Summary: British Machine Gun Corps training film on the tactical use of the Vickers machine gun in open country, 1918-1922.
Description: The film uses a mixture of line drawings, animation, and actuality material. The exercise is for a Vickers machine gun section of gunner, loader, and two carriers, under the instruction of a lieutenant, with a sergeant watching the whole exercise in order to criticise the actions of each man in the debriefing. All are members of the Machine Gun Corps. The setting is an area of rolling countryside with enclosed fields, a few houses, but no trenches, strongpoints, or Artillery support on either side. The officer takes the section number 1 (the gunner) forward with him by walk and crawl to reconnoitre the intended position, and there gives him his sector and the range and nature of his target - a gate in a hedge just beyond a red-roofed house 1000 yards distant. The number 1 returns to his section and briefs its members. At the officer's signal the section moves up to its position under cover of a hedge. The number 1 reconnoitres the sector and personally selects the site for his machine gun, which is then set up. Each section member in turn then checks the view along the gun's sights to the target. Finally, in the debriefing, the sergeant checks the line of the gun to the target, the manner in which the gun has been set up, the range on the sight, and the actions of each section member. The machine gun does not actually open fire.
