Tragic legacy of Verdun Battlefield. In 1964 photographer and war veteran Alfred Eisenstaedt returned to Verdun, where one of the costliest battles of the Great War took place in 1916. Here is what he photographed. Accompanying him was correspondent Ken Gouldthorpe. And here’s what he wrote: ‘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 so