[BlueTrain]

You are correct about it being an individual weapon, which rather sets it apart from the practice in other armies with regards to the squad automatic weapon. I believe that even in other armies that used the BAR or a variation thereof, it was treated as a crew served weapon. Most other armies definitely treated their squad automatic that way. In the French army of 1940, the No. 2 man on the light machine gun was armed only with a .32 automatic. On the other hand, it may be that the BAR had a lower basic load of ammunition than other similiar weapons and the BAR gunner had to carry it all himself. The British practice was to distribute magazines among the other members of the rifle section to give something like at least 500 rounds for the Bren but there was still a No. 2 Bren gunner. However, the basic load for a rifleman was only 50 rounds of rifle ammo, or one bandolier. That would have been supplemented by one or two more bandolier's worth of ammo before going into action, however. That did not change until quite recently, either. According to the British manual for the SLR published in the 1960s (I don't have my copy in front of me), a rifleman only had three magazines.