It's 75 years ago and you and your buddies are in a hole in Belgian soil facing the Siegfried line trying to keep warm. You are in charge of a tripod mounter M1919, and the holes on either side are pretty far away. But so is the war. It's a quiet sector. Until it isn't.
You go to hose down some Germans emerging from the fog but nothing happens when you pull the trigger.
Frozen!
It doesn't work and you were too green to know to watch for that.
Ok, what froze?
I honestly don't know what would freeze in the mechanism.
I am thinking condensation, and morning frost and breath vapor would accumulate and permeates and infiltrates the weapon, getting into the firing pin channel, or summat, and staying there as a small block of ice.
Also, the lubricants would thicken a bit in the cold. Maybe not stopping it up, but slowing it.
But those are just guesses.
This guy knows.
That gun probably sat on that 'parapet' for days. Unfired. So the cold and any freeze/thaw cycles have had their way with it.
Once a few rounds go off, the gun warms itself.
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