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Herbert W. McBride

Herbert W. McBride was a Captain in the Twenty-first Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force, during the First World War.

He was a sniper and commander of a machine gun unit known as the "Emma Gees" and was the author of two seminal books on the Great War: "A Rifleman Went To War" (1933) and "The Emma Gees" (1918).

He was born into a military family in Waterloo Indiana, on October 15th 1873. His grandfather had served in the Mexican War and his father had served in the Union Cavalry during the American Civil War. Following the war, his father rose to the rank of Colonel in the Indiana National Guard and was appointed to the Indiana Supreme Court. Following his father and grandfathers footsteps, Herbert also trained and soon qualified as a Lawyer.

From an early age Herbert hunted game and participated in rifle competitions. He honed his skills at Camp Perry, where he also participated in the National Matches.

While still a young man, Herbert contracted tuberculosis and upon receiving medical advice to change climate, he soon traveled to the western United States (Colorado and New Mexico) so to meet some of few the remaining 'Old West' gunfighters - including such legends as Bat Masterson.

He later traveled to the Klondike during the gold rush in 1898-1900 and later enlisted in the Indiana National Guard, rising to the rank of Captain by 1907. He was posted to an artillery battery and was introduced to the infamous Gatling Gun.

Immediately before the Great War, he traveled to British Columbia and hunted large game for a railroad company. When the war started, he quickly volunteered in a Canadian rifle company in Ottawa, hoping to see action as quickly as possible.

He was commissioned as an Officer, but was soon reduced to a Private following several 'drunken incidents'. He shipped to England for training and then moved to the Western Front, where he participated in battles around Ypres and the Somme throughout 1916.

In his book, "A Rifleman Went To War," he recounts killing more than 100 German soldiers as a sniper. This book is highly regarded by students of riflery. Amongst other things it is still mandatory reading in the U.S. Marine Corps Sniping School and is considered one of the best first-person accounts of World War I, often being compared favorably to "Storm of Steel" by Ernst Junger.

Like Junger, McBride is unusual in that he writes enthusiastically of his war experiences, deriding Hollywood "sob stuff" pictured in the movies after the war.

McBride notes in his book that by the end of 1916 he felt in his heart "the game was over," and a series of alcoholic binges resulted in his court martial and dismissal from the Canadian Expeditionary Force in February 1917.

He later joined the United States Army's 38th Division, serving out the war as a marksmanship and sniping instructor at Camp Perry. He resigned in October 1918. After the war, he worked in the lumber industry in Oregon for most of his later years. He died in Indianapolis of a sudden heart failure on March 17, 1933, shortly after finishing "A Rifleman Went To War." He was 60.