Explanation: The Chauchat was a light machinegun designed and manufactured by France just in time for WW1. Having an automatic weapon that a single man could lug around was considered potentially game-changing, and a large amount were made and distributed to French troops. It does have several questionable design choices which reduced its reliability and efficacy - including an open magazine.

Great for seeing how much ammo you have left! Not so great when trying to keep mud and debris out of the gun in the trenches to prevent it from jamming.

All the same, it was certainly better than not having automatic weapons, and so remained in use throughout the war.

It has a poor reputation in the modern day, however, in large part because when the Americans entered the war, we altered the design slightly in using the Chauchat for our troops... to a different bullet caliber, 30.06.

As the gun was not designed for this different caliber, and was stretching the limits of its design to begin with, the American-made Chauchats 'mysteriously' had a tendency to constantly jam, which did not endear the Chauchat to the American troops who were assigned one.

Fo sho sho

it boggles my mind that they made it work considering the enormous geometric difference between 8×50mm Lebel and 30.06.

and while all this conversion folly is happening, crates of BARs are gathering in stacks because they were afraid to deploy them lest the germans duplicate them.

war isn't only hell, it's very strange sometimes, too.