The Emma Gees

[geim druth]

I just finished 'The Emma Gees' by Herbert Wes McBride, available online here: http://manybooks.net/authors/mcbrideh.html

A good read, all about serving as a machine gunner with the Canadian Army in Flanders during WWI. The book is full of detail about serving in the trenches, all told in a no nonsense style. (And what a truly terrible existence that must have been.)

I do have a question for anyone with particular knowledge about WWI era machine guns. He mentions that his regiment was equipped with Colt, gas-operated, belt-fed machine guns. Were these Colt Model 1904 'potato diggers', or were they Vickers guns manufactured by Colt?

 

[BigG]

I read McBride's other masterpiece A Rifleman Went to War and believe they had the Browning guns, manufactured by Colt. May have been potato diggers but probably the M1895 gas operated gun. He was with the Canadian Forces. They started with Ross rifles, as I remember and had to come up with their own scopes, etc.

 

[Deanimator]

May have been potato diggers but probably the M1895 gas operated gun.

Same gun. There's an in depth treatment of the potato diggers in the Collector's Grade book on the M1917/M1919.

 

[Jim Watson]

If it was gas operated, it had to be the 1895 Colt-Browning "potato digger". Maxim, Vickers, and Browning (1917) MGs are recoil operated.

 

[geim druth]

Thanks for the replies. I had thought that the Colt-Browning was pretty much obsolete by the time of WWI, but I suppose anything that John Browning designed had to be a good gun.

 

[Deanimator]

Thanks for the replies. I had thought that the Colt-Browning was pretty much obsolete by the time of WWI, but I suppose anything that John Browning designed had to be a good gun.

It was obsolescent. Most of those using it did so because they couldn't get enough of something better, the Russians for example.

Marlin converted the design to straight piston action to produce a workable aircraft and tank gun.