A monument of bones
The Douaumont Ossuary is a 137-meter-long stone monument overlooking the Verdun battlefield, the site of a brutal 300-day battle in 1916. Through small windows at the base of the structure, visitors can see the remains of at least 130,000 unidentified French and German soldiers. These bones were collected from the battlefield for years after the war ended and brought to the ossuary, which was officially inaugurated on August 7, 1932. The building has a 46-meter-high tower, called the "Lantern of the Dead," which contains a rotating red and white light that illuminates the landscape at night.
In front of the ossuary lies the largest single French military cemetery of the First World War, with 16,142 graves. The collection and memorialization of the dead was a massive undertaking. During the battle, the landscape was so thoroughly pulverized by an estimated 60 million artillery shells that many soldiers were buried where they fell, often in shell craters or collapsed trenches. The ground became an unmarked cemetery, and the work to recover the dead continued long after the armistice.
The soil's toxic history
The intense fighting at Verdun created a new type of soil, sometimes called a "necrosol," formed from the mixture of earth, human remains, and millions of unexploded munitions. This landscape is part of a larger, heavily restricted area in northeastern France known as the Zone Rouge (Red Zone). After the war, this zone was deemed "completely devastated" and impossible to clean, with 100% damage to agriculture and property.
Modern soil science reveals a persistent chemical contamination. During World War I, armies used chemical weapons including mustard gas and arsenic-containing agents. Post-war cleanup efforts, which sometimes involved burning massive stockpiles of these shells, created toxic hotspots. Studies of the soil in the Verdun area have found arsenic levels up to 35,000 times higher than normal background levels, with some samples containing as much as 17% arsenic by weight.
These contaminants, which also include lead and mercury from conventional shells, are extremely persistent. They bind to soil particles and can remain a hazard for centuries. The pollution is so severe that in some parts of the Zone Rouge, 99% of plants cannot survive. The French government's bomb disposal agency, the Département du Déminage, continues to remove hundreds of tons of unexploded ordnance from the former battlefields each year in what is known as the "iron harvest." Experts estimate it could take another 300 to 700 years to fully clear the area.