23. Over 100,000 men were listed as missing from both sides
During the period of fighting known as the Battle of Verdun (February – December 1916) more than 100,000 men were officially listed as missing in action. Nearly all of them were actually killed in the fighting and their bodies were never found. The artillery bombardments were so devastating that as it reshaped the soil it buried the dead and the living wounded, collapsed the walls of trenches, and the roofs of buildings. Other times it disinterred the bodies which had been hastily buried, or had been swept under the soil during preceding bombardments. In 1932 an ossuary containing the skeletal remains of at least 130,000 unknown dead from either side was dedicated.
The battle area continued to deliver up skeletal remains of the soldiers who died in the battle for decades following the end of the First World War. One of the unknown victims of the battle was chosen for interment in 1920 in France’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Paris. Bones continued to be found during excavations for various reasons into the 21st century, and when found, they were typically placed in the ossuary, which was erected at Douaumont, near a cemetery where many of the dead were buried in the aftermath of the battle.