World War I is supposed to be about men stuck in the mud of trench warfare, a static stalemate with little movement.
Yet there were numerous patrols and attacks along the Western Front, the kind of action where portable automatic firepower could give soldiers a tremendous advantage.
The Maxim and Vickers machine guns of the time were effective but heavy. Those weapons were for infantry support from fixed positions.
But there was a light machine gun that saw plenty of action on the ground and in the air. It was the Lewis Gun, an all-but-forgotten weapon today that was ubiquitous on the battlefields of The Great War because it could be carried, mounted on vehicles and even placed on airplanes.
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