The armies of eight other nations—Belgium, Finland, Greece, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Serbia—also used the Chauchat machine rifle in fairly large numbers during and after World War I.

The Chauchat was one of the first light, automatic rifle-caliber weapons designed to be carried and fired by a single operator and an assistant, without a heavy tripod or a team of gunners.

It set a precedent for several subsequent 20th-century firearm projects, being a portable, yet full-power automatic weapon built inexpensively and in very large numbers.

[citation needed] The Chauchat combined a pistol grip, an in-line stock, a detachable magazine, and a selective fire capability in a compact package of manageable weight (20 pounds, 9 kilograms) for a single soldier.

The Chauchat is the only mass produced fully-automatic weapon actuated by long recoil, a Browning-designed system already applied in 1906 to the Remington Model 8 semi-automatic rifle: extraction and ejection of the empties takes place when the barrel returns forward, while the bolt is retained in the rear position.

The magazines in particular were the cause of about 75% of the stoppages or cessations of fire; they were made of thin metal and open on one side, allowing for the entry of mud and dust.

Besides the 8mm Lebel version, the Chauchat machine rifle was also manufactured in U.S. .30-06 Springfield and in 7.65×53mm Argentine Mauser caliber to arm the American Expeditionary Forces (A.E.F.)

The project was led from the beginning by Colonel Louis Chauchat, a graduate from Ecole Polytechnique, assisted by senior armorer Charles Sutter.

Spurred by General Joseph Joffre, it was decided to adopt the Chauchat, above all else because the pre-war CS (Chauchat-Sutter) machine rifle was already in existence, thoroughly tested, and designed to fire the 8mm Lebel service ammunition.

[7] Furthermore, due to its projected low manufacturing costs and relative simplicity, the newly adopted (1915) CSRG machine rifle could be mass-produced by a converted peacetime industrial plant.

Paul Ribeyrolles was the general manager of the Gladiator company, a peacetime manufacturer of motor cars, motorcycles, and bicycles located in Pre-Saint-Gervais (a northern suburb of Paris).

The fairly large Gladiator factory was thus converted into an arms manufacturer in 1915 and became the principal industrial producer of Chauchat machine rifles during World War I.

Later on, in 1918, a subsidiary of Compagnie des forges et acieries de la marine et d'Homecourt named SIDARME and located in Saint-Chamond, Loire, also participated in the mass manufacture of CSRGs.

[citation needed] The Mle 1915 Chauchat's performance on the battlefield drew decidedly mixed reviews from the users when the war was stagnating in the mud of the trenches in 1916.

As documented from the original American and French military archives, most of these Mle 1918 Chauchats in .30-06 were flawed from the beginning due to incomplete chamber reaming and other dimensional defects acquired during the manufacturing process at the Gladiator factory.

After the United States entered World War I in April 1917, the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) arrived in France without automatic weapons or field artillery.

A modern-day test firing of the M1918 .30-06 Chauchat was performed at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in July 1973, but no particular problem was described in the official report, which is accessible on open file.

Their testing, which is reported in "The Chauchat Machine Rifle" volume, did expose severe extraction problems caused by incorrect chamber measurements and other substandard manufacturing.

During World War I, in 1918, the preserved U.S. archival record also documents that American inspectors at the Gladiator factory had rejected about 40% of the .30-06 Chauchat production,[6] while the remaining 60% proved problematic when they reached the front lines.

The qualitative leap in a few years is enormous and modern squads and platoons still function in the same manner, albeit with more sophisticated equipment such as portable radios and night vision devices.

As the center of the tactical device, the Chauchat gunner (tireur) would expect casualties - but also decorations:"Soldat Carpentier, 20e RI, near Nogentel, Oise, 31 August 1918... he advanced on the enemy, firing while walking, the rest of the platoon led by Sergeant Berthault.

At the same battle, General Franchet d'Espèrey the commander of 6th Army, successfully introduced specially trained squads of infantry whose role was to accompany the tanks (chars d'assaut, as they were called).

In a series of instructions in 1918, General Philippe Pétain sought to achieve greater cooperation between air power, artillery and tanks, all acting in support of the assaulting infantry; measures which bore fruit in the counter-offensives of summer 1918.

Captured terrain would be defended by emplaced Chauchat fire bases suppressing enemy counter-attacks until heavier machine guns could be brought from the rear.

[7] The Belgian Army, which held a large sector of the Western Front but left its arms industry on the territories occupied by the Germans, started to acquire Chauchats for its infantry in the spring of 1916, getting over 1400 in a year, all in 8 mm Lebel.

[18] In order to simplify squad-level logistics in the spring of 1917 a version chambered in their standard 7.65×53mm Mauser ammunition was tested, which had a new curved box magazine lacking cutouts for the mud to get inside.

[18] During the war, Belgium acquired almost 7000 Chauchats, and reportedly about a half of those were either produced in 7.65 or retrofitted to the modelle 1915-17 standard, with 3250 in active service and an unknown number (taking into account combat losses) in reserve.

[27] One remaining specimen of these Polish Chauchats in 8mm Mauser is preserved and visible in the MoD (Ministry of Defence) National Firearms Centre which is a part of the Royal Armouries in Leeds, Great Britain.

Colonel Chauchat had already formulated this tactical vision since the early 1900s, in his many proposals to the highest levels of the French military command structure, including General Joffre.

Experimentation was carried out at the Manufacture d'Armes de Châtellerault during the early 1920s, culminating in the adoption of the new light machine gun (in French: fusil-mitrailleur), the FM Mle 1924.