The Firearms Blog set up a couple of pretty faithful squad sized live-fire exercises using World War II-era weapons and a local reenactor group to see just how the Greatest Generation did it.
Working on steel targets at 100 and 500 meters, the weapons were correct M1 Garands, M1A1 Carbines, M1919 light machine guns and M1911s. They used the same tactics and reloaded from gun belts and bandoliers.
To keep everything safe, they ran the maneuvers on several dry runs long before they went loud and had an EMT on standby for if things went pear-shaped as 30.06 does not play nice if you don’t respect it and friendly fire just isn’t.
The “pings” of the M1s mixed with the variable cacophony of the volume of fire makes this a run and gun with historical significance.
On the bright side, at least the “German” positions they were assaulting were not filled with guys in field gray humming 8mm Mauser and 9mm back in their general direction.
Be sure to check out the round table discussion from the actual participants and who were present at the live fire to see what lessons they learned.
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