A French WWI Model 1914 Inert Ball Grenade in good to very good condition. The French WWI 1914 ball grenade was an early French hand grenade used during the opening years of World War I. Often referred to as a spherical or ball-type grenade, it reflected older grenade designs that predated the more advanced fragmentation grenades later used in trench warfare. These grenades were typically made with a round cast-metal body and were intended to produce fragmentation upon detonation. As the war developed into trench warfare, France rapidly expanded and improved its grenade designs, eventually introducing more effective models such as the French F1 grenade in 1915. The 1914 ball grenade remains an interesting early-war piece, representing the transition from older 19th-century grenade concepts to the modern fragmentation grenades that became standard throughout WWI.