In 1882, in Vienna, an American inventor named Hiram Maxim was told by a friend that if he wanted to make real money, he should invent something to help Europeans “cut each other’s throats with greater facility.” Two years later, he had built the world’s first fully automatic machine gun.
By August 1914, every major army in Europe had some version of Maxim’s design. Nobody had fully reckoned with what happens when both sides of a war have the same weapon in large numbers.
This episode traces that reckoning from Maxim’s London workshop, through the beaten zones and interlocking machine gun fire that built the Western Front, to the Canadian Corps’ long, costly education in how to use the weapon that had nearly destroyed it.
It’s a story that runs through an Edmonton newspaperman who talked the Canadian government into funding the country’s first mechanized fighting force three weeks into the war, through the mathematics of indirect fire at Vimy Ridge, and into the voices of five Canadian veterans who lived through what all of that meant on the ground.
In this episode
- How Hiram Maxim’s 1884 invention became the standard weapon of every major European army by 1914
- Why the “beaten zone” and enfilading fire made the machine gun the single biggest reason the Western Front became a war of trenches
- Raymond Brutinel, the French-born, Edmonton-based newspaperman and Grand Trunk Railway surveyor who convinced the Canadian government to fund the Canadian Automobile Machine Gun Brigade in August 1914
- How the Lewis gun changed infantry tactics at the platoon level, and how the Canadian Machine Gun Corps (established April 16, 1917) turned machine gun fire into a precisely calculated, artillery-like weapon of indirect fire
- The numbers behind Vimy Ridge: 362 Vickers guns, 258 of them firing in the indirect barrage role, nearly five million rounds allocated to the fire plan
- The Canadian Independent Force of 1918: 80 machine guns and bicycle infantry, described by historian John A. English as the first mechanized formation in Commonwealth military history and the forerunner of the armoured division
- Five Canadian veterans, in their own recorded voices: Charles Darwood Skeates (46th Battalion), Leonard Wood (Oakville, Ontario), Colin Bond (128th/46th Battalion), Allan “Spike” Smith (46th Battalion, Military Medal), and James Neil MacLeod (24th Battalion)
Sources & Further Reading
Primary and archival sources
- Hiram Maxim, My Life (London: Methuen, 1915): Maxim’s own account of the 1882 conversation in Vienna that led to the Maxim Gun
- Veterans Affairs Canada, Heroes Remember collection: recorded interviews with Charles Skeates, Colin Bond, Allan “Spike” Smith, and James Neil MacLeod
- Leonard Wood interview (1978), filmed by Gordon Reid, courtesy of the Town of Oakville YouTube channel
Secondary sources — primary anchor
- G.W.L. Nicholson, Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914–1919: Official History of the Canadian Army in the First World War (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1962): the standing primary research anchor for this podcast; used throughout for CEF organizational history, the Canadian Automobile Machine Gun Brigade, the Canadian Machine Gun Corps, and the Canadian Independent Force
Secondary sources — human/experiential anchor
- Tim Cook, At the Sharp End: Canadians Fighting the Great War, 1914–1916 (Toronto: Viking Canada, 2007)
- Tim Cook, Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting the Great War, 1917–1918 (Toronto: Viking Canada, 2008)
Additional research
- John A. English, on the Canadian Independent Force as the first mechanized formation in Commonwealth military history
- Loyal Edmonton Regiment Military Museum (LERMM): regimental history reference and collection consultation (the Museum holds examples of the Maxim, Vickers, Lewis, and German MG 08)
- Imperial War Museums: casualty figures and background on the Somme offensive
- Canadian War Museum and Library and Archives Canada: supplementary verification of unit establishment dates and equipment specifications
Related listening
If you haven’t heard it yet, our episode on the Newfoundland Regiment at Beaumont-Hamel covers July 1st, 1916; the day this episode’s closing act leads directly into. https://open.spotify.com/episode/0rK64WYRLFupQ65kyCQNOn?si=U4sOi647RCyggFN9tzaSLg
Visit
The Loyal Edmonton Regiment Military Museum holds examples of the Vickers, Lewis, and German MG 08 machine guns discussed in this episode. https://www.lermuseum.org/visitor-information
Memory and Valour is produced and hosted by Samantha McCrea.
Support the show at http://www.buymeacoffee.com/memoryand valour
