site.btaRomania Celebrates Armed Forces Day

Romania celebrates its Armed Forces Day on October 25. The public holiday was established in 1959.

The programme of observances includes events in the country's main garrisons, military missions abroad and in the countries where Romania has military attaches.

The programme features a military-and-religious ritual at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Bucharest's Carol I Park. The ritual will involve floral tributes, an oath of enlistment of military school cadets, and a show of overflying planes of the Romanian Air Force.

There will be a ceremony at the Heroes Monument in front of the Carol I National Defence University, also in the capital. In the evening, a torch procession will go from the National Military Club to Timisoara Blvd.

Other observances will be held in Satu Mare and Carei, both in Northwestern Romania, and at Romanian military cemeteries and memorials in Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czechia, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, and Russia.

According to information from the Romanian Ministry of National Defence, about 540,000 Romanian troops fought in battles of World War II (1939-1945) and 90,000 of them lost their lives, 60,000 were declared missing and 330,000 were wounded in combat. After the liberation of the national territory on October 25, 1944, the Romanian army continued to fight in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Austria alongside forces of the Allies, thus contributing to the great victory in Europe in 1945 at the cost of more victims and sacrifices.