The "centers of resistance" were well protected by barbed wire obstacles that reached a depth of 10 to 15 meters, but they were placed some 50 metres away from the firing line and thus could not be defended with hand grenades. A hundred meters in front of the main line the Romanians had built three rows of pitfalls and barbed wire that ran continuously from fort 15 to fort 3. Most of the artillery was placed in the main defensive line, although several pieces, along with trenches and machine guns, were placed on the nearby islands of the Danube in order to support the Romanian Danube Flotilla, which was tasked with providing artillery cover on the western approaches to the fortress. Some four kilometers from the main defensive line and three kilometers from Turtucaia itself lay the secondary defensive line of the fortress. It consisted of a single line of trenches with few prepared machine gun nests or obstacles, and no artillery at all. With their attention focused almost entirely on the main defensive line, the Romanian command largely ignored this secondary line. For command purposes the entire area of the fortress was divided into three sectors: I (west), II (south) and III (east), also named after local villages - Staro Selo, Daidâr, and Antimova. Each of them had its own commander. The defense of the Danube and Dobruja frontiers was entrusted to the Romanian Third Army, under the command of General Mihail Aslan, who had his headquarters in Bucharest. The fortress of Turtucaia was commanded by the head of the Romanian 17th Infantry Division, General Constantin Teodorescu, who by the beginning of the conflict had the following forces at his disposal:  17th Infantry Division (Teodorescu)  Romanian battle strength stood at 19 battalions, with over 20,000 men and 66 machine guns. Only three of the battalions were of the standing army, with the rest drawn from the reserve. A valuable asset for the garrison was the assistance of the Romanian Danube Flotilla, consisting mainly of the 2nd Monitor Division: "Brătianu", "Kogălniceanu" and "Catargiu". General Teodorescu could rely on a large artillery park, consisting by the end of August of over 157 guns ranging in caliber from 7.5 to 21 centimeters; however, most of these were fixed guns that lacked modern, quick-firing capability. The trench artillery consisted of numerous small-caliber turret guns, while the mobile horse-drawn artillery had 23 guns, only eight of them quick-firing.