So Drifter's comment got me curious, and a quick Wikipedia search would indicate the weapons handed to the soldiers in this chapter were real, a type of anti-tank grenade called a "lunge mine." The fact that they killed the user along with the target seems to have been a feature, not a bug. In exchange, though, it had one of the highest penetration rates of any of the anti-tank grenades used during the war, about double that of other weapons of the same type.
Link for those interested:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunge_mine