak,the rough hat of the martial Anatolian male, was a powerful symbol of his identification with the people. He won battles by fusing his will to the Islamic faith and endurance of his peasant soldiers.
    Kemal had decided to concentrate his forces for an overwhelming assault at Afyon Karahisar, a strategy that would (if successful) separate the Greek army from the rail line back to its base in Smyrna, cut off its supplies, and impede its retreat. It was risky, and his generals had argued against it. If it failed, they had told Kemal, the army might be finished. Kemal trusted his intuition, which so far had been flawless. He was striking at the strongest point of the Greek line, counting on surprise and ferocity to prevail. The Greek line was terribly long, a three-hundred-mile spinnaker of tired but battle-tested troops that reached from the Sea of Marmara in the north to the port of Ephesus on the Aegean coast on the south.
    Only weeks earlier, British officers had visited the Greek line and reported it to be strong and battle worthy. An intelligence report said (prophetically) that the Greeks were excellent offensive fighters “strong, active and enduring, and impetuous to close with the enemy. Their impetuosity, however, makes coordination with them difficult.”
    The forces along the entire front were evenly matched: The Greeks had 225,000 men and an advantage in machine guns, field guns, and motorized transport. The Turks had 208,000 men and an advantage in cavalry and heavy artillery. The Greeks had the Evzones, elite mountain fighters dressed in the traditional uniform of woolen leggings, pleated kilts (400 pleats for each year of the Turkish occupation of Greece, beginning in the fifteenth century), baggy-sleeved shirts, and laceless decorated shoes. They were armed with bolt-action Mauser rifles and daggers. *
    The Turkish army had a cavalry of skilled horsemen that attacked with long curved swords and sharpened lances, and foot soldiers armed with a bastard mix of German, French, Italian, and Russian rifles.
    The Turks had the advantage in command; they had Kemal.
    Kemal’s soldiers, faithful Moslems, revered him; some thought he could not be killed on the battlefield. He may have believed it himself. Nowhere had his courage, brilliance, and ruthlessness been more vividly demonstrated than at Gallipoli, where he had contributed to the devastating defeat of British forces early in World War I. Gallipoli had made his reputation. Seeking in that first year of the Great War to seize Constantinople and divert Turkish troops that were threatening their ally, Imperial Russia, the British had attempted to storm and hold the westward peninsula that flanked the Dardanelles. The fighting had lasted for nine months, an Allied disaster that had cost 120,000 lives. Winston Churchill, author of the campaign, had lost his job as first lord of the Admiralty over it.
    At the start of battle in April 1915, Britain had landed troops at two Gallipoli beaches. Turkish forces, under the command