I’ve been there a few times...it’s hard to fathom that tens of thousands of soldiers..on both sides..were just vaporized into nothing...today, a century after the battle there are still large areas where nothing will grow..not even weeds, because the soil is so toxic from the residual chemicals of the artillery explosives..
They were not vaporized into nothing. Their bodies were shredded into little pieces by repeated artillery shelling.
Every week French farmers from the area bring bones found in their fields to the Monument at Fort Douaumount. Here a French army medical officer determines if the bone fragments are human. If so they are turned over to a French Army Chaplain to be add to the ossuary. There lay the shattered bones of over 130,000 French and German soldiers.
I believe on average a soldier was killed every sixty seconds on the battlefield of Verdun.