""Bomber" title" Topic

I was just pointing out to someone that "bomber" was the word used by the British in WW1 to describe someone armed with grenades rather than using "grenadier".

I was wondering if the French and Germans used a word similar to "bomber" to describe their grenade-armed troops rather than using a variant of "grenadier"?

OT: BTW, I looked to crosspost this on the German Wargaming Board but the crosspost pulldown menu didn't have any of the national boards listed as a selection. Would you mind crossposting this to the German board, Bill?

I doubt that the French or Germans had the same institutional social difficulties over nomenclature; it was the Grenadier Guards who insisted that the word "Grenadier" shoul only be used to a member of that regiment.

All the best,

John.

The word bombaš was used in Serbian both in the First and the Second world war

Grenadiers.

Interesting picture and texts on this page:
link
The name "grenadiers d'élite" was sometimes given to trench raiders groups, to avoid giving them officially some unfamous name such as "nettoyeurs de tranchée" which wouldn't have sounded so glorious.

It was a very good name though, describing the process of clearing up captured positions. The English term was mopper-upper, not as eloquent IMHO.

Robert

Merci, Patrice.

The French army likes the name "grenadier" because it sounds napoleonic. Modern French army infantry privates are still called "grenadiers-voltigeurs" which probably means they have inherited from both the grenadiers and the voltigeurs of the old days!

The names of the various members of a French WW1 grenadier squad are provided here:

link

Robert

That's a very good link too, Robert. I've just bookmarked it.

Very interesting! I did not know all this.

Very interesting stuff on the French; anyone have a similar on-line info source for British/Imperial forces?