The Capture of Fort Douaumont, A Postscript
Half a century after the drama of Verdun, Alistair Horne describes the Paris meeting of two of the battle heroes, Eugen Radtke and Gustave Durassie.
It does not happen often to a writer of History that one of his heroes, previously presumed dead, suddenly reappears in the flesh and says “here I am.” When it does happen, it is incredibly exciting and makes the occupation of writing history more rewarding than a novelist’s.
I had such an experience in Paris recently, when I met Oberreichsbahnrat Captain (ret.) Eugen Radtke. Readers of History Today may recall my account (August, 1962) of how in February 1916 Douaumont, reputedly the world’s strongest fort, was captured by a handful of Brandenburgers. According to one French general, its retaking was estimated to cost one hundred thousand men.
It is probably no exaggeration to rate the capture of Douaumont as the most dramatic single feat of arms in all the drab, amorphous land-war of 1914-18. Thus, quite justifiably, “the stormers of Douaumont” joined the ranks of the great war-heroes of the Kaiser’s Germany. The only trouble was that the man most deserving of acclaim went totally unrewarded (as, I have long suspected, happens in the confusion of war more often than one cares to think).
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