Locotenent-Colonel Ioan G. Trofin, Awarded Michael the Brave Post-Mortum

Missing are the Order of the Star and the WW1 Cross with 1919 bar.

Close up of the Michael the Brave Award box as issued by the National Mint.

What is the High Decree number (bottom left corner)? The photo is too small to make out the writing.

thanks for the photos


ahile

Glad to share this exciting group with everyone. Looks like this was one pretty tough guy.

Absolutely stunning group, Regal Uniforma Collector! Thank you for sharing the pics with us.

Thanks for the detail as well as for the other photos. Congratulations for this whole group.

This is the desk used by Lt. Col. Trofin in the Ministry of Defence and transformed by his colleagues in a shrine to his memory.

Lt. Colonel Trofin was a Genral Staff officer at the Ministry of Defense at the the time the war broke out. He then was asigned to the 7th Vanatori Regiment and faught in the Ukraine and Odessa.

This is the desk used by Lt. Col. Trofin in the Ministry of Defence and transformed by his colleagues in a shrine to his memory.

These guys must have been his colleagues.

According to this newspaper clip, he has requested to be sent to frontline activities.

Thanks Carol I for translating the presentation plack that is mounted to the top of Lt. Col. Trofins desk. It reads as follows :

Legendary Figures

A soldier had fallen, a brave had entered the ranks of the heroes of our nation.
When on the 22th of June our holy war was declared against the people without faith robbers of the lands of Bukovina and Bessarabia, nobody and nothing could have prevented Lt. Col. Trofin, who worked in the 3rd Office of the General Secretariat of the Ministry of National Defence, to leave for the front line.
All my carrier and my life - he said in one of the countless of reports asking to get approval for departing for the front line - I have prepared for war. To stay here when on the eastern border the gun sounds and when so many comrades bleed, means to commit a crime against my conscience; it means to blush in front of my former pupils and in front of all the comrades whom I have always told that the true soldier lives his normal life only in the face of death and only in the face of the holy emotions that are given by war. And he left ..................
He was entrusted with the command of the 2nd Battalion of the 7th Vânători Regiment.
In short time he managed to become obeyed, loved and respected by all the soldiers under his command, the brave from Tisa;
Because Lt. Col. Trofin was a hardened soldier in the fights of our last war. Born on 7 February 1897 in Bacău county, the son of some worthy Moldavian răzeşi, after he finished high school, gets into the Military School of Infantry. Commissioned a 2nd Lt. on 1 July 1917, he is sent to the 6th Vânători Regiment, with which he takes part in all the operations in Transylvania and Hungary.
He had distinguished especially in the fight at Blaskowitz on the Tisa, where risking his life, together with his platoon and manoeuvring alone one of the machine guns, he inflicted heavy losses to the Hungarian columns; wounded in this fight, he was decorated with the Order of the Star of Romania with the Military Virtue ribbon for his brilliant deeds.
As Lieutenant and Captain he had followed the lectures at the Military Academy, wherefrom he graduated successfully. He had dealt with the study of military history.
In 1937 he had been called as teacher at the Application School for Infantry, where he has taught, as he did for the Application School for Cavalry as well, Military History and General Tactics.
Due to his broad knowledge, an attractive pedagogical methodology and his skills in military history, he had the best results managing to inspire in his pupils a taste for the art of fight. It is well known the importance for a soldier of the military history studies.
This is how Lt. Col Trofin regarded, in one of his works, the importance of this study and why he had studied military history in his spare time which is scarce for an officer:
"The principles of war, that in fact are a few simple rules, on which rests the whole military science, cannot be understood if the conditions where they had applied are not known. Knowing these conditions is an absolute necessity because the unknown and the conditions are strong factors in leading the operations. And these conditions we can only find in the military history of the past". Lt. Col. Trofin had studied military history with passion, as he did with all the works he dealt with, managing to produce the following works: "Military history in universal history", 3 volumes that deal with the middle age and the modern age, "The study of the Russian-Romanian-Turkish war", "The analysis of the Russian-Japanese war", "Brief analytical study on the world war 1914-1918".
He had therefore dealt with a broad field ranging from very old to very new. The study of history requires an extreme thoroughness, broad overviews and solid military knowledge. Lt. Col. Trofin had these qualities; all his works are extremely interesting, and one of them had studied for the very first time the expeditions of the famous leader and perfect soldier Gengis Khan.
We are certain that his studies will be used for the instruction of generations of future officers. In 1941 he became Lieutenant Colonel and moved among the staff of the General Secretariat of the MoD where he continued to use his competence in solving tough problems which required remarkable competence. It was not possible that in this war Lt. Col. Trofin not to act bravely, as he was in the previous war. Nor was it possible that a former teacher of military history who tried to inspire his pupils the past military deeds of our nation not to show them how one has to understand the old operations to conduct the new ones, to miss the duty of being present on the battlefield. Why had we studied in so many schools, why had we work to improve ourselves in the military art if we cannot apply the military duty, the Motherland, the King and the Leader commands?
Of course there is the place for all of us. We, for whom this unique occasion has not appeared due to our service duties, long for the coming of this day, as we long for the tomorrow. Because no sacrifice is too large when the happiness of our Motherland rests on our bravery. Lt. Col. Trofin, as he said in one of his letters sent from the frontline, had left to honour the trust that was always shown by his superiors. And he has honoured it. In the morning of 28 August, the 8th Division to which he belonged, in the tough fight for the conquest of Odessa, has led the attack to conquer one of the lines that defend this city. In the centre sector of the plateau that overlooks Odessa, there is the height 80, a hill grown strangely on the flat field of the Bug.
During the attack, both the action of the 8th Vânători Regiment carried to the north of the hill 80 and that of the 6th Vânători Regiment carried to the south were strongly flanked and subsequently stopped by the fire of the Bolshevik resistance, grouped around this height. Repeated attacks of the right wing of the 8th Vânători Regiment on this height did not lead to the expected result. Towards the afternoon, the 8th Division has decided to renew the attack with a battalion from its reserves. In this purpose, the 2nd Battalion of the 7th Vânători Regiment, commanded by Lt. Col. Trofin, receives the mission to conquer at any price the hill 80. At 16:30, the 2nd Battalion has started the attack led by its commander, and in only half an hour the command post of the division received the following report: "The mission was carried out with success. Hill 80 is in our hands. I continue the attack on the village Kartosow". And the battalion began again the attack with Lt. Col. Trofin in front, but the brave commander did not enjoy a new victory because he had fallen hit to the head by shrapnel from a heavy artillery projectile. What 2 regiments did not manage to conquer in half a day, Lt. Col. Trofin’s battalion managed in half an hour.
"Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow I will stick – wrote this brave officer – the flag of the battalion on the redoubt, even with the cost of life." And he stuck. Lt. Col. Trofin kept his promise, as in the previous war. He was gallant, he disregarded death and he confronted the risks with a determination in which a call of death flickered mysteriously. What did his life mean when it did bring glory to the unit he commanded?
What did his youth mean when the dedication in that unique intoxication of death he felt around him was the supreme act of satisfaction? For Lt. Col. Trofin the danger was hallucinogenic. He looked for it, he provoked it willing to spend in a moment an existence that was dear to the army. He wanted to concentrate life as a strong drink and to drink it at once in the impetus of an attack for the victory of the righteousness. And he drank it as he wanted it, conquering hill 80 in front of his battalion; its conquest meant a decisive step in the siege of Odessa.
This is the man, these are the deeds, this is the sacrifice. We do not mourn him. We hail him. Lt. Col. Trofin had been for us more than a comrade and a superior. He was a living example of the legendary gallantry of the Romanian. The history of the nation will write with golden letters his name and his heroic sacrifice and his memory will guard forever like a living flame in the souls and minds of those who knew him, of the country and the generations to follow.
Capt. Eduard Dragomirescu
Talk given on 10 September 1941 during the meeting of the Association of Romanian Military Writers and published in Unirea newspaper on 13 September 1941.

That is the nicest Romanian Tunics I have ever seen! It ranks up at the top of the list of WW2 tunics I've had the joy of viewing.