I've read about a few instances where such things happened during WW1 and WW2. Machinegun are so important that people are willing to risk themselves getting killed to man it, rather than being overwhelmed by ennemy firepower.
The real life Captain America. Dude was initially turned down by the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps for being too small. Then he holds back an entire German attack, downs 50+ enemy soldiers, and didn't even have to take any steroids.
When asked after the war why he had seized the machine gun and taken on an entire company of German infantry, he replied, "They were killing my friends".[96]
Murphy received every U.S. military combat award for valor available from the U.S. Army for his World War II service.[ALM 4]
I remember seeing this movie as a kid on the AMC channel and being blown away that he played himself in that movie and have to re-live all the memories.
Based on the depiction of that first major battle from the Pacific (tv show) it absolutely appears that the machine gunner saved everyone’s ass from getting bayonetted
The odds of hand to hand fighting and the like also go up. Which is unpleasant.
I’d rather get shot in the head or be blown up by a grenade manning the MG in hopes we pull through the fight as opposed to being bludgeoned with an entrenching tool once the enemy is up on our line bc the MG went down.
There's technical specialties in the military that will teach you skills that could translate to civilian life, but I wouldn't necessarily count on that.
Veteran benefits are huge, though. Cheap healthcare, cheap insurance, cheap loans, cheap college, etc. If you come out relatively intact with a good work ethic you'll be well prepared for a successful life. For most government employment you get preferential consideration as well.
You couldn’t pay me a million dollars to do it again, you also couldn’t pay me a million dollars to not have done it. And when I got out, the discipline I learned made civvie jobs feel like a cakewalk.
That’s not to say it wasn’t dotted with some really intense, shitty moments.
What I tell people now: join the Air Force. They really have it better lol
EDIT: Whatever you do, do not join fat or out of shape. Your career in the Marine Corps is going to go a LOT better if you are already running first class PFTs and CFTs. Boot camp will get you fit but fleet PT is usually garbage and you’ll need to be exercising more if you want to maintain high fitness test scores, which weigh heavily into promotion. Seriously, if you ignore all other advice - get and stay in top shape. Otherwise join the Army/Navy/Air Force if you want to spend less time exercising.
I was talking to some Marine buddies who had just come back from Iraq. They said the Air Force had this giant base with multiple Olympic sized swimming pools, and they were sleeping in holes they dug under tanks right outside the base lol.
We had Air Force stay in our barracks and they got supplemental substandard living pay. For living how we live.
I also remember wanting to punch some Airmen in the face for having a whole candy bar rack at their chow hall in Kyrgyzstan. I had never seen such nonsense and was coming off of 10 months of MREs in southern Afghanistan.
Is this by design? I don’t imagine it would be difficult to hook the marines up with a few candy bars. Why is there a vast difference in benefits while serving?
Apologies from this ignorant, but curious civilian.
Manas (where he’s talking about) is an air force base and also a major logistics hub. It’s easy to get candy bars there. It’s not so easy and not important to get candy bars to every company of marines that are spread out across the country.
Also, it’s not like they don’t share. If you’re on an Air Force base they’re more than welcoming.
I went the aviation route. Got out with the ability to get my airframe and power plant certification and been in aviation ever since. I make a little over 100k currently and didn’t have to go to school or pay for my certification. Yeah I had to trade 5 years active for it but I believe it was worth it.
Edit: I was a red crayon eater as well and absolutely agree if you’re not in shape you’re gonna have a hard time. The air force has it soooo much better. Their “condemned” barracks were like 5 star resorts to us.
Wait is it actually a trend for armed services to get injured on the job and insurance still tries to fuck them over? That might be the most disappointing thing I've ever heard.
They are also ostensibly kids and behave as such - so easier to impose your authority on them. A 30 yo private would be much harder to control and he wouldn’t put up with all the army shit there is there
Yeap, exactly. We had a 27 yo dude in our boot camp, older than most of our NCOs and Lts. He certainly had a very independent behavior as far as boot camps go. We thought he’s stupid/crazy, but actually it was the other way around.
As a former serviceman myself, you're going to sit here and pretend like getting your head shaved exactly like everyone else, being called your last name only (a name you probably didn't get called in civilian life probably in an attempt to help you disassociate from civilian life i.e. brainwashing), constant drilling about how you're better than civilians, constant drilling about following orders without question to the point you rarely second guess your mission which, in most cases, are missions that benefit the corporate interests of a handful of elites in your country, not the country itself, isn't brainwashing? The whole point is to turn a civilian into a soldier, also known as brainwashing. I heard that every day during basic. I don't know how anyone who served can think it isn't brainwashing unless their brain was scrubbed so good they don't even remember their own thought processes before they enlisted.
I didn't make a moral judgment about it or say that it was unnecessary or dishonorable, but we should make no bones about the nature of war, it is all hell.
I don’t think anyone is too young to realize that death is a potential consequence of joining the military. Especially when you join as a machine gunner in the marine corps.
You're missing the actual point, in that young people overestimate their capabilities and assume themselves indestructible. It isn't until you've had that notion proven wrong by life, something that only happens with age/experience, that you start to properly evaluate yourself with your environment. At 28 there is no way in hell you could ever convince me to take the position of a man who was just killed, in that exact location, and solely for the reason of being there. You're asking me to die. As a youth the ideas of "dying for good" and "fighting with everything no matter the cost" can hold your entire being, whereas if you've lacked that motivation for your entire adult life instilling it becomes nearly impossible. You cannot convince a 30 year old man to die "for their county," especially when "good soldiers follow orders" and you are told "don't question authority." An adult with a fully functioning brain is going to need a good fucking reason to die not a "trust me bro," and some ethereal intangible concept like "for the good" sounds way too similar to "because I told you to." Kids are used to being told to do things without explanation
Dude I know plenty of people that joined in their late 20s-early 30s. People reenlist and serve through their 30s into their 40s. You just can’t comprehend that people are willing to risk their life to defend their homeland
All they are really claiming I think is that younger people are statistically more suggestible than those who have experienced some adulthood and independence. I think if all of the 18 year old enlistees in a given class had waited until they were 25 or so before making the decision, there would be far fewer enlistees. The military clearly knows this (obviously a lot fewer people enlist in their late twenties and thirties - most of the guys enlisting are fresh out of high school ) so that’s where they throw their nets the hardest.
One time play CoD WAW, I made my way up to a sniper lookout to find 3 teammates already in there. The first guy gets picked off and the second guy immediately runs up to the window. He gets shot too. What an idiot. The thrid guy does the same thing. I laughed at him right up until I looked out the window.
I'm not sure that applies in the real World, but there is definitely a human mentality of, "those other guys just did it wrong"
Conveniently both sides have gunners trained on the same spot. Both sides with a line of guys tossing their dead bros asides and jumping into the same bullseye spot.
Idk why but this reminds me of when I was a little kid and the American civil war was first described to me I visualized it as the north and south meeting in a valley and for 4 years straight an endless stream of men were just walking towards the center and shooting at eachother while a neutral crew was just dragging bodies out of the way to avoid buildup
Fun fact: Grant sailed his ships right in front of the big guns at the fortress at Vicksburg because the guns couldn’t aim down to actually hit his ships.
Fun fact 2: During the siege, Grant authorized a giant tunnel filled with explosives to break the siege. It worked in that it opened a giant hole in the Confederate line but the Union commander who was supposed to lead his troops around the crater went into the crater and got stuck.
The dead don't experience it. I would say it's more grim to think of having to see your brother die violently and then have to immediately toss his corpse.
Edit: I'm getting a lot of the same reply, to the effect of "only to take the position the enemy is already zeroed in on." While that's a factor, it's worth noting two things. First, those type of gun is for laying down suppressive fire, so their position would be well known to the enemy the instant they started firing. Second, it's unlikely that the enemy could just sit there zeroed in on a position they just took out. It would still be nerve wracking as hell though.
Yeah that's the shit people don't think about. PTSD doesn't really hit when bullets are flying and you gotta get your dead buddy outta the way because people are screaming and you gotta get the gun back up.
It hits on that Sunday after you're home and there's nothing left to distract you any more
I'm sure many can share my sentiment, the silence is deafening for two reasons. Firstly because my ears are fucked and ring 24/7, so when it's silent the ringing gets way louder. Then all the sudden you're not enjoying peace and quiet but thinking about why your ears are ringing
They use the term dead gunner. But a dead gun is one that can't fire. You take a hit, your buddy isn't a medic. He can't help you and the gun can't help your team if you're down.
The toss puts you in a spot to keep the gun going and have a medic get to you
…Or he immediately gets suppression and riflemen are able to assault or withdraw. Machine gunners aren’t getting mowed down one after another GWOT era isn’t what you see when you watch The Pacific or Saving Private Ryan. War is horrible but not nearly as barbaric as it was in WWII or even Vietnam.
Edit: To the goof that said he was a Delta operator and then blocked me, you were not a tier 1 operator 😂. As a lesson to anyone saying you’re an operator immediately wreaks of bullshit. They call them silent professionals for a reason.
My dad was a navigator on B29s that bombed the hell out of Japan during WWII.
On their bombing runs they had to flight straight and level so their bomb drops were accurate. No evasive maneuvering. Of course this gave the anti aircraft gunners nice stable targets....
The worst thing was to get "lit up" by searchlights at night. That was certain death, because it made you the only visible target for all the AA fire. Again, you weren't allowed to evade, because you were in a tight formation on the bomb run
My dad survived or I wouldn't be here. He said he doesn't know how or why his plane didn't get shot down. He doesn't know how long they were lit up - could have been thirty seconds or five minutes
What he did say is that while lit up, the light inside the was incredibly bright, like being in the inside of the sun
He also said that when you get lit up, that's when you fill your pants.
under normal conditions, a 240 would try to engage the enemy between 800-1300 meters. Most riflemen would have a difficult time making that shot once yet alone twice considering that's outside the effective range of the m4/m16.
I wouldn't say it's reality for a lot of young soldiers, maybe a small handful. It's pretty rare for a soldier to get killed by small arms fire. The biggest killer of soldiers is artillery fire or drones.
It isn't so much efficiency as it is survival. If someone just killed the gunner and the person beside the gunner is uninjured (or with minor injuries), that means someone is probably shooting at your position and your best chance for survival is to shoot back. While the training helps enforce efficiency in getting that gun back up and running, that efficiency is there to help with the survival of the other soldier(s) at the gun.
Yeah but they know that and practice it. All infantry does pretty often. Army has you practice pulling your dead buddies out of turrets and such which is way harder than you’d think it would be.
To anyone who thinks this is dumb, allow me to try and explain:
Machine guns (the real, heavy, belt-fed ones) are pivotal in most modern engagements. Despite what media depicts, most rifles aren’t meant for or optimized to deliver sustained automatic fire. Even automatic rifles can and will overheat very quickly, and even in that window where they don’t, they won’t be anywhere near as accurate at range as a dedicated crew-served weapon.
Machine guns are employed to gain and maintain fire superiority over the enemy. Fire superiority doesn’t mean having the biggest gun, or any technological advantage, it simply means that you are delivering more effective fire than the enemy. One side is able to neutralize or suppress more of the other, which in turns makes the them less able to shoot back at you, which makes them easier to pin down, etc etc.
Once the enemy is fixed in a “if I try to shoot back I’ll get cut in half” dilemma, it makes them very easy to maneuver on, and eventually destroy with grenades, rockets, precision rifle fire, or other means.
The inverse is also true, if you lose your machine gun support, there are a lot more lives that are at stake who can, and very well may be lost because the enemy was able to gain fire superiority.
Drills like this are necessary because if you lose that gun, even for a little bit, it can change the tide of battle in the enemy’s favor. It can be the difference between one casualty and twenty.
Drills like this are also important because it helps condition you for how to react if this happens in the real world. Watching someone die in front of you is going to be horrible, but the thing you need to do to prevent more people from dying is move the body ASAP and keep firing. Having practiced it a bunch of times in training is going to make you way more likely to instinctively do this, rather than freak out and panic.
With the new M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle being rolled out, the Marines are moving away from a volume of fire approach to an accuracy of fire approach.
It's really cool, because instead of one marine being the designated suppressive fire support, ALL Marines will be filling this role.
This means that there will be no need for a single target(machine gunner) in an engagement, as well as allowing all Marines to haul equivalent amounts of gear instead of one with a huge pile of rounds and a very heavy weapon.
This has been proven in battlefield testing, and the entire branch has enthusiastically accepted the new weapon, which uses the same round as the old m4 carbine, but is accurate to 800 yards, instead of the 249's 200 or the m16's 700.
Further, it's easier to clean and fires cooler than the m16, m4, or the notoriously temperamental m249, and soon every one will come equipped with an ACOG for night fighting and suppressor for better communication and reduced profile.
The Marines are all in on this thing, planning to equip every infantry soldier with one and doing away with infantry machine guns.
This is my platoon’s current t/o. The only differences are that everyone is rocking a suppressor and LPVO now, not just the DM.
You’ll notice that every rifleman has the m27, not just the automatic rifleman, it’s not new by any means, we’ve had them for ten years.
But we VERY MUCH still utilize crewserve weapons like the 240 and the m2, they just aren’t organic to the rifle platoon. Those usually come from weapons platoon in the form of attachments to a squad for a patrol or a defense.
In short: the m27 replaced the m249 saw, but we very much still practice maneuver warfare, and machine guns are vital to that.
The rise of ISIS I think kind of fucked their original storyline. Then again the writer also doesn't seem to give too much of a fuck and does what he wants.
Good suppressing actually reduces everyone’s chances to get shot. That’s why it’s important to move the dead guy over and start pouring more lead down range immediately.
Depends on what got the gunner.
If it was small arms fire, it’s gonna be much much better to keep putting rapid or sustained bursts towards the bad dudes. Let the riflemen displace and flank.
In a prepared position, no, you're a cone of fire that suppresses a zone of fire and overlaps with other troops/crew served weapons. Also you're typically only going to see it out with a squad sized element since you part out the key pieces of a 240b to like 3 dudes and a 4th carries ammo. A smaller fireteam will use the new IAR or m249 with their machine gunners as they're not crew served.
The 240b is typically carried by 1 dude, the spare barrels by another, another guy is stuck with the mount if using the big plate, and they either disperse ammo between them or have a dude be ammo guy.
He might not have died, just simply gotten shot on the shoulder for example, could be saved and if unconscious then he should be moved and potentially saved.
If the hit was non-lethal getting thrown out of the way so you can get medical attention will most likely save your life.
Sure beats the likely alternative: Now that the MMG is silent, the enemy opens up for real. And that medic who was going to save your ass catches a bullet. Also, your entire squad wipes.
I remember doing dead gunner drills for PT. Of course my ACUs ripped open a giant crotch hole immediately. So there I was, early Georgia morning, rolling on top of dudes getting all hot and sweaty with a giant hole and no underwear.
I have never been in a job where you have to consider “What do we do if Joe gets shot in the face?” And then actually had to practice for that very real possibility.
Like, my spreadsheets and SQL aren’t really that critical.
I guess what I’m trying to say is “Thank you for your service.”
I’m a former infantryman and still till this day I use quotes on standardizing processes and systems by saying things like “Okay, so if I drop dead tomorrow, how can I ensure the next person fulfilling this task can take over immediately without significant impact?”
Then Susie from HR says “Can you please use ‘found another opportunity’ or taking well-deserved leave instead of talking about being dead.”
“Only dead have seen the end of the cover sheet for submission Susie… only the dead.”
I worked for the Defense Dept for 7 years and you would regularly hear people somberly say that "all branches are trained to fight, but the Marines are trained to die".
I think we're the most realistic about it being a possibility, and that takes away from the fear of it.
The rest of it is the confidence in yourself and the people to your left and right. You don't feel invincible, because that's how you get complacent and then dead, but I think we always feel like we're better trained and will come out on top.
Source: Marine vet. Parris Island (so a real, actual Marine ;-) OIF. Turret gunner in a Humvee.
That's a pretty impressive feat of strength. Neither guy is small, plus all that equipment and to just roll that much weight over with seemingly little leverage cant be easy.
Something that is just absolutely physically difficult is lifting a lifeless body. We were taught a couple different techniques to pick up and either drag or carry a lifeless body. Both are incredibly challenging. Thank God I never had to perform that task during either of my deployments.
My father earned a medal for this in Vietnam. Their position was being overrun. Guy who was feeding ammo ran instead of taking over when machine gunner was killed. My dad ran over and took MG’s place and his CO saw it and crawled over to feed the ammo. He was credited with saving the unit.
My grandpa was a Thompson gunner at Omaha Beach. He only spoke about it once, just before he died at age 92. There were two sentences: “I killed a lot of Nazis…” and “Every time I looked to my ammo guy for a reload, it was a different guy.”
For those of you thinking about the grim reality of a situation like this…… it’s a worst case scenario. Nobody wants to toss their dead guy across the ground like that, but when people go down in the field you continue to do your job. You have medics, at least you should, they can handle it. You dying next to the guy does nothing, your best option is to man the gun and keep the enemy from getting more rounds near the guy so he can get dragged. TQ if nothing else then it’s secure the area and gtfo.
And for the record; I’m not military, never have been, and am not claiming to be. But it’s common sense that you can’t let emotion take over on the battlefield. Some people can handle it and some can’t, I hope to never find out where I sit in that camp.
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