Ghosts of World War I: Revisiting Verdun, 50 Years Later

Of all the battle sites along the 350-mile sweep of the Western Front [Gouldthorpe wrote in the June 5, 1964, issue of LIFE], none has come to symbolize the carnage and futility of World War I’s fighting more than the fields and hills of Verdun. Here the Germans tried to bleed the French army to death. . . . Today in an ossuary near Douaumont, even now smelling of death, rest the bones of 130,000 unidentified casualties from both sides: skulls, thighs, and — almost indistinguishable — the hobnailed sole of a soldier’s boot. Th erupting shells of a thousand bombardments killed and dug up and mixed and then reinterred the bodies until they intermingled inseparably beneath the mud. [But] not all the memorials honor unknown soldiers. In the wall of Fort Vaux . . . a couple of poppies from nearby fields decorate a plaque [picture #17 in the gallery] to one French victim of Verdun. It says, simply, “To my son. Since your eyes were closed mine have never ceased to cry.”