Poem ~ Grenade Fashions - Monday, 4 January 1915

Source: File: German soldiers in a trench holding hand grenades during World War I.jpg, 2015. From 'The Illustrated War News', published in 1915. 4 January 1915. [online] Available at:<http://www.magnoliabox.com/art/332103/german-soldiers-in-a-trench-holding-hand-grenades-during-world >[Accessed:4 January 2015].

With opening stages of a European war,

The use of grenades was nothing new -

For field operations - as in the occupation

Name of 'Grenadiers' – less than thirty
Years before, drills of grenade throwing

Was first stopped then abandoned.  

During the Balkan War the practice

Was revived, when the Komitadji rebel

Bands frequently used the weaponry -

In Sieges, the usage of hand grenade,

Was still employed as a combat weapon. 

These hand missiles were applied by

the thousands at Port Arthur, between

Japanese and Russians – then Germany

Employed a sealed pattern from pre war

Arsenals, with others made in the field. 

The factory made pattern, described

As being a cast iron globe of 1 ½ pounds,

Four inches diameter – A fully loaded 

Body filled with powder, then exploded

By slow burning mix - sparked by friction

Tube, just as the grenade is thrown.

A surface of deep grooves in explosive

Force breaks metal into flying fragments.

Of two improvised sorts one has shape

Of a lady’s hand mirror, a wooden handle

Being wired with explosives, to be ignited

With detonator and fuse and prompted

By percussion lighter just before thrown. 

Trench mortars are smaller items -

Thin metal cylinders of 4 to 18 pounds

With charges of scrap iron and high

Explosives – these enemy arms,

Are so designed to hurt and maim; 

Of course, allies effectively reply in kind.

by Jamie Mann.

Anon.,1915. Fighting in Flanders – Scenes and Incidents of the Trenches War – Hand Grenades. The Daily Telegraph, [online] 4 Jan. p.7. Col.2. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ww1-archive/11322299/Daily-Telegraph-January-4-1915.html [Accessed: 4 January  2015].

Mann, J., 2014. 100 years Ago - Poems by Jamie Mann. [letter] (Personal communication, 4 January  2015). 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ww1-archive/11322299/Daily-Telegraph-January-4-1915.html

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