German Use of the term "Belgian Rattlesnake"

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FullerH

Joined
Nov 25, 1998
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Michael Dye uses the following as his signature, along with a picture of the Revolutionary War "Rattlesnake Flag":
Michael Dye said:
...the Rattlesnake is found in no other quarter of the world besides America. She never begins an attack, nor once
engaged, ever surrenders: She is therefore an emblem of magnanimity and true courage...she never wounds 'till she has generously given notice, even to her enemy, and cautioned him against the danger of treading on her.
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This has led me to wonder at the term that I have heard that the World War I German soldiers used for the Lewis Light Machine Gun, "Belgian Rattlesnake". How would a German soldier have any idea what in Hell a rattlesnake was? Perhaps one of our German member can answer this for me.
 
Found this via Google on "Belgian Rattlesnake." It's from Guns magazine, March 2000.

Belgian Rattlesnake

The Germans weren't slow to note the implications of the light, portable machine gun. They bitterly dubbed the Lewis the "Belgian Rattlesnake" because of their enemy's habit of ambushing raiding parties with a sudden, furious hail of copper-jacketed venom. The highly practical Germans were quick to exploit every Lewis they could capture and included its care and feeding as an integral part of instruction of all new machine gunners.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BQY/is_3_46/ai_59281217
 
I think that it's simply due to education.

Cougar Allen said:
The sound of a machine gun is often described as "rattling."
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Yeah, but the German word for rattlesnake is "Klapperschlange". And a machine gun doesn't "klapper". ;)
"Klappern" usually means "to rattle", they're still different. Unlike "to rattle", "klappern" doesn't imply a rapid succession of the sounds.

But there's the word "rattern", and that's what automatic fire sounds like...it obviously has the same origin as "to rattle".
 
Books.

Zoos.

Photographs.

We are talking about the 20th century here. I've never been to Germany either, but I know it is there.
 
I think there was a recent article on the Lewis M.G. Curiously, although the Lewis MG originated in the US, even the U.S. troops who had been equipped with it before we entered the war (Marines IIRC) were not issued it for combat in WWI. Instead they got a POS French castoff that routinely appears on lists of the worst weapons of WWI. :rolleyes: It was soldiers of other nations who made the reputation of the Lewis.
 
I split this thread to get rid of the political BS that was crudding it up. You can find the political end of this thread here.
 
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