“Now pull the trigger and pull backwards; you will find that the entire grip and trigger assembly slide off easily. You know the drill… put it on the ground cloth.”
Daniil Kostyshakov was, himself, unfamiliar with the Lewis guns, though he’d read about them, and about light machine guns, in general, in various German military journals while incarcerated in Fort IX. These had mostly covered tactical employment, rather than the mechanics of the things.
Seeing Kostyshakov watching from the edge of the parade field, Nenonen turned matters over to a half-trained assistant and trotted over.
“I am beginning to doubt, Sergeant Major, that the Germans will come through with those machine pistols,” Kostyshakov began. “That means we may be using these things to clear rooms, hallways, stairwells, and floors. Tell me about them.”
Nenonen filled his cheeks and blew air out, in a fricative. “They’re a really mixed blessing, sir.”
“How so?”
“Well… in the first place, they’re very complex. They’re… mmm… best I show you.”
Nenonen led the way to where one group of three men had just completed disassembly on their Lewis. “Go join one of the other gun teams,” he told them. “Your gun will still be here when you get back.”
Nenonen picked up one of the pan magazines lying on the ground cover. Turning it over, he said, “Problem one is this, sir. So are problems two and three.
“This holds forty-seven rounds. Captain Romeyko is sitting on some that hold ninety-seven rounds, but they’ve got their issues, too, so we don’t know what to do with them. Note that it’s open on the side that faces the gun and the ground. It has to be, given the way these things are loaded. It has the advantage of allowing dirt and mud to get out. It has the far worse disadvantage of allowing a lot more dirt and mud to get in in the first place.”
Nosing around the ground sheet the sergeant major picked up a cylindrical tool, from a cubical leather case, which he affixed to a shorter cylinder that was part of the magazine. The tool had a hand-width diamond pattern engraved on the upper half to aid in gripping.
Nenonen explained, “You load these by inserting one round at a time and then”—here he twisted the tool by hand to demonstrate—“turning this to rotate the disk that holds the round in place. You have to do this forty-seven times to load the magazine fully. It is not easy and it is not quick.
“That’s why we have twenty-two magazines for every Lewis gun: to keep up an adequate rate of fire for a long enough time, you need every one of those, fully loaded, to start.
“But the weight of twenty-two fully loaded magazines is about sixty pounds for the ammunition and thirty-eight or so pounds for the magazines. Add in the twenty-eight pounds for the gun, itself, and… well, a three-man crew is barely enough for the job. And they won’t be exactly playing leapfrog with each other while they’re moving across the battlefield, either.
“It’s also a problem for marching fire. This magazine spins as it’s feeding ammunition to the gun. If the gunner doesn’t keep it well away from his body and cant it to the right, it’s going to rub on, maybe even get caught on, his uniform. That means a stoppage.
“And then there’s the overheating problem…”
“But I thought that shroud on the barrel kept it cool,” Daniil interrupted.
“For a while—longer than you might expect—it does. That’s not the problem.”
Nenonen reached down again, this time picking up a smallish, flattish half cylinder. “It’s this thing, the operating spring. Unlike most machine guns, instead of a long helical spring to drive the bolt and/or operating rod forward, it’s got what amounts to a clock spring wound up inside this. But it’s also near the chamber and it does get hot, hot enough to lock up the gun. And in a hard fight it will tend to do so long before those twenty-two magazines are used up.
“Oh, and speaking of heat”—here the sergeant major reached out and tapped the shroud around the barrel—“this thing gets hot within the first four magazines, too hot to hold without a glove, and that glove had better be thick.
“Also, sir, note that if you get to close quarters, there is no bayonet lug. It’s also too heavy to manhandle quickly from one aiming point to another.
“Finally, there are fifteen distinct causes of stoppages, ranging from a freely rotating magazine that won’t feed to a double feed. About half of those, eight, to be exact, can generally be dealt with by immediate action. The other seven? They require a good deal more effort, down to and including taking the thing apart, to one degree or another. This is a neat trick on a muddy battlefield.
“But, sir, all that said, what it does, which is to provide mobile suppressive fire to the foot soldiers, it still does better than anything else in the world, to date.”
Kostyshakov nodded understanding. And one problem you didn’t mention, Sergeant Major: once we go into a building to clear it out and rescue the royal family, this thing is going to shoot right through all but the stoutest walls, at things we cannot even guess at, let alone see. Put the royal family in a clump, on the other side of one of those walls and, well, we shouldn’t have even bothered to start.
Interlude
Tatiana: The changing of the guard
My favorite days were the ones where the Fourth Regiment was on duty. There were still those who remained friendly to us and it made the day easier for everyone, especially Alexei.
Papa, Alexei, and I spent several hours with the men of the Fourth in the guardhouse. There was talk and discontentment, some of which they were reluctant to discuss. But finally they did, opening up to Papa about the grumblings in the Second Regiment.
Those grumblings came to fruition in the most unexpected way on February Eighth. The soviet of soldiers of the Second had decided to replace Commissar Pankratov, the very man who worked so hard to “enlighten” them. They had decided that his ideology was not Bolshevik enough and called for a Bolshevik commissar to be sent from Moscow.
He was not their only casualty however. That crass man, Nikolsky, must also resign. They “insisted.” I confess, I looked forward to seeing him go.
I waited for Papa to ask what would happen to Commissar Pankratov, but he did not interrupt, letting the men of the Fourth lead the conversation now that they were so forthcoming.
They spoke of rumors that the new Soviet Russia was no longer at war and that the army was to be disbanded.
As they spoke their fears, he would pat their shoulders and say something encouraging, but his voice would break and sometimes he couldn’t finish speaking.
The men continued to speculate, to hope, and he’d sit there, blinking like a man keeping tears at bay.
Finally, when there was no more to say, no more to hear, Papa nodded his understanding and shook hands with them. Something sad passed between him and the men huddled in the guard house.
That sadness descended onto my father’s shoulders like a heavy cloak. Those shoulders that I once knew would hold up the world, remained weighed down even as he straightened, stood, and bid the men a good night. The cloak trailed behind him in the snow on the way back to the house, leaving invisible drag marks in the snow. He held onto my hand and Alexei’s, our skin separated by gloves. Even through them, I could sense a different kind of cold than the one clawing at our faces.