The Vickers Machine Gun
The Vickers machine gun was designed off of the Maxim machine gun, which had great success in the late 19th century. The British army adopted it in 1912 and used alongside Maxim guns for the early years of the war. Each infantry company would have Vickers guns allocated to it's machine gun companies, until it was replaced by the Lewis gun in 1916. After this, the Vickers was only allocated to the Machine Gun Corps, and was used primarily in defensive and indirect fire roles, instead of as an infantry support weapon.
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Lewis Machine Gun
The Lewis machine gun was designed in 1911 in the United States and was licensed by BSA for English production in 1914. It wasn't until late 1916 when it replaced the Vickers Machine gun as the primary infantry machine gun. The CEF pioneered a new platoon formation, which included 4 sections, one of which being a machine gun section armed with two Lewis guns. These would be used to suppress the enemy in the trenches or as a defensive machine gun once the objective had been taken until the machine gun corps could arrive.
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Stokes 3 Inch Mortar
The Stokes 3 inch mortar was designed in early 1915 to match the German Minenwerfer, which was a portable mortar that would be commanded at the battalion level. While the design was superior in many ways to older models, the rounds were completely different in size and would need to be newly manufactured. This made adoption of the Stokes difficult, but it was eventually adopted in the summer of 1915. A company of Stokes mortars was attached to each battalion, as organic fire support, while every brigade would have a mortar battalion attached to act as fire support to the division.
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