Battle of Verdun

The national cemetery at Douaumont near Verdun, France, seen from the ossuary in front of it, with the forest of the old battlefield stretching to the horizon. The Battle of Verdun ran from February 21 to December 19, 1916, and the cemetery holds 16,142 graves of French soldiers. The ossuary behind the camera, inaugurated in 1932, houses the unidentified remains of about 130,000 French and German soldiers. The woods look peaceful now, but they cover ground churned by ten months of shelling.