Ottoman machine gunners

Officers inspect the results of firing practice with two Ottoman MG09 heavy machine gun teams in a training camp, circa 1915 (note the tents on the horizon at upper left). These weapons, purchased before the war, are a 7.65-mm MG09 export version of the German 7.92-mm MG08 heavy machine gun, which used bullets of a different calibre. The MG09 was mounted on a tripod in the same fashion as the British Maxim Gun, rather than on the sled arrangement used for the MG08; this difference is the easiest way to tell the two weapons apart. The Germans began supplying the Ottoman Empire with MG08 machine guns when direct transport links between the two empires were re-established after the conquest of Serbia in late 1915, but by this time the fighting at Gallipoli had ended.