Actually the Lewis was purchased by the Army Air Service, the US Navy and the US Marine Corps.
The reason why the Lewis was never adopted by the US Army best shows how "stupid" senior officers can be. In order to demonstrate how light the Lewis was, Colonel Lewis arranged for his demo model to be carried on board an aircraft. This enraged the reviewing officers who considered arming an aircraft to be totally unnecessary. They refused to purchae the Lewis. So Colonel Lewis retired from the Army and took his design to Europe.
The "Belgian Rattlesnake" was one of the most popular light machineguns that the British used.
And when the Marines were told that they would have to exchange their Lewis's for the POS Chauchat......they were enraged!
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The reason that the American Army does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices chaos on a daily basis.
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