It helped defend the last stretches of Romania against the Central Powers' unified offensive, and met success in the Battle of Mărășești, but it still lacked a unitary command structure.

[7] Elected First Senior of the Camp, the 40-year-old Victor Deleu was a legal professional, rank-and-file member of the Romanian National Party (PNR) and journalist from Transylvania, who came to Darnytsia after internment in Kineshma.

[3] The other members of Darnytsia camp's leadership body were Pompiliu Nistor, Vasile Chiroiu, Emil Isopescu, Valeriu Milovan, Octavian Vasu and Ioan Vescan.

[8] Regardless of such initiatives, Romania tended to give little attention to the potential of recruitment in Russia, as many decision-makers were still uncertain about the devotion of Transylvanians and Bukovinians, and worried that they might be welcoming Austro-Hungarian spies into army ranks.

[14] According to veteran Simion Gocan, the soldiers were inspired by both these revolutionary promises and the American entry into World War I, which seemingly made the Wilsonian Self-Determination an official Entente policy.

[21] However, Corps veteran Petru Nemoianu (Nemoian) was later to state that envy and class conflict were also characteristic for the formation, where the intellectual leaders quarreled over the better paid assignments.

[1][31] It was also presented individually to representatives of Russian political life and to the foreign press agencies,[1] and circulated among the national emancipation movements of Czechs, Poles, Serbs and "Ruthenians".

[33] The Darnytsia soldiers soon gave themselves a special banner, based on the Romanian tricolor, with the added slogan Trăiască România Mare ("Long Live Greater Romania").

The largely Romanian-inhabited Russian city gave them a warm welcome: the battalion received another Romanian tricolor as war flag, and were presented with an Orthodox icon.

The ceremony was attended by King Ferdinand, Premier Brătianu, General Prezan, by representatives of Entente missions (Alexander Shcherbachov, Henri Mathias Berthelot)[38] and by ambassadors of neutral countries.

[39] At a later banquet and public rally in Union Square, Victor Deleu addressed the civilian population, describing the Corps' arrival as a rescue mission: "We had the duty of coming over here on this day, when you are living through such hardships.

[41] When it was proposed that men from the Corps be assigned noms de guerre so as to avoid execution if captured, Deleu reacted strongly: "We intend to be the army of Transylvania!

"[42] In July 1917, Corps offices in Kiev circulated the first issue of a recruitment gazette, România Mare ("Greater Romania"), which became the essential component of its propaganda effort in Russia.

[43] It was a new edition of the Bucharest gazette founded by Voicu Nițescu, and, in this new form, was managed by a team of pro-union activists: the Transylvanians Sever Bocu, Ghiță Popp, Iosif Șchiopu and the Bukovinian Filaret Doboș.

"[40] As the Mărășești battle was waging, the Romanian government called on the Russian leadership to allow yet more recruits to be sent to the front, and received a confirmation of Guchkov's earlier 30,000 directly from Chief of Staff Lavr Kornilov.

[65] The volunteers had dressed as Russian soldiers during their passage to Iași,[66] but were recognized as Romanian units by the Moldavian and Bolshevik troops garrisoned in Kishinev City Station, where their train stopped on January 6.

[69] Romania's own peace treaty with the Central Powers put the recruitment project on a complete standstill, and diminished the effort to move Transylvanian-Bukovinian soldiers into the single new force.

[70] According to his own account, Sever Bocu attempted to quickly dispatch Hârlău troops to the Western Front, but his project vetoed by the Romanian commander in chief Alexandru Averescu.

[74] On the Western Front, a similar formation was being created, mainly by Romanian citizens who resented their country for surrendering, but also by soldiers who clandestinely left Romania to continue the fight.

[76] Their unit was attached to the French Foreign Legion, to be joined by the various other categories of Romanian recruits, but the effort was stopped midway; in November, the Entente's victory over Germany ended World War I for both France and Romania.

[77] As the dissolution of Austria-Hungary was taking effect in October 1918, other such units were spontaneously formed on Austrian territory, mainly from rogue components of the Imperial Army.

As early as April 1918, some Romanian volunteer groups joined up with the Bolshevik Red Army, taking their orders from Commissar Béla Kun, but some of their members continued to serve the nationalist cause.

Some crossed into Bolshevik Russia hoping to be repatriated together with the Romanian consulate, while others took to areas controlled by the White movement, reaching Irkutsk;[66] still others escaped through northern routes into Sweden.

Criticized for his eccentric idea of imitating egalitarian Bolshevik practices and doing away with military ranks, he also sparked a conflict when he arrested the more conservative officer Voicu Nițescu.

[85] A complex set of sanctions were imposed, in the hope of curbing dissent, ranks were reintroduced, uniforms on the Romanian Land Forces model were distributed around, and a patriotic cultural section began to function.

[90] Taking a long and perilous journey, Elie Bufnea and some other officers of the original Darnytsia Corps joined up with "Horia" in mid autumn, at a moment when the Romanian soldiers were celebrating the breakup of Austria-Hungary.

[93] Once relocated to Irkutsk and Omsk in late 1918, the volunteers expressed their lack of interest in fighting against the Bolsheviks: after rebelling against Colonel Kadlec, their Czech technical adviser, the Corps was placed under Maurice Janin of the French Mission.

[94] A Romanian Legion of Siberia was formed from this structure, but only 3,000 soldiers still volunteered in its ranks—2,000 others were progressively transferred out of the combat zone, shipped out to Romania or taken back to prisoner of war camps.

[96] The combative Legion defended the Trans-Siberian between Tayshet and Nizhneudinsk, where they forced the Bolsheviks into a truce and established their reputation for brutality with the nickname Dikaya Divizia (Дикая Дивизия, "Wild Division").

[56] The old rivals from within the Romanian National Party, who led the Directory Council of Transylvania after 1918, allegedly refused to welcome the Corps back as a single unit, and plans for its mobilization had to be dropped.