Conserve Military Equipment - It Will Not Let You Down In Battle

This Red Army instructional poster depicts two soldiers operating a Model 1910 Maxim machine gun on a Sokolov mount ("Pulemyot Maxima na stanke Sokolova") in the snow. The panels at the bottom show how to clean the weapon and how to load water into the cooling jacket. The Model 1910 was the standard heavy machine gun of both the Russian Imperial Army in World War I and the Red Army until 1943, the Model 1910 was a water-cooled weapon firing 7.62mm (.30 caliber) rifle cartridges. During the 1939-1940 Winter War with Finland, untrained Red Army soldiers were not schooled in using the Model 1910 in cold weather. Posters like this one helped the green Red Army recruits to use the weapon in many winter theatres during the war.