2006Victory Day - Set

June 23 was first celebrated as Victory Day in 1934 although the original proposal to start marking the anniversary of the Estonian defeat of the Baltic-German Landeswehr army at Cºsis, Latvia, in 1919 came from Maj. Gen. Ernst Põdder when the War of Independence was still going on. The first Estonian naval parade will be staged in Saaremaa Island’s Küdema Bay on Victory Day 2006 in the run-up to the 15th anniversary of the restoration of independence. Today, naval parades have become traditional vehicles to mark events of great national importance. The navy is the pride of every maritime country, participation in naval parades being a highly responsible part of each navy man’s service. The parade is a review of the naval forces and a chance for the crews to demonstrate their good training. The naval parade 2006 will be one of the major cooperation projects between military and civilian structures since the reestablishment of independence, sending to the world a message of Estonia as a developing maritime country. The naval parade in Portsmouth in 1937 in the honour of the recently crowned King George VI of Great Britain was the first where Estonia displayed its naval flag, flown by the submarine Kalev.