A. Russell Bond

In primitive times battles were fought hand-to-hand. The first implements of war were clubs and spears and battle-axes, all intended for fighting at close quarters. The bow and arrow enabled men to fight at a distance, but shields and armor were so effective a defense that it was only by hand-to-hand fighting that a brave enemy could be defeated. Even the invention of gunpowder did not separate the combatants permanently, for although it was possible to hurl missiles at a great distance, cannon were so slow in their action that the enemy could rush them between shots. Shoulder firearms also were comparatively slow in the early days, and liable to miss fire, and it was not until the automatic rifle of recent years was fully developed that soldiers learned to keep their distance.

When the great European war started, military authorities had come to look upon war at close quarters as something relegated to bygone days. Even the bayonet was beginning to be thought of little use. Rifles could be charged and fired so rapidly and machine-guns could play such a rapid tattoo of bullets, that it seemed impossible for men to come near enough for hand-to-hand fighting, except at a fearful cost of life. In developing the rifle, every effort was made to increase its range so that it could be used with accuracy at a distance of a thousand yards and more. But when the Germans, after their retreat in the First Battle of the Marne, dug themselves in behind the Aisne, and the French and British too found it necessary to seek shelter from machine-gun and rifle fire by burrowing into the ground, it became apparent that while rifles and machine-guns could drive the fighting into the ground, they were of little value in continuing the fight after the opposing sides had buried themselves. The trenches were carried close to one another, in some instances being so close that the soldiers could actually hear the conversation of their opponents across the intervening gap. Under such conditions long-distance firearms were of very little practical value. What was needed was a short-distance gun which would get down into the enemy trenches. To be sure, the trenches could be shelled, but the shelling had to be conducted from a considerable distance, where the artillery would be immune to attack, and it was impossible to give a trench the particular and individual attention which it would receive at the hands of men attacking it at close quarters.

Before we go any farther we must learn the meaning of the word "trajectory." No bullet or shell travels in a straight line. As soon as it leaves the muzzle of the gun, it begins to fall, and its course through the air is a vertical curve that brings it eventually down to the ground. This curve is called the "trajectory." No gun is pointed directly at a target, but above it, so as to allow for the pull of gravity. The faster the bullet travels, the flatter is this curve or trajectory, because there is less time for it to fall before it reaches its target. Modern rifles fire their missiles at so high a speed that the bullets have a very flat trajectory. But in trench warfare a flat trajectory was not desired. What was the use of a missile that traveled in a nearly straight line, when the object to be hit was hiding in the ground? Trench fighting called for a missile that had a very high trajectory, so that it would drop right into the enemy trench.

HAND-ARTILLERY

Trench warfare is really a close-quarters fight of fort against fort, and the soldiers who manned the forts had to revert to the ancient methods of fighting an enemy intrenched behind fortifications. Centuries ago, not long after the first use of gunpowder in war, small explosive missiles were invented which could be thrown by hand. These were originally known as "flying mortars." The missile was about the size of an orange or a pomegranate, and it was filled with powder and slugs. A small fuse, which was ignited just before the device was thrown, was timed to explode the missile when it reached the enemy. Because of its size and shape, and because the slugs it contained corresponded, in a manner, to the pulp-covered seeds with which a pomegranate is filled, the missile was called a "grenade."

Grenades had fallen out of use in modern warfare, although they had been revived to a small extent in the Russo-Japanese war, and had been used with some success by the Bulgarians and the Turks in the Balkan wars. And yet they had not been taken very seriously by the military powers of Europe, except Germany. Germany was always on the lookout for any device that might prove useful in war, and when the Germans dug themselves in after the First Battle of the Marne, they had large quantities of hand-grenades for their men to toss over into the trenches of the Allies. These missiles proved very destructive indeed. They took the place of artillery, and were virtually hand-thrown shrapnel.

The French and British were entirely unprepared for this kind of fighting, and they had hastily to improvise offensive and defensive weapons for trench warfare. Their hand-grenades were at first merely tin cans filled with bits of iron and a high explosive in which a fuse-cord was inserted. The cord was lighted by means of a cigarette and then the can with its spluttering fuse was thrown into the enemy lines. As time went on and the art of grenade fighting was learned, the first crude missiles were greatly improved upon and grenades were made in many forms for special service.

There was a difference between grenades hurled from sheltered positions and those used in open fighting. When the throwers were sheltered behind their own breastworks, it mattered not how powerful was the explosion of the grenade. We must remember that in "hand-artillery" the shell is far more powerful in proportion to the distance it is thrown than the shell fired from a gun, and many grenades were so heavily charged with explosives that they would scatter death and destruction farther than they could be thrown by hand. The grenadier who cast one of these grenades had to duck under cover or hide under the walls of his trench, else the fragments scattered by the exploding missile might fly back and injure him. Some grenades would spread destruction to a distance of over three hundred feet from the point of explosion. For close work, grenades of smaller radius were used. These were employed to fight off a raiding-party after it had invaded a trench, and the destructive range of these grenades was usually about twenty-five feet.

Hand-grenades came to be used in all the different ways that artillery was used. There were grenades which were filled with gas, not only of the suffocating and tear-producing types, but also of the deadly poisonous variety. There were incendiary grenades which would set fire to enemy stores, and smoke grenades which would produce a dense black screen behind which operations could be concealed from the enemy. Grenades were used in the same way that shrapnel was used to produce a barrage or curtain of fire, through which the enemy could not pass without facing almost certain death. Curtains of fire were used not only for defensive purposes when the enemy was attacking, but also to cut off a part of the enemy so that it could not receive assistance and would be obliged to surrender. In attacks upon the enemy lines, grenades were used to throw a barrage in advance of the attacking soldiers so as to sweep the ground ahead clear of the enemy.

The French paid particular attention to the training of grenadiers. A man had to be a good, cool-headed pitcher before he could be classed as a grenadier. He must be able to throw his grenade with perfect accuracy up to a distance of seventy yards, and to maintain an effective barrage. The grenadier carried his grenades in large pockets attached to his belt, and he was attended by a carrier who brought up grenades to him in baskets, so that he was served with a continuous supply.

LONG-DISTANCE GRENADE-THROWING

Fig. 3. A rifle grenade fitted to the muzzle of a rifle

All this relates to short-distance fighting, but grenades were also used for ranges beyond the reach of the pitcher's arm. Even back in the sixteenth century, the range of the human arm was not great enough to satisfy the combatants and grenadiers used a throwing-implement, something like a shovel, with which the grenade was slung to a greater distance, in much the same way as a lacrosse ball is thrown. Later, grenades were fitted with light, flexible wooden handles and were thrown, handle and all, at the enemy. By this means they could be slung to a considerable distance. Such grenades were used in the recent war, particularly by the Germans. The handle was provided with streamers so as to keep the grenade head-on to the enemy, and it was usually exploded by percussion on striking its target. These long-handled grenades, however, were clumsy and bulky, and the grenadier required a good deal of elbow-room when throwing them.

A much better plan was to hurl them with the aid of a gun. A rifle made an excellent short-distance mortar. With it grenades could be thrown from three to four hundred yards. The grenade was fastened on a rod which was inserted in the barrel of the rifle and then it was fired out of the gun by the explosion of a blank cartridge. The butt of the rifle was rested on the ground and the rifle was tilted so as to throw the grenade up into the air in the way that a mortar projects its shell.

STRIKING A LIGHT

The lighting of the grenade fuses with a cigarette did very well for the early tin-can grenades, but the cigarettes were not always handy, particularly in the heat of battle, and something better had to be devised. One scheme was to use a safety-match composition on the end of a fuse. This was covered with waxed paper to protect it from the weather. The grenadier wore an armlet covered with a friction composition such as is used on a safety-match box. Before the grenade was thrown, the waxed paper was stripped off and the fuse was lighted by being scratched on the armlet. In another type the fuse was lighted by the twisting of a cap which scratched a match composition on a friction surface. A safety-pin kept the cap from turning until the grenadier was ready to throw the grenade.

The Mills hand-grenade, which proved to be the most popular type used by the British Army, was provided with a lever which was normally strapped down and held by means of a safety-pin. Fig4 shows a sectional view of this grenade. Just before the missile was thrown, it was seized in the hand so that the lever was held down. Then the safety-pin was removed and when the grenade was thrown, the lever would spring up under pull of the spring A. This would cause the pin B to strike the percussion cap C, which would light the fuse D. The burning fuse would eventually carry the fire to the detonator E, which would touch off the main explosive, shattering the shell of the grenade and scattering its fragments in all directions. The shell of the grenade was indented so that it would break easily into a great many small pieces.

There were some advantages in using grenades lighted by fuse instead of percussion, and also there were many disadvantages. If too long a time-fuse were used, the enemy might catch the grenade, as you would a baseball and hurl it back before it exploded. This was a hazardous game, but it was often done.

Among the different types of grenades which the Germans used was one provided with a parachute as shown in Fig.5. The object of the parachute was to keep the head of the grenade toward the enemy, so that when it exploded it would expend its energies forward and would not cast fragments back toward the man who had thrown it. This was a very sensitive grenade, arranged to be fired by percussion, but it was so easily exploded that the firing-mechanism was not released until after the grenade had been thrown. In the handle of this grenade there was a bit of cord about twenty feet long. One end of this was attached to a safety-needle, A, while the other end, formed into a loop, was held by the grenadier when he threw the grenade. Not until the missile had reached a height of twelve or thirteen feet would the pull of the string withdraw the needle A. This would permit a safety-hook, B, to drop out of a ring, C, on the end of a striker pellet, D. When the grenade struck, the pellet D would move forward and a pin, E, would strike a cap on the detonator F, exploding the missile. This form of safety-device was used on a number of German grenades.

The British had another scheme for locking the mechanism until after the grenade had traveled some distance through the air. Details of this grenade, which was of the type adopted to be fired from a rifle, are shown in Fig.6. The striker A is retained by a couple of bolts, B, which in turn are held in place by a sleeve, C. On the sleeve is a set of wind-vanes, D. As the grenade travels through the air, the wind-vanes cause the sleeve C to revolve, screwing it down clear of the bolts B, which then drop out, permitting the pin A to strike the detonator E upon impact of the grenade with its target.

The Germans had one peculiar type which was in the shape of a disk. In the disk were six tubes, four of which carried percussion caps so that the grenade was sure to explode no matter on which tube it fell. The disk was thrown with the edge up, and it would roll through the air. Another type of grenade was known as the hair-brush grenade because it had a rectangular body of tin about six inches long and two and three quarter inches wide and deep, which was nailed to a wooden handle.

MINIATURE ARTILLERY

Hand-artillery was very effective as far as it went, but it had its limitations. Grenades could not be made heavier than two pounds in weight if they were to be thrown by hand; in fact, most of them were much lighter than that. If they were fired from a rifle, the range was increased but the missile could not be made very much heavier. TNT is a very powerful explosive, but there is not room for much of it in a grenade the size of a large lemon. Trench fighting was a duel between forts, and while the hand-artillery provided a means of attacking the defenders of a fort, it made no impression on the walls of the fort. It corresponded to shrapnel fire on a miniature scale, and something corresponding to high-explosive fire on a small scale was necessary if the opposing fortifications were to be destroyed. To meet this problem, men cast their thoughts back to the primitive artillery of the Romans, who used to hurl great rocks at the enemy with catapults. And the trench fighters actually rigged up catapults with which they hurled heavy bombs at the enemy lines. All sorts of ingenious catapults were built, some modeled after the old Roman machines. In some of these stout timbers were used as springs, in others there were powerful coil springs. It was not necessary to cast the bombs far. For distant work the regular artillery could be used. What was needed was a short-distance gun for heavy missiles and that is what the catapult was.

But the work of the catapult was not really satisfactory. The machine was clumsy; it occupied too much space, and it could not be aimed very accurately. It soon gave way to a more modern apparatus, fashioned after the old smooth-bore mortars. This was a miniature mortar, short and wide-mouthed. A rifled barrel was not required, because, since the missile was not to be hurled far, it was not necessary to set it spinning by means of rifling so as to hold it head-on to the wind.

GIANT PEA-SHOOTERS

Better aim was secured when a longer-barreled trench mortar came to be used. In the trench, weight was an important item. There was no room in which to handle heavy guns, and the mortar had to be portable so that it could be carried forward by the infantry in a charge. As the walls of a light barrel might be burst by the shock of exploding powder, compressed air was used instead. The shell was virtually blown out of the gun in the same way that a boy blows missiles out of a pea-shooter. That the shell might be kept from tumbling, it was fitted with vanes at the rear. These acted like the feathers of an arrow to hold the missile head-on to its course.

The French in particular used this type of mortar and the air-pump was used to compress the air that propelled the shell or aËrial torpedo, or else the propelling charge was taken from a compressed-air tank. Carbon-dioxide, the gas used in soda-water, is commonly stored in tanks under high pressure and this gas was sometimes used in place of compressed air. When the gas in the tank was exhausted the latter could be recharged with air by using a hand-pump. Two or three hundred strokes of the pump would give a pressure of one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty pounds per inch, and would supply enough air to discharge a number of shell. The air was let into the barrel of the mortar in a single puff sufficient to launch the shell; then the tank was cut off at once, so that the air it contained would not escape and go to waste.

THE STOKES MORTAR

However, the most useful trench mortar developed during the war was invented by Wilfred Stokes, a British inventor. In this a comparatively slow-acting powder was used to propel the missile, and so a thin-walled barrel could be used. The light Stokes mortar can easily be carried over the shoulder by one man. It has two legs and the barrel itself serves as a third leg, and the mortar stands like a tripod. The two legs are adjustable, so that the barrel can be inclined to any desired angle. It took but a moment to set up the mortar for action in a trench or shell-hole.

Curiously enough, there is no breech-block, trigger or fire-hole in this mortar. It is fired merely by the dropping of the missile into the mouth of the barrel. The shell carries its own propelling charge, as shown in Fig.9. This is in the form of rings, A, which are fitted on a stem, B. At the end of the stem are a detonating cap and a cartridge, to ignite the propellant, A. At the bottom of the mortar barrel, there is a steel point, E, known as the "anvil." When the shell is dropped into the mortar, the cap strikes the anvil, exploding the cartridge and touching off the propelling charge, A. The gases formed by the burning charge hurl the shell out of the barrel to a distance of several hundred yards. The first Stokes mortar was made to fire a 3-inch shell, but the mortar grew in size until it could hurl shell of 6-inch and even 8½-inch size. Of course, the larger mortars had to have a very substantial base. They were not so readily portable as the smaller ones and they could not be carried by one man; but compared with ordinary artillery of the same bore they were immeasurably lighter and could be brought to advanced positions and set up in a very short time. The larger shell have tail-vanes, as shown in Fig.10, to keep them from tumbling when in flight.