A Rifleman Went to War

on the spot — or replace some of the small but essential parts that went to make up the mechanism of the gun.

We utilized parts of cream separators, sewing machines, baby carriages, bicycles and parts of farm machinery found abandoned and lying around those Belgian farms. A bit of work with hacksaw and file and there was our spare part; the members of the gun crew put in many long hours filing out those parts which experience had taught would likely break, and it soon became common belief that we could make any part of a machine gun except the barrel. The French had a great many military bicycles in their organization and these were fitted with a rifle carrier. There was a certain bolt on this carrier which was an exact duplicate of an important part of our guns, so whenever we found one those old broken bicycles which had been abandoned, we would take the time to remove this bolt and carry it along for emergencies. I remember a few bolts which were taken out of bicycles not broken, also.

All automatically operated firearms are naturally very delicately balanced mechanisms, whether gas or recoil operated. The ammunition used must give just the proper power to overcome the normal friction of the working parts, eject the empty cartridge case, reload the chamber properly, fire it and continue the cycle as long as the trigger is kept pressed. Ammunition which does not give the proper pressures, or cartridges which through faulty manufacture cause undue friction either in being seated or ejected, will soon cause a “jam.” Also, ammunition which develops too much pressure or creates too little friction will cause breakages on account of the excess jar and hammering.

Hence we soon learned to test out all ammunition and find just how it was going to work before anything important was pulled off, either by ourselves or by the Germans. We would load up a few belts of a certain lot of ammunition and fire them at comparatively unimportant targets such as sweeping the top of the German trenches at morning stand-to, or a short burst in strafing work at night. This soon gave us the number of that particular batch of cartridges and if they were good we promptly took the necessary steps to obtain a reserve supply of that ammunition and store it away for use during the prolonged firing of a drive against us, or for covering fire over our own troops during an advance.

No, I’ll tell you fellows: we just had to make up this game as we went along. It was not easy either. Many better men than I am, spent their lives in trying to teach the rest of us how to do it. I wish I could remember the names of some of those men of the Twentieth Canadian Battalion Machine Gun Section; you know they alternated with us — relieving one another — all through that winter of 1915-16. The machine guns always went in ahead of their infantry. Well, anyway; we “Emma-Gees,” as they called all the machine gunners in the British service, went in and learned the game in the only way any game can properly be learned — by playing it.

During the war we used all kinds of ammunition. That loaded in England and (most of it) in Canada, was loaded with cordite, but most of the product of the factories in the United States used one or the other of the nitro- cellulose or pyro-cellulose powders manufactured by the duPont Company. Of course they were all designed to give the required initial velocity of 2440 f.s. and I suppose they actually did approximate that standard, but we found a vast difference when it came to machine-gun work where we were required to fire over the heads of our own troops.

Naturally we blamed the ammunition for all our troubles but, since I have had time to think about it, I am inclined to believe that part, at least, of the trouble, was due to worn-out barrels.

We went in with two barrels for each gun and so long as we were able to change barrels after each two belts (500 rounds) and thoroughly clean the used barrel, we had no difficulty in holding elevations within the limits required for safety, but there were times when this changing was impossible and many thousands of rounds would be fired through the one barrel without cleaning. Now, it seems to be pretty generally believed by civilians — and some soldiers, too — that a machine gun just shoots and shoots and shoots, that all the gunner does is to squeeze on the trigger and run out belt after belt, without any intermission. Of course this is all wrong. The really efficient machine gunner will fire short bursts with corresponding pauses between. On rare occasions, when the action becomes hot and the enemy is advancing in overwhelming numbers, he may have to simply “pour it into them,” but when he does he knows full well that he is sacrificing his gun.

From time to time we received new barrels and the old ones were sent back to “Ordnance” where I suppose they were tested or, perhaps, just calibrated, to see how badly they really were worn. We tried always to have at least one good one for use in our strafing work where accuracy at long range was essential.

There is one phase of machine-gun work which I have never seen mentioned in print and that is wire-cutting. When a raid was contemplated or even a minor attack on a limited bit of front, it was customary to have certain men delegated to go out ahead and cut lanes through the enemy wire. The British even had several varieties of gadgets which fitted on the muzzle of the rifle for wire-cutting purposes. One was something like the extended pruning shears which gardeners use, but this was not strong enough for some of the heavier wires. Another had two “horns” which brought the wire directly across the muzzle of the rifle where a shot would sever it. But where a general advance was in preparation and it was desirable to keep some semblance of a line, it was necessary to cut up, roll up or blow up as much as possible of the entanglement.

For a long time this work was done by the artillery — mostly light, field batteries. Given time they could certainly make a mess of things and would usually flatten out the barricades so that men could work their way through. Then some bright “Emma Gee” discovered that bullets would cut wire, and, from that time on, it was one of the functions of the machine gunners to do this work. By mobilizing a group of guns — anywhere from four to a dozen, they could rip lanes through any barbed-wire defense in a few hours.

We Canadians of the Second Division were originally equipped with Colt guns. We afterwards — at various times — learned to use others, all of the Maxim persuasion. The machine gunner’s business, so far as I learned it, was either to keep the infantry out of trouble, or get ’em out of it after they had over-estimated their own ability.

At the time of the beginning of the war, in the British as well as in the United States Army, the machine gun had been considered — and so described in their textbooks — as a “weapon of opportunity:” something to fall back on or to use when conditions appeared to be favourable. Evidently they did not look for the opportunity to occur very often, because each regiment had but two machine guns issued them. In visiting various army posts and from conversations with officers of the regular establishment during the years prior to 1914, I got the idea, and I think it was well founded, that the machine-gun section was a place to send undesirable individuals from the various companies or troops — just a convenient dumping ground for all the no-account soldiers and bums who did not seem to fit into the spick and span ranks of the regular units.

I had occasion to observe the same feeling during my training period with the Canadians.

I suppose my own gang, in the Emma Gee Section of the Twenty-first, harbored more of the happy-go-lucky and devil-may-care individuals than all the rest of the battalion. Some of them were transferred to us because their company commanders had become tired of having to gloss over their insubordinate and utterly undisciplined actions; but many others had voluntarily — even eagerly — sought this service because it offered the best chance for more excitement than the monotonous routine of the infantry companies. However that may be, it is just such a mixture of adventurous spirits, disdaining personal danger and ever on the lookout for a chance to stir up a scrap, that makes a good and efficient machine-gun organization. Hard swearing, hard fighting and, yes, on occasion, hard drinking men; it is no place whatever for the sissy or the mollycoddle.

Lest some of my readers may infer, from the above, that the machine-gun men were just naturally a depraved and unregenerate lot, I hasten to deny any such allegation. Among them were to be found many of the highest type of “gentlemen and scholars” — men of education and refinement, who harbored, under the surface, an intense and burning desire for high adventure. Others, perhaps, denied even the most elementary schooling, were possessed with the same un-definable urge for the excitement of primitive combat. A few months of association under the stress of actual warfare and it was difficult for an observer to detect any material difference. All had been fused into a perfect, synchronized unit to which might well be applied the slogan: “one for all and all for one.” Tough? Yes, indeed; I’ll say they were tough, but, by the same token, they were not mean or “ornery.” Their toughness was of the case-hardened nature which is absolutely necessary if men are long to endure the frightful horrors and desperate, relentless ordeal of furious life and sudden death which is their daily portion. Hard indeed, on the surface, but underneath this artificial veneer was hidden a generous store of the milk of human kindness. The Oxford graduate and the homeless hobo met on common ground, where the only thing that counted was innate courage and honest friendship.