I was a Maxim once

>Once I was hated: my crew hated carrying me during advance & hated me even more during retreat.
>The enemies hated me as well, for I took away hundreds of their comrades.
>Day in and day out I would mow down the advancing hordes of the enemy, taking the lives of hundreds of someone's loved ones.
>I don't even remember how many gunners I had then. Some were discharged after they could no longer handle the stress, for some the first time anyone noticed what was happening was when they took their own lives, still some died of their wounds while still holding my spade handles, pressing the butterfly trigger until the belt ran out & the assistant gunner took the dead man's place.
>Then came peace, I was in bad shape and was put in storage with cleaning & greasing as the only maintenance.
>Years later I was taken out of storage and given a complete overhaul, once again I'd be carried by a crew who hated every second of it. I didn't care, for when I'd be taken to the range my crew would always argue who got to shoot first, it was then that I knew I was loved.
>Years went by, hundreds of young men, just boys really, would carry me, curse my weight and then fight over who gets to shoot me first. It was good; being shot without anyone dying, hearing the boys' exaggerated stories of their adventures on their last leave, the same old jokes told by the same aging instructors to the boys who always stayed the same age.
>But it didn't last, one day I was given another overhaul & put in storage, there were rumors that I along with my sisters would be scrapped; the politicians were opposed to military weapons being surplussed & sold to civilians.
>Then the day came, I was taken out of storage, thrown on a truck and taken to a recycling plant.
>The armorer didn't want to sign me off.
>The truck driver didn't want to take me and my sisters to the plant.
>The workers on the plant didn't want to scrap me.
>But politicians wanted.
>I was a medium machinegun once.