101 Things I Learned From 'Passchendaele'

A hand grenade is used in the beginning to destroy a mg nest in the church. Looked quite reliable to me. The Germans had of course their stick grenades since 1915.

"White in their eyes" was from the previous centuries - back then guns were not accurate and fired in volleys even at enemies marching in formation, people mostly died by bayonet (just like most casualties in the modern wars now are from mortars and mines, not by gunshots). But the WWI Lee-Enfield and Mauser rifles were VERY accurate (decades later later used as sniper rifles, just like the US Springfield and Russian Mosin-Nagant rifles from the same era). More accurate than the assault rifles now.

"Hand grenades hadn't been invented. The hand thrown 'bombs' were very unrealiable and unpopular, and the wicks were hard to light when it was wet/raining."

Handgrenades hadn't been invented? They used 'granado' types? This movie wasn't set in the 17th century you know.

They most definitely had hand grenades, rifle grenades, trench mortars, etc. and they used the buggers A LOT too.

"So that you could guarentee you would hit the target. As in, don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes."

You really seem to believe this movie is set in the 17th century and they're all standing about with firelocks, charging till they're 20 yards apart so they can blaze away while seeing 'the whites of their eyes'.

You may want to check why RIFLES were so darn deadly and how they changed the face of warfare, particularly from the mid/late 19th century onwards.

Epic fail.

"It is not enough to like a film. You must like it for the right reasons."
- Pierre Rissient

Hand grenades hadn't been invented. The hand thrown 'bombs' were very unrealiable and unpopular, and the wicks were hard to light when it was wet/raining.

The No.36 Grenade, also called the Mills Bomb, used at Passchendaele was the standard British Commonwealth hand grenade until the 1970's. They were very similar to the American pineapple grenades we see most often in film. They did call them "bombs" during the Great War as the Grenadier Guards objected to other regiments using their terminology.

So that you could guarentee you would hit the target.

Great War soldiers would engage with rifle fire at ranges up to three or four hundred meters, depending on the tactical situation. Rifle sights were graduated to 1600 yards, nearly a kilometer and a half, and range practices at six hundred yards were part of the training program

Flat trajactory bullits didn't appear until the Vietnam war with the 5.56mm-S77 rounds, and the more modern 5.56mm-S109 rounds.

5.56 rounds have no flatter a trajectory than 0.303 inch rounds. The usual practice with both modern C7 rifles and Great War Lee-Enfields was to set the sights at 200 meters/yards as the battle sight. This is normally good to about four hundred meters.

"So that you could guarentee you would hit the target. As in, don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes."


The "whites of their eyes" bit was from the Battle of Bunker Hill, which was in the American Revolution. I think weaponry had advanced quite a bit in the years between the two battles.