Page:Tactics (Balck 1915).djvu/301

 baggage wagon, one ration (commissary) wagon, one forage wagon, and a second store wagon.

The movements and gaits of a machine gun battery are the same as those of a field battery: the order in line, at close or extended intervals, in which the guns are abreast, the intervals between them, measured from center to center, being 5 and 17 paces, respectively. The order in line, at extended intervals, is used in moving to the front or rear; the order in line, at close intervals, for assembly, for movements in that formation, for parking, and for parade. The section column is the principal maneuver formation on the battlefield; it is employed as an assembly formation on a road, and as route column. (Par. 320 German F. S. R.). In section column the guns follow each other at a distance of four paces. In addition to this column, a column of platoons is used, in which the platoons follow each other at a distance of 22 paces. (This may be reduced to 6 paces).

A machine gun battery has available 87,300 rounds of ammunition (10,500 rounds with each gun and 8100 rounds in each ammunition wagon, or a total of 14,550 rounds per gun), which may be drawn forward to the firing position upon sleds, in boxes holding 250 rounds each. The ammunition wagons are refilled from the ammunition wagons of the light ammunition columns of the cavalry division and from the wagons of the infantry ammunition columns marked with a red stripe, which carry ammunition for machine gun units. A reserve machine gun is carried with the ammunition column.

The machine gun battery combines high infantry fire power (approximately equivalent to that of the skirmishers of a German cavalry regiment, armed with carbines, or to that of 4-6 platoons of infantry) with instant readiness for firing,