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Remembered Today:

General Aristide Razu of 22nd and 5th Romanian Infantry Divisions 1916


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Hi,

My name is Andrei Radu Georgescu.My ggrandfather was General of Division Aristide Razu and he commanded 22nd and 5th romanian Infantry Divisions on the romanian front in 1916-1919 romanian Campaign,in battles at Marasti,Marasesti, Oituz ,Dragoslave,Rucar-Bran.

Here are some photos with him and the Officer Corps of the Signalling and Communications Regiment which he commanded at the time, made in 1.10 1929 .I put them on Panoramio at: http://www.panoramio.com/user/2365578

Also there are photos with whole(regiments and so on...) Romanian Army 1902 after the war with the Otoman Empire of 1877.

Sorry about WW2,my ggrandfather was retired in 1928-1929, probably it didn t looked good for the new alliances that romania was making since he was decorated with Order Of the Bath,Military Division of the Third Class,CB ( i only have a xerox copy of it probably nationalized by the communists).Also all his properties(of Aristide Razu) are nationalized since communism ,even his house....in Varsovia street no.5 Bucharest.

Cheers!

Great Site!

post-43550-1235411934.jpg

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My greatgrandfatherAristide(Aristhar Razu born) is the one in the middle ,upset and with the mustache and yes with the lyon face.And with a little belly as he liked to eat bors(a kind of romanian soup).

This picture is called "Aristide and the boys" picture taken probably in 1928 upon his retirement.Also he was given the War Ministry but he declined it.

post-43550-1233826831.jpg

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Mult'umesc, Andrei. What is the Romanian word for 'Transmission'? This English word does not seem to convey the right meaning for the name of the regiment.

Robert

PS: Romanian bors is lovely ;)

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Mult'umesc, Andrei. What is the Romanian word for 'Transmission'? This English word does not seem to convey the right meaning for the name of the regiment.

Robert

PS: Romanian bors is lovely ;)

For Transmission is Tranzmisiuni,Transmission Regiment is Regimentul de Tranzmisiuni.

post-43550-1235412148.jpg

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Thanks Robert.I thought about it an i think it coud be more accurate that the corect translation is Communication Regiment (Regimentul de Comunicatii) instead of Transmission Regiment?

What is the English for Geniu Weapon(which in romanian army are the engineers,with everything from building bridges ,communication ....etc.?

Andrei.

p.s. The romanian army was reformed during WW1(in the middle of 1916 during desastrous romanian campaign of that year) by General Henry Mathias Berthelot of the French Army,and by the French Mission.

Too bad that in WW2 ,in 1938 the romanian government nationalized the petrol,even from our family(and my ggrandfather lost the trial in court with the romanian state),became a nazi state ,gave the oil to the germans .....hence WW2.

I wonder what Aristide was thinking seeng that everything is going away....the country

But I think people were more religious in those days,and probably he was more concerned with what would explain to the people he led into battle ,to death,when he would meet them.

Anyway the romanian "aces" instead of going to fight in RAF they fought in luftwafe.....in WW2....And people were said that they join the german axis to eliberat Basarabia and Bukovina,but I think in true it was good bussines at the time ...with the petrol and so on(the rummor says the germans were payin with gold bars).And also an oportunity for people from lower class to go up very fast.As they say"when the water rises the garbage goes up".

And now when you enter ww2.ro (romanian army site) they say Romanian Flying ACES of WW2.Instead of sayng criminals,like Cantacuzino or Polizu Micsunesti from old romanian families.They gave a good example for the lower class.But many of them fled the country to the romanians in Switzerland.Also many of them have been helped during communism years by swiss and their families are ok now.Just like nothing bad happened.And were helped by the romanian diaspora....incredible.Some of them went to prisson(the ones that did not fled in1946) were they were baptized with other things than Christian way.So in the end There is a God I should think.

Also marshall Ion Antonescu ,which was chief of staff. under the command of General Constantin Prezan(Commander of the IV-th Romanian Army) in WW1,learned everything from the French,.....and turns against the allies to lead the romanian nazist axis.."but Brutus is a honourable man"...no comments.All these people have condemned Romania to at least 50 years of communism.Everything Romania built in WW1 was destroyed in WW2 by " the romanians".Nice memory to 300000 romanian soldiers that died in WW1,in the 1916-1919 campaign(some figures say 800000 ,but this probably includes civilians?)....not to mention that King Ferdinand was fighting his own German blood and family.

I say this because I see that many people have never seen their fathers just because other people wanted to get rich and famous.Madness!

Probably this thread will ban me from this site!

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...could be more accurate that the corect translation is Communication Regiment (Regimentul de Comunicatii) instead of Transmission Regiment?
Hi Andrei. For some reason, the photographs are not showing up. From your descriptions though, it sounds like Communication Regiment might be better, although it still doesn't quite sound right in English. The meaning is clear, but it would be more like Signalling or perhaps Wireless Regiment. The word 'regiment' suggests a very large unit in the British army context, so the unit would usually be a Signalling or Wireless Company. This does not mean that the Romanian army used the same unit description of course.

What is the English for Geniu Weapon(which in romanian army are the engineers,with everything from building bridges ,communication ....etc.?
'Geniu' is similar to the French word for military engineering. In English, it would be "engineering equipment", given that almost all of the equipment would not have been weapons as such.

Robert

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p.s. The romanian army was reformed prior to WW1 by General Henry Mathias Berthelot of the French Army.
Andrei, thank you for reminding us of the French influence, which was also important in the period after the German invasion into Romania. The history of the Romanian involvement in WW1 is not well known to most English-speaking people.

Robert

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Andrei, thank you for reminding us of the French influence, which was also important in the period after the German invasion into Romania. The history of the Romanian involvement in WW1 is not well known to most English-speaking people.

Robert

Hmmm...Roger! ;)

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Hi Robert.

from 'the War Illustrated’ 13th April 1918 'Smoke-Clouds of Destruction' by Hamilton Fyfe a Wanderer in War LandsHow a Great Task was Greatly Achieved

from 'the Times History of the War'....(this was happening in 1916,just when the Germans invaded Bucharest)

What will happen to the Rumanian oil-fields ?(situated at city of Ploiesti,near Bucharest) Many people would be glad to know, especially those who have money invested in them. Will the Germans try to keep them ? If so, will the property of British investors be confiscated ?

The British, French and Russian Governments agreed, so it was stated in Rumania at the time of the destruction of the wells, to pay compensation for damage done. Now Russia has no Government. Will France and Britain recompence shareholders in oil companies for their whole losses ?

What would those losses amount to if the oil district were annexed ? That I must leave to "someone in the City" to compute. All I know is that the engineers put the value of the property destroyed towards the end of 1916 at thirty million pounds ! A more effective, more creditable piece of work has not been done during the war.

Yet it was, of course, a melancholy business. It had taken many years to build up the Rumanian oil industry. Years of thought and labour, of effort and calculation. Years, at last, of triumph and profitable toil for all concerned.

A "Destroying Angel"

The industry kept a large population busy and prosperous. It provided the world with more than one of the necessaries of life, as we live it to-day — with light and heat, with grease to make the wheels of engines go round, with the driving power for millions of automobiles and other kinds of petrol motors. Hundreds of thousands of people depended upon its continued working for their living, or for part of it. The convenience and comfort of millions have been affected by the lessening of the petrol supply. Yet it was a military act of necessity to destroy. the industry as far as possible.

"What is war," Napoleon asked, "but a game of barbarians ?" Savage and senseless, save from its own distorted view-point, acts of war must always be.

It was on a sunny November, day that I first saw in Bucharest my old acquaintance "Jack" Norton Griffiths — "Empire Jack" his constituents used to call him. He was looking at the ruins of a building wrecked in the early morning air raid. At first I did not recognise him, in uniform with red tabs, but I found that being a Staff colonel had not a whit changed his jolly, kindly, care-free nature, nor diminished his immense energetic capability by any job of "militarism."

He had been sent out to see that. The Germans got as little as possible out of Rumania, either in the way of oil or grain. Already it was clear that the Rumanian Army could not save the country from invasion. Help was looked for from Russia, but the Russians could not send it in time. They were most unjustly accused of "betraying Rumania." That is nonsense. General Alexeieff was ready to do all that lay in his power, but he could not work miracles. Only a miracle could have moved sufficient Russian troops to save Rumania from Mackensen's machine- like manipulation of his forces.

By the end of November it was clear that the oil-wells must either be destroyed or presented to the enemy. Already they had been left untouched too long. The Rumanian Government urged that they should be left a little longer. But now Colonel Norton Griffiths had his orders. Off he went to Ploesti, the capital of the oil country. He called together the British engineers and managers who had longest experience and those who were reputed to possess the longest heads.

He got valuable advice also from American oil-men. There was general agreement that the only way to seal up a well, so that it could not be used again, was to drop the dipping machinery into it upside down. Wherever such a thing had happened by accident, it had been found impossible to get the machinery out.

Then the colonel got to work. He is by the way, the founder and head of a very big contracting firm which makes docks, digs canals, builds harbours all over the world. Now he proved that he was no less competent at destruction than at construction. A "destroying angel," the oil people nicknamed him. One mine manager of a poetical turn, described him to me as being "in love with ruin."

A great deal of oil was pumped or run off from the reservoirs into shallow basins, where it was set on fire. It did not explode. It did not blaze up. It burned sullenly, giving off a dense black smoke. All over the country the dense black smoke rolled in sinister, slowly-moving clouds. At a place called Targovistca, twenty miles away, it was thick enough to blot out the daylight and make dark night at four in the afternoon.

As I look back, those days of destruction are like a nightmare in my memory. A nightmare lit up by huge flares of burning petrol, lakes of petrol, rivers of petrol, and always above them dense, black, stinking smoke.

Nothing in the war has made a deeper impression on my mind. The lurid sensationalism of it, the hurry in which it was all done, with the query lurking at the back of everyone's thoughts : "Can we do it in time ?"

With Colonel Norton Griffiths worked several oil-men. The new officers set to work with as many helpers as they could enlist by promise of reward. It was a perilous job they were engaged in. There were dangers of falling roofs or walls, dangers of fire, dangers of suffocation. And added to these, there was danger in the threatening mood of the population.

These unfortunate people had to look on and see their living vanish. They saw the wells and refineries which supported them and their families being choked up and knocked down. "Better that the Germans should have them, and employ as, than that we should have no work and starve." That was how they argued.

The colonel was here, there and everywhere, "the life and soul of the party," as another mine manager put it. This poor fellow had helped to break up his own home. His furniture, piano, a library of books which he had been collecting since he was a boy, all had gone. His job had gone. The oil-field which he had managed so capably, and made to yield its increase in growing volume year after year, was out of action. Yet he joked about it. He was the most cheerful of us all as we sat at our scanty meals.

Just in Time

If the oil would not light up quickly the colonel took bundles of blazing straw and flung them into it. He was seen swinging sledge-hammers against the oil-refining machinery, "He ought to have been killed a hundred times," said an admiring American. "Why he wasn't, I cannot understand." His example made all his assistants work like three men apiece.

Just in time they got their work finished. The sound of the guns, magnified by the mountain echoes, had been coming nearer and nearer. Through the town wounded men and deserters and fugitives were flowing in solid streams. There was no hope now that the enemy could be checked before he had captured Bucharest and the oil region.(which is the city of Ploiesti)

The well-to-do part of the frightened population had no thought but to flee. The rest for the most part, took a fatalist view. "Let the Germans come," they said to each other. "They can't harm us more than these foreigners have done."

On a Saturday the destruction was almost completed. It was, known that the Rumanian Headquarters Staff had passed through Ploesti in flight. "Give it up now," the colonel was urged. The bombardment sounded very near.

“No," he said, "we'll make a clean job of it." They went on until the Monday. Then the remains of Avarescu's Army began pouring down from the passes(in Carpathian Mountains ,Romanian Army was trying to stop the German's Offensive) they had held so bravely, and so much longer than they had been expected to hold them.

Only then did Colonel Norton Griffiths give the word to quit. It would, indeed, have been useless to stay longer. There was nothing left to do.

Thank you.

Andrei

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Hi Andrei and Robert,

In the French army today, 'Transmissions' means signalling and communications.

Nice to have a Romanian input on the site.

Christina

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Hi Christina and Robert.

Thanks for your prompt answers.I will make the changes for correct English Language translation.

p.s.Is there a problem with the pictures(are they viewable) I have uploaded?I see them from my computer just fine.

Andrei.

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Thanks Robert.

Now I have uploaded them with upload instead of insert image .But they re 3mega-ish each.

How is that now ?Still invisible? :ph34r:

Andrei.

If yes Help!

Andrei.

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Hi Andrei and Robert,

In the French army today, 'Transmissions' means signalling and communications.

Nice to have a Romanian input on the site.

Christina

Thanks for having me on the site Christina.

Andrei,

post-43550-1233780984.jpg

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Andrei, there is one image associated with your last post. It shows the interior of an ambulance. The image is very clear.

Robert

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Excellent photos, thank you. Is there any evidence, either from the photograph or other sources, that the wireless equipment was supplied by France?

Robert

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something like this....radio transmissions,the 2 KW post.

Well I made the pictures as small as possible.

Jolly good!

I hope now they are visible.

But in the picture with Aristide and the boys one cannot see the faces very clear,I should think.

Thank You.

Andrei.

post-43550-1233782178.jpg

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Hi Robert.

Well I wouldn 't know because these are family photos,It is the only thing I have from him and army.Most of the things related with army were donated to the military museum of Bucharest.Although when I went there I only saw one drawing with General Aristide Razu on displayNot even a picture..Probably most of the things ended up in som communist chieftain's house.

The one with the ambulance I made in Duxford Imperial War Museum,it is a diorama of a Lady Medic tending a wounded soldier....Me!

Andrei.

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