Until the formation of the Machine Gun Corps (MGC), each infantry battalion had its own machine gun section under the command of a machine gun officer attached to the battalion headquarters. At the start of the Great War, there were only two machine guns (either Maxim or Vickers) in the machine gun section but the development of the war showed that this needed increasing and it was decided to add a further two guns, with the section divided into two sub-sections of two guns each.
In an infantry brigade, a specialist officer attached to brigade headquarters coordinated the machine guns of the infantry battalions and sometimes ‘brigaded’ these guns together. In doing so, he was able to consolidate and control the fire of 16 guns. It is this structure that carried on into the brigade machine gun companies when the MGC was formed in October 1915.
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