General Henri Mathias Berthelot (the rotund one on the left) & General Alexandru Averescu (the skinny one in the middle) speak in Romania in 1917. The French Military Mission played an important role in revitalizing the Romanian Army after its disastrous entry into WW1.

Romanian soldiers in a machine gun nest in the Caşin Valley in January 1917.

A German sniper team in Romania in 1944 clean their equipment.

A forward medical slip filled out for a Romanian soldier of the 18th Infantry Division wounded on 30 November 1942 during the fighting around Stalingrad. Note the little illustrations for walking, sitting, & stretcher cases.

A letter to a Romanian soldier in 1990. Note: the flag on the tank has a hole where the communist emblem has been cut out - a symbol of the Romanian revolution in December 1989.

Romanian soldiers taking a lunch break during an interwar exercise.

A colorized photograph of the Neagu family's Christmas tree in Bucharest circa 1942/1943.

Soldiers of the 114th Mechanized Regiment & civilians prepare a pig in Vânju Mare in 1966.

The Brăila naval yards on the Danube in November 1943.

The notice annoucing the commemoration in Dorohoi for Captain Neculai Brănişteanu who was killed outside of Odessa in August 1941.

A colorized photo of Romanian soldiers using camels for transportation on the Eastern Front during World War II.

A census form issued by the Central [Office] of Jews in Romania in 1942.

A chromolithograph printed in Sibiu showing a Romanian cavalry officer leading a charge - with a cutout from a photograph pasted on the face - below images of King Ferdinand I & Queen Marie as a "souvenir from military service."

A Romanian soldier poses with an RPG in Brăila in 2003.

German soldiers with locals in Romania during WW2.

A Romanian helmet & three Crusade Against Communism medals recently unearthed from the Stalingrad battlefields. Romanian soldiers often threw away these decorations, awarded for distinguished service in the campaign against the USSR, before entering captivity.

German airmen in front of the Communal Palace (city hall) in Buzău in 1941/1942.

"Based on where they're falling, it's the Romanian mortars firing."

Jews in the Bălţi Ghetto in July 1941.

Soviet troops stack captured Romanian weapons near the village of Raspopinskaya in November 1942.

Nichita Smochină, as leader of ethnic Romanians in Transnistria (Romanian-occupied Ukraine) greets King Mihai I in Tiraspol in 1941. In the interwar period, the scholar (born in the Kherson Governorate) had been an activist for ethnic Romanians "beyond the Dniester" in the USSR.

A couple of German officers walk through Câmpulung Muscal in 1941. One of them, Fritz Witt, went on to become a general. He was killed by Allied naval gunfire while commanding a division in Normandy in 1944.

Recently promoted Brigadier General Alexandru Averescu, wearing the uniform of a cavalrymen, at the annual royal maneuvers of the Romanian Army in 1907. An interesting figure who rose from the enlisted ranks, became a hero of World War I, & led a populist party during the 1920s.

A pair of Romanian mountain artillerymen in Brad in the 1980s putting on their war faces for the camera.

A religious ceremony at the Cave Monastery of Saint Andrew in Dobruja in 1944. In the 1930s, a lawyer who had a vision claimed the apostle lived in the cave while preaching to the Geto-Dacians.

A postcard home dated 4 June 1944 from Corporal Vasile Popa with the 91st Infantry Regiment on the Iaşi front. He thanks his sister for a letter, reassures her that he's fine & "knows how to my duty here," & tells her to work hard & take care of their mother.

An interwar postcard of Nicolae Leonard, "the Prince of the Operetta," in costume for The Pandur (the title refers to a type of light infantry in the 18th & 19th centuries). The tenor was very popular in Romania from his breakout in 1905 until his untimely death in 1928.

A 1906 stamp showing then-Prince Carol saluting the Romanian Army as it crosses the Danube in 1877.

During WW2, the seaplane base at Mamaia had a pigeon section. Romanian pilots took the birds to send a message if they were shot down or forced to land due to mechanical issues. In tests, the birds could often beat the aircraft back to base.

A Romanian soldier (probably a member of a support unit because he is equipped with an older French-style helmet) attacks a statue of Soviet marshal Voroshilov after the fall of Odessa in 1941.

An original color photo of a Romanian airman with civilians in 1943.

A German soldier in a square with a mosque in Turnu Măgurele near the Danube River in 1941.

Military students in the courtyard of the cavalry officer school in Sibiu in 1944.

A Soviet cartoon from after the battle of Stalingrad. "Ceremonial inspection of the Romanian Jaeger division." The Romanian soldiers are depicted in old fin de siècle uniforms for added comic effect.

A parade during an oath taking ceremony in Orăştie in 2002.

German soldiers dressed up in Romanian folk costumes during WW2.

"Long live liberated Ardeal!" "Long live its liberators!" "Long live democratic Romania!" The profiles of King Mihai I & Stalin in front of a map of northern Transylvania with a rising sun after its seizure by Soviet-Romanian forces from Hungarian occupation in fall 1944.

A German-made identify disk for a Romanian soldier from WW2. Pvt. V. Coţet. Iaşi R[ecruiting] C[ircle].

A column of Romanian soldiers on the eastern front in WW2.

"Salutations from the Officer Corps of the 6th Roşiori Regiment." A fin de siècle postcard of the leadership of a Romanian line cavalry unit based in Tecuci.

Romanian officers at a equestrian competition in Iaşi in 1921.

Romanian soldiers watch civilians dance a hora in 1941.

Romanian & German officers participate in a ceremony at a Greek Catholic church in 1941.

Graves of Romanian soldiers in part of the courtyard of a Soviet kindergarten in Kotelnikovo near Stalingrad in late 1942. The building still stands today but all signs of the military cemetery are gone.

Sergeant Ion Râmniceanu with his camera on the Eastern Front in WW2. He captured images of the fighting from the Don Bend to northern Transylvania.

The January 1974 issue of the Romanian magazine Military Life: "no, girls don't serve in the army like princesses," "the x-ray of a certification," & "the spectacular history of armored vehicles."

I'm excited for the launch of this book, *The History of the Blind: Romania in War, 1940-1945*, in a week. It's about the Romanian home front. The title refers to how most Romanians grope blindly in the past knowing only part of their WW2 history.

A Romanian artillery officer with his family in the 1930s.

Wooden crosses in a Romanian frontline military cemetery in Pimeno-Cherni, southwest of Stalingrad, in December 1942.