In this article, I study memories of the Allied occupation of Maraş, Mersin and İzmir that were published in local newspapers between the 1920s and 1960s. Apart from one earlier text, the stories were published during the first decades of the Turkish republic, when Muslims had re-gained political hegemony and forced both the occupying armies and most local non-Muslims to leave the country for good. The texts I use were published in the dailies Sebilürrreşad in 1921 (in Istanbul), in Ahenk in 1926, in Ege Ekspres in 1958 (both in İzmir), and in the late 1960s in Kuvayi Milliye, a monthly veterans’ magazine published in Mersin. Their authors were ordinary insofar as they were relatively low ranking clerks, former reserve officers, and readers of the İzmir papers . As literate Muslim males able to pen their own memories, however, they certainly held a certain degree of privilege over less educated and illiterate people, women and non-Muslims. In order to analyze their narratives, I use concepts developed by Maurice Halbwachs and Jan and Aleida Assmann.