This project began for the purpose of presenting a paper to the  Macedonian Front Conference held in Thessaloniki on 10 - 13 May 2018. I based my research on a collection of 303 case files of applicants for war benefits, pensions and allowances, originally belonging to the Ministry of Finances> General Directorate of Public Accounts> Directorate of Pensions> Department of Pensions of Old War Victims> War Pensions of war victims 1912-1922.[1] They are case files consisting of applications submitted to and processed by the regional authorities in Crete and are now in the possession of the Venizelos Foundation in Chania. 

These 303 case files represent only a fraction, by no means a representative one, of the cases of individuals applying for war pensions, according to my estimate only 0.8%.[2] First, they are limited to the island of Crete. Secondly, they do not represent the totality of applicants from Crete: for two reasons:

1.     Out of the 303 cases studied, involving 323 casualties, there are only 3 cases of applications of soldiers wounded in combat. Statistics show that in all wars the soldiers wounded in combat far outnumber the dead at a ratio ranging between two to one and ten to six. As injury cases are underrepresented in these case files, the figures suggest that the collection is by no means either complete or representative.

2.     Furthermore, when checked against other records of war casualties, for instance a pamphlet published to commemorate the men of the 34th infantry regiment[3], again, most of the Cretan soldiers listed in the pamphlet do not appear among the casualties in the case files.

Besides, other lists of casualties are also incomplete: Casualties in the case files of the Venizelos Foundation collection do not appear in the comprehensive list of war casualties published by the Greek Ministry of Defence on the centenary of the Greek war of Independence.[4]

Given these limitations, I will attempt to examine to what extent this small sample helps us to form a picture about state policy, the nature of the wars, the profile of the victims and the fate of the survivors.

In order to provide answers to these questions, I created a database to record the data, using Heurist, a data management platform developed by Ian Johnson of for humanities scholars. The database is hosted by the University of Sydney and is accessible at 1912-1922 war victims pensions.

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[1] Υπουργείο Οικονομικών >Γενική Διεύθυνσις Δημοσίου Λογιστικού >Διεύθυνσις Συντάξεων >Τμήμα Συντάξεων παλαιών θυμάτων πολέμου >Πολεμικαί Συντάξεις θυμάτων πολέμου 1912-1922.

The Greek General State Archives hold 

1.   a series of records titled “pension deads” (Πράξεις Συντάξεων) belonging to the Court of Auditors (Ελεγκτικό Συνέδριο), and

2.    a series of 9 books titled “Proceedings of the meetings of the Council of the War Victims Fund of the years 1929-1936” (Πρακτικά συνεδριάσεων του Συμβουλίου του Ταμείου Θυμάτων Πολέμου των ετών 1929 – 1936) belonging to the Ministry of Health.

[2] According to a 1931 estimate, the number of beneficiaries for the period of the wars between 1912 and 1922, nationwide, was at the time approximately 62.000 individuals: Έκθεση του Ν. Ιασωνίδη σχετικά με τα πεπραγμένα του Υπουργείου Προνοίας και Αντιλήψεως, 30 Δεκεμβρίου 1931. Μουσείο Μπενάκη, Αρχείο Ελευθερίου Βενιζέλου, Φάκελος 134/26-27: http://www.venizelosarchives.gr/rec.asp?id=27875.

[3] Νικόλαος Παπαϊωάννου, ed., Ηρώον ενδόξου 34ου Πεζικού Συντάγματος ΙΙ Μεραρχίας (Πειραιάς, 1923), https://www.evernote.com/shard/s9/nl/1055522/f66db558-129b-4451-899a-94f574db3d67/.

[4] Υπουργείον Στρατιωτικών, Ειδική Επιτροπή Εκατονταετηρίδος, ed., Αγώνες και νεκροί 1830-1930 (Αθήνα, 1930), http://opac.academyofathens.gr/cgi-bin-EL/egwcgi/57446/showfull.egw/1+0+1+full. A catalogue of Cretans fallen in the battle of Skra, compiled at the Ministry of Defence on 27 July 1918 found in Venizelos’s private papers lists 69 soldiers. In the papers I studied there are only … http://www.venizelosarchives.gr/rec.asp?id=59294. It was compiled after a private citizen donated the sum of 10.000 drachmas for the families of the Cretans who had fallen in the battle (http://www.venizelosarchives.gr/rec.asp?id=59322 Mich. Papadakis to Venizelos, Kifisia, 30 June 1918.