This vivid and authoritative history of the machine gun is enhanced by the first-person battlefield accounts of veterans of many armies in combat. "The machine gun will never replace the horse as an instrument of war," claimed Field Marshal Lord Douglas Haig during World War I. Yet as early as 1916, at the Battle of the Somme, 20,000 men in the British Fourth Army were killed by the machine gun. Machine Gunner features a mass of easy-to- follow technical information about the workings of machine guns and their changing tactical role. The book ranges from the first machine guns in the American Civil War to the conflict in the Gulf. It includes infantry machine guns as well as those mounted on planes, helicopters, and boats. It covers theaters of war across Europe, Africa, Korea, Vietnam, and the Falkland Islands, as well as the machine gun's use by terrorist organizations and gangsters such as Al Capone and John Dillinger. Written by an expert in the field and including combat photographs, Machine Gunner is a must for anyone interested in modern military history.