Very rare to find British Battye improvised hand grenade with reproduction internal section and fuse nice solid relic condition with black paintwork recovered from the Somme battlefield of 1916-1918.

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This is a nice and very rare find from the battlefield which is British Battye grenade nice condition relic only used in 1915 on a large scale but with only limited use in 1916  before withdrawn from service completely.This is the outer casing only which is empty and inert but has very nice reproduction internal section and fuse wire attached the metal case has no holes only some light surface rust and pitting and still retains some of  what i think is the original black paintwork finnish but could be post war and is perfect for display or any collection. The grenade which was recovered on The Somme battlefield famous in 1916 this would have been used in the static trench warfare of 1915 before the battle mostly likely but possibly used during the offensive .This grenade comes with A5 laminated information card.

The Battle of The Somme took place between 1 July and 18 November 1916 on both sides of the River Somme in France. The battle was one of the largest of World War I, in which more than 1,000,000 men were wounded or killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles in human history.

Just like most of the fighting nations armies, Great Britain Army had to compensate the lack of reglementary grenades at the beginning of the war by a parallel production of improvised weapons. The Battye grenade was born in 1915 and was an idea of a major named Battye, built on the basis of a simple prefragmented cylinder made in Bethune (France) by the thousands. The use of improvised grenades such as this one was forbidden at the end of 1915 in the British Army, because of too numerous accidents but still saw some use in emergencies in 1916.