It was the morning of the Fourth of July and kids were lighting smoke bombs, sulfurous coils of red and green, the colors dense and bright like concentrated dye blooming through water.
1916, Patrick MacGill, chapter 3, in The Great Push: An Episode of the Great War, London: Herbert Jenkins, page 48:
Smoke bombs would be used. The thick fumes resulting from their explosion between the lines would cover our advance.
1918, Willis J. Abbot, chapter 9, in Aircraft and Submarines: The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day Uses of War’s Newest Weapons, New York: Putnam:
Over every German battery would soar the observation plane indicating by tinsel or smoke bombs the location of the guns […]
The agent gave them the two camera-cases you saw. […] He told them that the blue case contained a very powerful smoke-bomb. The red case was the explosive. As one of them threw the red case, the other was to press a switch on the blue case and they would escape under cover of the smoke.