Most machine guns were manned by a crew of at least two people.  A second person was needed both to help carry the weapon, and to feed in the long belts of ammunition needed to keep a steady supply of bullets flying (shown below).





Machine guns were not usually deployed en masse, but deployed either as single fortified posts that were well camaflogued, like on the edge of a thicket, or the edge of a wood, or they would be deployed in fours and fives in one encampment to provide a very heavy overlapping crossfire.

In trench warfare, one or two machine guns could cover an enormous swath of No Man's Land.  Soldiers going over the top proved to be easy targets, especially as they climbed over the barbed wire between the two trenches.  Machine guns were the most feared weapons on the battlefield.  Because they reduced the number of soldiers needed to directly guard the trenches, men were freed up to either work on repairing the trenches, aid the wounded, or man artillery and trench mortar pieces to further attack the advancing enemies going over the top.

At the start of the war, in August of 1914, the Germans had almost 12,000 machine guns in their army.  By the end of the war, that number would increase almost tenfold, to over 100,000 machine guns in service.  In comparison, the British and French had fewer than one thousand machine guns each at the start of the conflict.

Most machine guns were deployed on the Western front in defensive positions.  As the war continued, machine guns would be adapted to fit on tanks, armored cars, and eventually airplanes.




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