[Mike Irwin]

"Mike, but I still believe that walking (not running) toward entrenched machineguns, while firing rifles that would have seemed to make no noise would not have kept anyone's heads down."

No, the artillery would have done that. By late 1917-1918 walking barrages were becoming a primary tactic for infantry assaults. Gone were the days of the 3 week "softening up" barrage on the front lines. All that did was signal to the Germans where the assault was going to take place and allow them to stack reserves in that sector.

The most successful attacks of the war were done with barrages that lasted only, at best, a few hours, designed to force the Germans into their bunkers and cut holes in the wire to clear the path of advance.

The intent was that once the assault troops were close enough to the trenches that the barrage would either lift to rear areas or cease, they would be close enough for the Pedersen devices to provide adequate levels of fire to deal with the Germans as they began to recover and come out of their bunkers.

You have to remember, the Pedersen fired what was essentially a pistol cartridge with an effective range of, at best, 150 yards. It wasn't intended to provide walking cover over the entire expanse of No Man's Land.

It's also very doubtful that in battlefield conditions individual rifle fire, either from a Pedersen device or a full power round, would have been distinguishable at all. Sort of like the "the ping of the Garand clip hitting the ground cost many American GIs their lives..." myth. Battlefields are incredibly noisy places.


" Nor is there any evidence that Russian SMGs did so, either"

Conversely, there's no real evidence that they didn't, either. See my point about how artillery support was being used in 1917-1918.

"Still, by 1936, it was pretty apparent that the Great War was likely to be renamed World War ONE, and not too far in the future."

Uhm... No. Certain people, like Churchill, were predicting another general war (and he was, even that late viewed by many to be a war-mongering idiot), but even in 1936 it certainly wasn't a foregone conclusion. Diplomacy was still seen as being an effective bar to another war, at least amongst the allied powers in Europe. Remember, Chamberlain's "Peace in Our Time" from the Munich Agreement happened in late September 1938. The British, who had started something of a rearmament program in 1935-36, even considered shutting that down because diplomacy had won out. Or so it seemed.

As for the United States, where most in the military and government apparently considered US participation in any potential war questionable, at best, by 1936 work on the new Garand was showing such promise that everyone realized that it would be silly to abandon it, so money was appropriated in increasing amounts to both finish it and field it.