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Romania Military Training
The 1972 Law on the Organization of National Defense
mandated
universal premilitary training for Romanian youths. Each
year more
than 650,000 young men and women between ten and twenty
years of
age received basic military training at schools and work.
They were
organized into what were called Youth Homeland Defense
detachments.
In the summer, they attended 200 ground forces, 40 air
force, and
15 navy training camps located throughout the country.
During
several weeks of training camp, they wore the blue uniform
of the
Patriotic Guards. The Ministry of National Defense, the
Patriotic
Guards, and the UTC supplied the military equipment and
instructors
for premilitary training. The program sought to compensate
for
short service terms by preparing young men for service in
the armed
forces. Young women used their premilitary training in
later
service with the Patriotic Guards. A major objective of
premilitary
training was to inculcate youths with socialist, and
especially
nationalist, values. In addition, Youth Homeland Defense
detachments could be deployed for certain missions and
duties if
needed in wartime.
After induction into the armed forces, the basic
training cycle
for conscripts was similar to that in most of the world's
armies.
It started with individual physical conditioning,
close-order
drill, small-arms firing, and fundamental small-unit
tactics,
followed by training in more complex equipment and
crew-served
weapons and the assignment of a military specialty, and
appropriate
training in it, after several months. Approximately 20 to
30
percent of basic military training time for conscripts was
devoted
to political indoctrination. The emphasis on political
education
among soldiers was evident in the fact that the large
majority of
them were UTC members. More than 70 percent of the
noncommissioned
officers (NCOs) in the armed forces were members of the
PCR. At the
time of induction, the most qualified conscripts were made
NCOs in
return for extending their service beyond the normal
sixteen-month
or two-year term. Nevertheless, the short service term in
the armed
forces made the training and retention of competent NCOs a
chronic
problem.
In 1989 daily existence for soldiers was harder than
for most
citizens. The daily dietary allowance for soldiers was
2,700
calories, which consisted mainly of bread and small
quantities of
meat in stews and soups. Dairy products and fruit were
generally
absent from the military diet because they were in short
supply
even in the civilian sector. Military units cultivated
gardens and
raised animals for slaughter to supplement their rations.
In many
instances, however, this home-grown produce and meat was
sold for
cash on the black market.
Data as of July 1989
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