It took another year for the Turks to complete their preparation for a major offensive. Mustafa Kemal predicted that the 'real saviour sun of the Turks would shine down on the morning of the attack in all its splendor'. The attack that began on 26 August 1922, was followed by a day in which everything seemed to be over for the Greeks and their hope of reversing a history of one thousand years by re-establishing a Greek Empire that would include Asia Minor. The operational commander of the Greek front was captured, and without a leader the Greeks began retreating toward zmir with the Turks in hot pursuit Lord Curzon, the British Foreign Secretary, was informed by Sir Horace Rumbold, then High Commissioner in still occupied Istanbul, that the Greeks 'went to pieces altogether', leaving behind 'a sickening record of bestiality and barbarity'.19o The Turkish writer Halide Edib, who was following the Turkish army, was stunned by what she saw. The Greek army in escaping from the fires it started and from atrocities.
Women mindlessly try to dig the ground with their fingers.
It is as though hell had come to earth. When the Turkish army reached zmir, the city was full of Greek refugees from the interior. However, some Greek troops had been left behind, and these, along with the thousands of refugees, were in a state of confusion. Some jumped into the water in an effort to reach Allied warships that were still in the harbour. Mustafa Kemal entered zmir on 10 September 1922 as the hero of the Turks, who made available to him the house in which King Constantine had stayed and where he had trampled the Turkish hag as he entered.