Machine Gun Corps
The Machine Gun Corps (MGC) was a corps (administrative regiment of a branch of arms ) of the British Army that existed from 1915 to 1922. It was the late in recognizing the important role machine gun in grave war of World War I set up and needs accordingly trained units and included several specialized branches. From one of the latter, the Heavy Branch MGC , the Tank Corps emerged in 1917 , which today continues as the Royal Tank Regiment .
history
At the beginning of the First World War, the role and potential of the machine gun was underestimated by the management of the British Army. When the British Expeditionary Force took to the field in August 1914, their infantry battalions and cavalry regiments each had only one machine gun section with two machine guns each. The Royal Naval Air Service introduced its own Armored Car Section , whose armed with machine guns armored car type Rolls-Royce in the initial war of movement an important role in educating and protecting their own lines of communication took over. Based on this experience, the army set up its own motorized unit in November 1914, the Motor Machine Gun Service , which was equipped with sidecar motorcycles . In December 1914, a small machine gun school was opened in Wisques near Saint-Omer after the corresponding facility in England had been closed. Her first students came from the 28th (County of London) Battalion, The London Regiment (The Artists' Rifles) , who later took on a training role at this and later established schools.
After a year of largely static war on the western front , the army command responded to the now better understood need for trained operating teams and the establishment of the Machine Gun Corps was ordered by Army Order 414 of October 26, 1915. It consisted initially of three branches ( Branches ):
- Infantry of the Line
- Cavalry of the Line
- Motor Machine Gun Service / Motor Branch
The Guard units had their own counterpart, the Guards Machine Gun Regiment . A fourth branch, the Heavy Section , later Heavy Branch , was added in March 1916. Equipped with the first working tanks ( Mark I ), it was first used in September 1916 during the Battle of the Somme near Flers and Courcelette . In July 1917, the separate Tank Corps was set up from it.
A training center and depot was set up in the park of the Belton House country house in Lincolnshire for the newly formed Machine Gun Corps . This trained entire companies that were assigned to the individual brigades of the new infantry divisions. In Camiers , Pas-de-Calais, which was established in March 1916 Machine Gun Corps Base Reinforcement Depot founded, soon the school was moved from Wisques in its vicinity. It was renamed GHQ Small Arms School in May 1917 . From 1917 on, each division was assigned its own machine gun company, which now had a total of four such companies. They were armed with the Vickers heavy machine gun and the Lewis light machine gun .
Machine Gun Corps units were deployed in all theaters of war where British forces were deployed. In total, more than 170,000 officers and men served in MGC units during the war, of which around 12,500 did not survive the war. Victoria Crosses were awarded to seven members of the Machine Gun Corps, two of them posthumously.
After the war ended, the MGC was also used in a number of follow-up conflicts, including the Russian Civil War and the Third Anglo-Afghan War . Units of the MGC also took part in the Allied occupation of the Rhineland . In 1922 the Machine Gun Corps was dissolved for reasons of cost.
Commemoration
The Machine Gun Corps Memorial , which commemorates the victims of the Machine Gun Corps, is located on London's Hyde Park Corner . A memorial event takes place here every year in the second week of May.
See also
- Machine gun department - units of the German army
Web links
- Machine Gun Corps Old Comrades Association website
- Machine Gun Corps at vickersmachinegun.org.uk
Individual evidence
- ↑ Machine Gun Corps history ( Memento of the original from July 11, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on machineguncorps.co.uk
- ↑ Remembrance on machineguncorps.co.uk
