WWI: Who Threw the Hand Grenade?

Grenades, especially hand grenades, are devices of war that most of us are familiar with, although mostly associated with World War II, in film and television, rather than World War I, also known as the Great War, World War, or the War to End All Wars. It was with World War I that great advances were made in the art of mutilating human beings.

My great uncle, Russell Worth Silverthorn, was the victim of a grenade in France on August 27, 1918. According to a medic, who came upon my uncle in a Fismette cellar, Russell and his fellow soldiers had taken refuge there, and were sitting ducks when the Germans threw a hand grenade through the door. The medic said that body parts were strewn throughout the cellar, and my uncle was the only one left alive. He wouldn’t be for long, though, due to a massive wound in his abdomen.

I had no reason to doubt this account until just recently, when the villages of Fisme and Fismette celebrated the one-hundredth anniversary of the battle that freed them from the Germans, thanks to the Americans. On September 15, 2018, re-enactors marched in a parade along with dignitaries from France and America. A 12-minute film about the battle was shown, and this is where the question of who threw the hand grenade comes in.

The film depicts the Americans throwing hand grenades in cellars where they believed the Germans were hiding out. What if they mistakenly did so into the cellar where my uncle and his fellow soldiers were taking respite from the fighting? I doubt that I’ll ever know, but it certainly makes me wonder.