Podcasts · WW1: Not So Quiet On The Western Front!

Episode 111: How Grenades Took Over the Trenches in WW1

· 57 min · Episode 111

Episode Episode 111: How Grenades Took Over the Trenches in WW1

0:00 57:17

In the early months of the Great War, a hand grenade was almost an anachronism — a relic of fortress warfare associated with seventeenth-century “grenadiers” rather than modern industrial armies. And yet, by 1918, it had become one of the most important and feared weapons on the Western Front.

This episode is the story of that transformation. From improvised “jam tins” and crude bombs to engineered patterns like the Mills bomb and the German Potato Masher stick grenade we’ll follow the technology, the tactics, and the hard, dangerous lessons learned in close combat.

We apologise for the quality of Dan's Audio in this episode!

Join us in 2026: https://battleguide.co.uk/nsq-tour-2026

Join Our Community: https://not-so-quiet.com/

Use our code: Dugout and get one month free as a Captain.

Support via Paypal: https://battleguide.co.uk/nsq-paypal

Do you like our podcast?

Then please leave us a review, it helps us a lot!

E-Mail: nsq@battleguide.co.uk

Battle Guide YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@BattleGuideVT

Our WW2 Podcast: https://battleguide.co.uk/bsow

If you want to keep your finger on the pulse of what the team at Battle Guide have been getting up to, why not sign up to our monthly newsletter: https://battleguide.co.uk/newsletter

Twitter:

@historian1914

@DanHillHistory

@BattleguideVT

Credits:

- Host: Dr. Spencer Jones & Dan Hill

- Production: Linus Klaßen

- Editing: Hunter Christensen

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them. Explicit shows are for adult profiles only, and children’s profiles hear only children’s shows. More about this list.