Two years on the Galician front (1914–1915). Pages in the diary of the Transylvanian Officer Marian Popu

Abstract

"Marian Popu was born in 1889 in the village of Diviciorii Mici in Solnoc-Dăbâca County and came from a Romanian family of intellectuals, his father being a teacher. He attended primary school in his native village and then attended secondary and high school in Gherla. After graduating from high school, in 1909 he enrolled in the ‘Ludovika’ Honvéd Military Academy in Budapest. Here he attended classes for three years and graduated in 1912, obtaining the rank of second lieutenant. Among his teachers there was also Lieutenant-Colonel Aurél Stromfeld, who would later be his regimental commander on the Galician front. In 1914, at the outbreak of the First World War, Marian Popu was promoted to the rank of lieutenant major and was sent to the Galician front at the head of a subunit of the Honvéd Infantry Regiment no. 32 of Dej. In 1914–1915, the Romanian officer reached this front four times. Each time he fought on the front line. His memory recalls the grim reality of the war, the entry into the front line of battle, the marches, the cold, the terrible death of his comrades but also the periods of convalescence spent in the military hospitals of Vienna and Dej. Here he was treated three times due to illness, exhaustion and the fact that he was shot in the arm during the offensive of May 1915. After the stabilization of the front, in the fall of 1915, Lieutenant Marian Popu reached the front line on defensive fighting positions in a forest in the area of Bedrykivti, on the banks of the Tupa River. Here he remained until June 1916, when he was forced to retreat after the start of the offensive led by Russian General Alexei Brusilov."