57K views · 2.2K reactions | French 75mm field guns destined for the defence of Verdun are paraded and trained at Vincennes in Paris, 1916. Read more about the Battle of Verdun: https://bit.ly/3KqtbJM Film: IWM NTB 251-1 | Imperial War Museum London | Facebook

Rare footage of Verdun veterans returning to the old battlefield in the 1920s. At Verdun, over 700,000 men were killed, wounded or reported missing in 1916. Entire landscapes were obliterated; villages were reduced to rubble and never rebuilt. ‘At Verdun, you died without knowing why,’ recorded one veteran. By 1929 the National Necropolis had been completed, where 16,000 French soldiers lie. And the Douaumont Ossuary, which holds the bones of over 130,000 unknown soldiers, was completed in 1932.