Just coincidentally, there was a history programme on the BBC2 on Monday titled "The Machine Gun and Skye's Band of Brothers" which discusses the development of the machine gun, its military adoption and social impact resulting from entire companies, often recruited from the same community, being gutted by machine gun fire - in this case the Portree Company of the Cameron Highlanders. (The latter part isn't quite 'What was Saving Private Ryan complaining about, WWI was much worse).

If any one's interested in the topic and can watch BBC online, it's available for rewatching for the rest of the week.