Romanian Military Make-Up December 27, 2017
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary , trackback
An oft quoted fact about the Great War is that the Romanian Army in 1916, when it bravely but foolishly entered that conflict, ordered its soldiers not to wear makeup. But is this unlikely sounding detail true? Did Romanian soldiers routinely wear mascara and the like? And did their generals try and control the practice? The claim about Romanian military make-up takes two forms. First, the make up allegation; and second the more specific eye-shadow allegation.
Norman Stone, The Eastern Front, writes ‘only officers above the rank of major had the right to use make-up.’[not referenced]
Peter Englund, The Beauty and the Sorrow, ‘only officers above the rank of major had the right to wear eye-shadow in the field.’
Norman Stone’s sentence, which Beach suspects is the point of origin of the vast majority of English-language works has no footnote attached: and the eye-shadow reference sounds like a mutation from that. Now Romanian officers did wear make up. Ethel Moir, a Scottish nurse, wrote of Romanians in 1916, ‘their officers are impossible, conceited, dressed-up fops, powdered and painted and dressed up to the nines. All they think of is their personal appearance.’ The Romanians clearly had a reputation, then, and there were certainly lots of Allied and Central Power jokes about effete Romanians. But whether make up was dealt with in military orders is another matter… Can anyone, preferably with Romanian, deal with this tale: drbeachcombing AT gmail DOT com
Note that Straight Dope has been here before us…. but without any results.
