The Book of the Machine Gun - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1917 Excerpt: ... In the various opinions on machine-gun tactics which are quoted or summarized in the preceding chapter, it is evident that the writers had in view the defensive attack of an enemy's position in pitched battles fought in the open. In the present war we have been brought face to face with a state of things which is not really new in its essential features, but is new in the extent of ground over which a special condition has prevailed and the length of time during which this condition has dominated the operations, especially on the Western front. Instead of battles in the open and a war of movement and manoeuvre, we have what are virtually prolonged siege operations between armies entrenched on prolonged fronts and close up to each other. We have said it is not new, because siege warfare is as old as war itself, and, further, the fight for entrenched positions with both sides dug into the ground has been a feature of many recent wars, beginning with the Wilderness campaigns in the American Civil War. The war of entrenchments has played a part in ever' campaign since Plevna. The battles of Liao-yang and Mukden in the Russo-Japanese War were prolonged entrenchment fights. But in this war the entrenched fronts in the Western sphere of operations are of a length for which there is no precedent in any previous war, and the condition of stalemate has lasted for months. Manoeuvre Battles Those who are training our machine gunners have, therefore, had their attention riveted on the question of their employment in this prolonged entrenchment fighting---a very different business from their use in manoeuvre battles, and one hardly contemplated by early writers on the subject. In conversations with machine-gun instructors, one finds indeed a tendency to leave entirely as...

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