Didn’t see the movie, but those might have been mortar rounds.
On a long ago tour of Fort Ticonderoga, I learned about the mortars of two centuries ago. Tiny little cannon that shot a round bomb with a lit fuse timed to explode at about the time of impact.
Occasionally the mortar would misfire, leaving the commanding officer to make a split-second choice among the soldiers who were unpopular with the rest of the men to “volunteer” to reach into the mouth of the mortar with gloved hand to try and extinguish the fuse…
There was a jagged half of a mortar barrel in the yard of the fort, and we were told the other half was at the bottom of the lake about a mile distant.
Touch a an alum-based styptic pencil to the mucous membrane of your mouth, and you will see why it has the reputation of shrinking heads. The sensation is one of puckering of the lips, which is exaggerated by the cartoons into shrinking the whole head.
The bombs depicted in M&C were hand grenades. They did look just like the cartoon bombs right down to the fuze sticking out of the top. But they were baseball or tennis ball sized.
Actually, you’re reference may still be valid. Mortar bombs looked just like the hand grenades, but usually bigger. Sometimes much bigger. *Last of the Mohicans * showed a large siege mortar being loaded and fired and the bomb had to be carried by two men using a lifting sling.
