The Social History of the Machine Gun

[Bruce Dennis]

ISBN 0-85664-266-5

Rereading this after a long time, I had forgotten how interesting the book is. It deals with the introduction of this new weapon of mass destruction into a number of armed forces and societies around the world. Ellis deals with the subject from the perspective of the problems it caused senior offiers and the disruption of fixed ideas about cavalry and artillery, as well as some of the sillier aspects of the machine gun in the Roaring Twenties.

Long out of print, it's worth getting if you see a copy.

Look-ups & scans possible

Bruce

[Hoplophile]

It's been a long time since I've cracked the pages of The Social History of the Machine Gun. From what I remember, however, the Ellis relied heavily upon highly polemic secondary sources rather than either documentary evidence or contemporary military writings. That is to say, he relied on the complaints made by journalists and politicians rather than the extensive record of discussions and decisions left by military authorities.

If one reads the latter sources, one sees a picture that is very different from the one painted by Ellis. In particular, one sees that:

1. The machinegun becomes available at the same time as other means of spraying bullets over the battlefield - particularly the smokeless-powder magazine rifle, the quick-firing shrapnel-shooting field gun, and the (now almost forgotten) pom-pom gun. Thus, the task faced by mililitary professionals is not a choice between firepower and 'cold-steel', but the design the right mix of new weapons.

2. A number of sub-cultures within many armies embrace the machinegun with great enthusiasm. These include the mountain troops (which immediately saw their value in defending mountain passes), the fortress troops (who understood enfilade fire), colonial troops (Hilaire Belloc, please call your answering service) and the cavalry (who were woefully short of firepower and knew it).

3. The experience of the Russo-Japanese War leads to the widespread adoption of machineguns by the infantry brances of many armies, including those of France and Germany. In the UK, it inspires the decision to re-arm infantry battalions with the new Vickers gun.

4. The outbreak of World War I finds the armies of Europe in the middle of programmes to acquire large numbers of machineguns and increase the scale of issue of such weapons to infantry units. These programmes are delayed by the outbreak of war, which interrupts the production of many weapons (because workers are called to the colours) and diverts some new production to the replacement of combat losses.

[Borden Battery]

Hello Bruce ... here is an excerpt from an interview of Brig-General Raymond Brutinel in October 1962 ... we are also researching the background of a Canadian military attache who filed reports on this war.

Regards - Borden Battery / Dwight Mercer

Tape 1: What led to the formation of the Canadian Motor Machine Gun Brigade?

Interviewer:

What led to the formation of the Canadian Motor Machine Gun Brigade?

Reply:

I have very often been asked to relate the circumstances which led to my joining the Canadian Expeditionary Forces and consequently to the formation of the First Canadian Machine Gun Brigade.

I have done so verbally many times but I feel that this simple story should be told again and recorded, as it is really the starting point of a great adventure, the multiple phases of which could not be foreseen in August 1914.

I had been a close student of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 and had been struck with the great fire power of the Machine Gun when employed in sufficient numbers by resolute men, well trained. I deplored the systematic ignorance of the qualities of these weapons shown by the French General Staff and also by the British General Staff, although with the light Vickers machine gun the British had the best machine gun available at the time - and, as far as I know, still unsurpassed.

When war was declared in August 1914, I was in the First Reserve of the French Army. A German Naval Squadron had interrupted shipping across the Atlantic and I could not speedily return to France from Montreal where I was at the time.

[AndyHollinger]

(Hilaire Belloc, please call your answering service)

There are times this forum cracks me up completely ... why is this not the world I live in and Community Colleges the world I visit in the morning before Lecture Prep?

[Guest Simon Bull]

Should not this book actually be called "The Anti-Social History of the Machine Gun"?

[Hoplophile]

Brutinel's comment strikes me as odd. As the pre-war period found him in Vancouver (if memory serves), I doubt that he was in a position to closely follow the opinions of the French General Staff vis a vis the Russo-Japanese War. As a matter of fact, the Russo-Japanese War inspired a huge increase in the number of machine-guns serving in the French Army. (On the whole, the French Army did a poor job of learning from the Russo-Japanese War. In contrast to the Germans, who saw it as a harbinger of things to come, the French saw the war in Manchuria as an anomaly. They thus declined to invest in heavy howitzers and trench mortars. They did, however, think the extensive use of machineguns by both the Russians and the Japanese was something worth immitating.)

[Borden Battery]

My thesis is that Brutinel was provided information by the Canadian military in 1914, perhaps by Sam Hughes himself as he appears to have had a strong interest in machine guns and the Russo-Japanese war. There are two sources of information which might have been then made available to Brutinel:

H.M.S.O., The Russo-Japanese War, Reports from British Officers Attached to the Japanese and Russian Forces in the Field, 3 vols., and 2 vols. of maps, London 1908. Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence, The Official History of the Russo-Japanese War (Naval and Military), 3 vols., and 3 vols. of maps and appendices, London, 1910-1920.

Herbert Cyril Thacker, Captain, Royal Canadian Artillery may have been a second source. He graduated from Royal Military College, Kingston and was attached to Japanese Second Army as Canadian Military Representative, July–November 1904.

In addition, we are working our way through the Logan & Levey material for references to the Russo-Japanese War and references to this item.

Borden Battery