8 leaves, 12mo (143 x 93 mm). In French. Finely drawn in black ink on onionskin throughout, one page text, 11 pages diagrams, including 4 double-page and one with a fold-out. (Staining to outer margins from adhesive.) Contemporary marbled wrappers, hand-lettered title on label on front wrapper (endleaf becoming disbound). 

 

The text leaf provides a name and description of each component of the Vickers machine gun, with numbers corresponding to the finely detailed diagrams which follow.  The Vickers gun was originally produced for the British Army, and required a 6- to 8-person team to operate.  It was in service from the First World War through the 1960s.  France ordered 2,000 Vickers guns in 1914, with another 12,125 issued to the U. S. Army in France. “The Vickers gun accompanied the British Expeditionary Forces to France in 1914, and in the years that followed, proved itself to be the most reliable weapon on the battlefield” (Hogg and Batchelor, Weapons & War Machines, p.62).