We were at the battlefield in Augst last year with my daughter (28, professor of math and CS). Sobering.
Across all of the Somme battlefields up to the channel itself, the trench warfare damage and excavations was actually hard to see from ground level - though clear in the photographs from above.
But at Verdun? Shellholes by the hundreds of thousands in every woods, valley, and hillside. Sobering.
I was there summer of 14 and last summer as well. July in 14 and Aug. in 15. Incredible shell holes remain as you said. Hope you got to visit the Forts and the Memorial. Imprssive.
I went there about 10 years ago with a college classmate. He was a history major and we toured the French battlefields of World War I. Before we got there he tried to describe the Verdun Ossuary to me and finally said it was just something you had to see to understand. He was right.