ining, even to the exclusion of many of the pet ideas of some of
the most accomplished instructors in our service schools. The trouble
with us is that we have not, and never have had, any machine gunners
in the United States Army. By this I mean men skilled in machine
gunnery as applied to present-day warfare. The evolution of
machine-gun tactics is, perhaps, the most outstanding feature of the
whole war. From being, as it was considered four years ago, merely an
emergency weapon or, as the text-book writers were pleased to call it,
"a weapon of opportunity," it has become the most important single
weapon in use in any army, not even excepting the artillery. A
properly directed machine-gun barrage is far more difficult to
traverse than anything the artillery can put down and the combination
of artillery and machine guns, working together, whether on the
offensive or defensive, represents the highest point ever attained in
the effective use of fire in battle.

Our instructors have been technical theorists of the very highest
order, basing their theories and working out their problems on the
experience furnished by previous wars and of course it is difficult
for them to realize that nearly every hypothesis which they have
assumed in working out their theories has been proved false. They can
not believe that "fire control" of infantry, as taught in the school
of fire, has no place in modern trench warfare. It will break the
hearts of some of them to learn that the ability to read a map and
use a prismatic compass is of far more value than knowledge of the
"mil-scale" or "fire-control rule." They will probably be scandalized
by the statement, which I make seriously and with full knowledge
whereof I speak, that one common shovel and an armful of sand-bags are
worth more than all the range-finders that have been or ever will be
bought for the use of machine gunners.

Every foot of ground in France, Belgium and Germany has been so
thoroughly and accurately mapped that there need be no such thing as
estimating ranges. You _know_ the range; you do not have to depend on
mental or mechanical estimates. And, as machine-gun fire is almost
entirely indirect fire, the guns must be laid by using map, compass,
protractor and clinometer (quadrant), in exactly the same manner as
artillery fire is directed. The average machine gunner will probably
go through the whole war without ever seeing a live enemy--excepting
prisoners. The various