A Rifleman Went to War

have been harping all throughout this book on the necessity of having a “great big” aperture in the rear sight, if using the iron sights, or a wide field of view with the ’scope. The observer (or your own observation) describes the “target” with reference to some conspicuous nearby object, and unless the fixer can see this object and a considerable amount of the surrounding territory, he will probably be unable to locate the said target at all when he looks through the sights. Enemy men do not expose themselves any more than is absolutely necessary when within easy sniping range. Not after a few of them have been bumped off, anyway. Whenever, as was the case with us when we first commenced our sniping campaign, they have not been shot at, they will probably be very careless, but it doesn’t take them very long to learn to keep well under cover. When we first started sniping and for several weeks afterwards, we had many good, open shots every day, but before I quit, about two months later, we had many days when we never saw hide nor hair of a German. When we did get a chance it was usually just at a bit of one of the little round caps which blended into the surrounding scenery so closely as to be well-nigh invisible. Often I have fired simply by noting, through the big spotting ’scope or my binoculars, certain conspicuous objects near the actual target and “holding off” with reference to them — not actually seeing the “bull’s-eye” at all through the sights — and sometimes was successful in hitting the right spot.

After all is said and done — that is another fine sounding phrase, or maybe it’s a song, I don’t remember which — there remains just one great big handicap to this business of turning out individual riflemen qualified to use all these new and intricate rifle telescopes and mountings, to estimate ranges, to build invisible sniping posts, to clean out enemy machine-gun nests and to otherwise allay, abate and “bump off” the enemy — there is still one great difficulty that is mighty hard to get around and I have long wondered what can be done about it.

The man who has been trained to do all these things turns out to be an invaluable sort of a chap to have around in the company; far, far better than the hundreds of others whom we have hurriedly thrown together in an attempt to form what will be our next wartime American Army. He stands out amongst the rest, being one of the few who knows what to do himself and also knows how to teach that to the others. That’s the rub of it right there. Result? These trained riflemen will seldom be permitted to keep on using that rifle, but will be promoted or commissioned and put in charge of more important work or details. For it is an acknowledged fact that the individual who has the brains and ability to learn to do what is required of the modern, individual rifleman is promptly going to be put where that ability is of supposedly more value — in some post of command.

What can be done about it? Well, the only thing I can see to do is to train and develop so damn many of these chaps that there just ain’t commissions enough to go around for all of them. Then we may be able to keep a few of them in the ranks — and using that rifle. Not that it is going to work any harm though, to have all that shooting ability and knowledge in the higher ranks — far from it.

Say — here is a thought. In these days of modern warfare we generally find opposing armies about evenly matched in numbers — at least amongst those units which come in actual contact in the field. Have you ever figured out what would happen if in our next war we can put an American Army in the field with its rifle users all sufficiently trained so they can each hit and kill one enemy soldier. Just ONE apiece now. THINK THAT OVER.

Chapter 18. The Emma Gees (Machine Guns)

UP TO the time of the outbreak of the World War the machine gun had received scant consideration — strange though it may seem in view of the fact that weapons of this character had been in use for some forty or fifty years. I do not know just when the first mitrailleuse was tried out, but I do know that Doctor Gatling had perfected his gun by the time I was old enough to notice such things, sometime in the early ’80’s, and that it had been used very effectively during the Spanish-American and the South- African wars.

For some reason or other, whoever wrote the first textbook on the subject injected the statement that: “Machine Guns are Weapons of Opportunity.” Just what he meant by that, I do not pretend to know, but the phrase seemed to suit other subsequent authors of such text-books; and the readers thereof, taking their cue from the book, probably figured that these guns were just some kind of a side-issue, anyway, hardly to be taken into serious consideration when it came to a real fight between soldiers — on horse or on foot.

But not so with our Cousin Heinie. He “catchem plenty savvy” on this M.G. business and when Germany went into this last big war she had an adequate number of better machine guns than any of the allied forces were able to devise and build during the whole four years of the conflict. Now, this may raise a howl from someone or other, but there are facts to back up that statement. We did not have, at any stage of the game, as many nor as good machine guns as had the Germans. By good guns, I wish it to be understood that I include the mountings as well as the shooting part of the guns. Those thoroughgoing Germans had figured out — sometime before 1914 — a lot of things that we never did catch up with. Of course we beat them; but it was not because we had better equipment — not by a long ways and then a long way more.

I don’t know such a lot about all the various types of machine guns used during the war but I do know plenty about some of them. We (my outfit) went in with Colt guns — with the long-legged tripods and everything. Well, of course, the first thing we did was to saw off the legs of the tripods and bring them down to something like a decent level. Then, one of our mechanical geniuses devised a gadget by which the operator of the gun could flip the lever without reaching all the way around in front. Later on we had the Vickers-Maxim, with a much better mount, but never have I seen any machine gun that is as safe for shooting over the heads of advancing infantry as the Colt. In other words, it has less dispersion, vertically, than any gun I have seen — and that goes right down to this day of grace in 1932. That old Colt sure would hold elevations. I have often shot and seen fired by others bursts of as many as ten shots, at the thousand-yard target, where not a single bullet struck outside the limits of the bull’s-eye.

And, by the way, lest I forget it, there is another good argument for the Colt gun, and that is that it is air cooled. Say what you want to, the business of getting water where there ain’t any and keeping that old condenser and its hose and everything right with you and ready to hook up, when you are crawling through all the litter of a battlefield, is not so easy. And how that water does boil away! In spite of the most careful use of the condenser, it evaporates at a rapid rate and then the problem is how to replenish it. Even though the action may be literally on the bank of a river it may be an impossible task to go the few feet and back; and, often, on the soggy, rain- drenched fields of Flanders, where everything was simply soaked, not enough real water could be procured to fill the jacket. More than a few times the members of the gun crew have been called upon to “make water,” and there is a sort of grim humor in the fact that on such occasions few, if any, could produce the goods: no, not a drop. Another psychological or, possibly pathological, problem.

The German guns of the heavier type — I believe they were of the Maxim-Nordenfeldt persuasion — had mounts which included both elevating and traversing arcs, marked in degrees and minutes of angle. They also had spirit levels embedded in the frame, exactly as you will find on any surveyor’s transit. In addition, they had substantial shields which afforded considerable protection to the gunners and still more to the gun itself. Our mounts, even the Mark IV, which was the latest of which I have personal knowledge, lacked all these refinements and we had to make all our corrections by using a simple compass, held in the hand and with a clinometer or quadrant such as was used by the artillery. As to protection for the gun or gunners, there was none whatever.

A single stray bullet could — and often did — put the gunner out of action, but, of course, gunners, like lieutenants, are “expendable,” so that was not so serious, but if that bullet happened to hit anywhere in the breech mechanism of the gun, it was just too bad. Even if it only pierced the water jacket it would effectually put the gun out of action in a short time. With the German guns, it was impossible for a shot coming from the front to strike any part of the gun excepting a few inches of the muzzle. The only way to abate them by rifle fire was to gain a position on the flank or in their rear.

The Lewis gun is rated, in the United States Army, as a “Light Machine Gun” and I can offer no objection to that designation. We considered them — and called them — automatic rifles, but I am not inclined to quarrel with anyone who prefers to include them in the class of machine guns, proper. They are wonderfully effective weapons, whatever you call them, and we were mighty glad to get them for use with the advancing troops. This left the heavier types — the real machine guns — to the work of directing overhead and indirect fire on the lines of enemy communications while the men with the Lewis guns could advance with the infantry.

The only French machine guns I have ever seen were of the Hotchkiss type — chaut-