18th and 19th Centuries
Grenadier units were already perceived as elite at that time, and received various privileges. For example, in many armies, the privilege of wearing a grenadier was wearing a mustache while the rest of the servicemen were shaved smoothly. In order to achieve uniformity, grenadiers with a light mustache were often forced to paint them black, and those who did not have a mustache would stick or paint them. The rest of the uniform of the grenadiers more or less corresponded to the uniform of other infantry units. In addition tall military personnel often turned out to be more enduring, the grenadiers began to specifically select for height, setting the lower bar to be at least 170 centimeters, and in many armies higher. Frederick of Prussia, who had a manic love for the army in general and for the grenadiers in particular, recruited tall and strong people across Europe, bringing the lower limit of growth to almost 190 centimeters.
In the second quarter of the eighteenth century, they returned to the practice of sheathing grenadiers with bear fur. But the angular shape of the caps was preserved.
Soldiers who were enrolled in the guards of the Directory, were selected very carefully. All of them were cavalrymen serving in the royal army, with impeccable morals and growing from 178 to 184 cm. Bonaparte, becoming the First Consul, immediately included this regiment in his consular guard, in whose ranks they took part in the battle of Marengo.
In 1804, this selective regiment, under the command of General Order, won first place among the regiments of the Imperial Guard.
Subsequently, the tactics of warfare changed, the use of grenades decreased, and the grenadiers survived only as units made up of selected soldiers. The French grenadiers also glorified their name in the era of Napoleon. They were armed with rifles with bayonets and sabers. They wore a shako, uniform, shoes and leggings.
20th Century
With the positional warfare established in the theaters of the First World War, the warring parties came to the conclusion that it was necessary to change the tactics of conducting an offensive battle, since the usual methods of conducting offensive operations led to thousands of losses in the capture of several hundred meters of the enemy’s deeply echeloned line of defense. In Germany, a little earlier, the Assault Battalion (World War I), and in 1916, by the initiative from below, special selective units were born in the Russian and Austrian armies, designed to break through the enemy’s defense in the trench warfare, and the main skill of which would be to throw enemy grenades into narrow enemy trenches.
From the end of 1915, “assault platoons ” (“grenadier platoons”), to which the sappers instructors were attached, appeared in all the infantry and grenadier regiments of the Russian army. The platoon consisted of one officer, four non-commissioned officers, 48 lower ranks. The grenadiers were armed and equipped with “Adrian’s helmets” , carbines (officers with revolvers), daggers — bebuts, 7–8 grenades, which were worn in special canvas covers worn crosswise over the shoulder, with steel shields. Each platoon was supposed to have two bombs.
Grenadier units were used for close combat in trench warfare. The absence of heavy weapons in small subunits and the realities of the fighting led to the replacement of the platoon composition.
In Nazi Germany , beginning in 1942, the motorized divisions of the Wehrmacht and the SS troops, on Hitler’s personal order, became known as grenadier divisions more precisely, panzergrenadieri, and their soldiers, respectively, panzergrenadiers. The same name applied to motorized infantry as part of tank regiments. In this case, the motorized infantry as a whole wore a salad edging, and the motorized infantry of the tank regiments was white.
In the Armed Forces of the USSR , during the Great Patriotic War, from November 17, 1941 to January 16, 1942, the 1st Grenadier Brigade existed – it was a unique formation for the Red Army.
China used Dadao Dui troops against the Japanese, the tactics of which were that, after throwing grenades at the enemy, they engaged in close combat using a two-handed melee weapon – Dadao.