One of the most recognizable mass characters of the 1917 Revolution is a sailor, girded with a cross to a cross with machine-gun belts with cartridges. It looks, of course, dashing, but it remains unclear why the sailors did this at all. Wouldn't it have been better to carry Maxim's machine-gun belts in special containers with a handle, which, by the way, were attached to each crew from the factory?
"Why carry when you can wear ..."
The Maxim machine gun was far from the only one used in the First World War. At that time, even the first light machine guns appeared. However, it was Maxim who became one of the most popular. And with him Russia met its collapse in the form of the fall of the empire and the subsequent rise in the form of the first socialist state. In addition to numerous advantages, the early Maxims also had disadvantages. The machine gun was very heavy. The weapon itself weighed 27 kg, and together with the machine, cans for cooling and ammunition, the mass of the calculation increased to 67 kg. All this was so cumbersome that in the imperial documents, the Maxim machine gun passed according to the nomenclature of the "artillery system".
Each calculation was served by three or more soldiers (during the Civil War, the calculation often reached up to 7 people). Pulling the machine gun was not easy. It was even more difficult to carry cartridges with you everywhere. Moreover, in a combat situation, they were regularly lost. Therefore, even before the revolution during the First World War, the soldiers and the sailor thought of wrapping themselves in cartridge belts and not taking boxes at all. A set of ribbons could be distributed to all members of the crew, which greatly simplified and accelerated the operation of the weapon.
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The tradition of "swaddling" with machine-gun belts from the navy has come. The first to do this were the marines, who at that time were selected from ordinary sailors and used for landing operations. It was very inconvenient to drag the ammunition boxes during the landing. However, they did this not only in Russia. Austrian, German and French soldiers also often wrapped themselves in machine-gun belts during the First World War.
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Finally, there was one more important point in relation to the Russian, and then the Red and White army. The main machine gun in the vastness of his native Fatherland was Maxim, who used 7.62 × 54 mm R. And the main rifle was the "Three-Line" (what a surprise!) With the same cartridge - 7.62 × 54 mm R. It was not so easy to get an extra cartridge belt for ammunition, and most importantly, carrying two or three rifle cartridge belts was frankly inconvenient. It's another matter if you wrap yourself up crosswise with machine gun belts and use them as an impromptu bandolier. In addition, if the machine-gun crew urgently needed the already equipped belts in the detachment, the shooters could quickly satisfy the cartridge hunger of the crew at the expense of their own ammunition.
If you want to know even more interesting things, then you should read about why chekists in the 1920s preferred to wear leather jackets and raincoats.
A source: https://novate.ru/blogs/220821/60260/
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