Would German troops have carried grenades when travelling on a train? Seems awfully risky
My understanding is no, German troops would not have been likely to carry grenades when traveling on a train. At least not issued to individual soldiers … it may well have been common for grenades to travel with the soldiers as available munitions, but they would likely have been in crates rather than issued out to individuals.
At least that is my impression.
As to risky? Maybe risky in terms of losing valued munitions. But not particularly risky in terms of a dangerous accidental discharge, I would guess.
The German M39 hand grenade (as correctly pictures -- props to the guys who set this up for mostly using the FJ's preferred grenade) used the same fusing mechanism as the Heer's more ubiquitous "potato-masher" -- you had to unscrew a cap and pull a cord to initiate the fuse. This was a time-consuming two-handed job (rather than the simple pull-ring of US and British grenades), making it more awkward in combat but less likely to happen accidentally by dropping or bumping, etc.
I only see one, or perhaps two, potato-mashers in evidence. The guys carrying them do not appear to be FJs, so perhaps these are the garrison troops at the destination railyard. But the most obvious guy with a potato-masher is clearly an officer. This seems even more unlikely to me, unless he was carrying it as an affectation to show off his combat creds or some such. When you carried a potato mashers tucked into the belt it was hard to sit down, bend over, or quickly go prone, and in the back of the jack-boots they made it hard to walk. There really was no way to carry them comfortably for any period of time.
But stranger things have happened in wartime. So yeah, maybe the emotional comfort they got from having some pocket-artillery was greater than the physical discomfort of carrying it.
Maybe expecting Partisan attacks?
Seems unlikely to me. If they were expecting Partisan attacks on the train, I would have thought they would have placed the troops in something other than a wood-sided open-topped car. There were armored troop-carrier train cars available for high-risk routes. In cases where such train cars were not available, German troops seem to have tended to re-enforce the sides with sand-bags. Seems they didn't want to get shot to pieces before they could bring their guns to bear. Ooh, such un-cooperative targets!
Also, when there was considered to be some risk of partisan attacks trains tended to push at least one or two cars in front of the locomotive. This was not a secret -- it's pretty clear from many wartime pics. I don't see any evidence of that in this scene, and it does appear these guys do their research. So I doubt this was the back-story.
I would attribute the grenades to nothing more than showing off. They have the kit, and they wanted to put it on display.
Of course I could be wrong, both in my understanding of SOP and in my interpretation of the intent of these guys. But that's how I would interpret the scene.
-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)
