I believe that to be the case. First episode ended with him marching towards the front with Chesty et al with a 1917 on his back, IIRC.
Interesting picture... wonder how badly he is burning his hand. 
Well, remember that the M1917A1 was water cooled. That gave it a big edge in battle over air cooled machine guns, which typically had to have their barrels changed during combat due to overheating. In fact, if any other machine gun had been used in that battle, the Marines could have easily been overrun. But because they had these two M1917A1 water cooled machine guns operating, they were able to lay down a deadly continuous fire into the oncoming Japanese ranks. The only thing that the Marines had to do was to keep feeding them ammo. A pause in the fighting to change barrels would have no doubt been disastrous in this battle.
Many Americans don't realize what a patriot John Browning was. For he donated almost all of his work for the US military in developing so many fantastic machine guns for them. The government had unfortunately been lax about adopting the M1917 at first. But once war was declared in April of 1917, Browning himself gave a personal demonstration of the gun to leaders of Congress and the US military a few weeks later, in a desperate effort to get it approved for production ASAP. During this demonstration, Browning personally fired over 40,000 rounds from the gun, without a single malfunction of any kind.
Witnesses were totally blown away by this demonstration. Some key people who were not present were even skeptical of the results, as the reliability had been so extraordinary. Some even openly wondered if the gun's performance that day had not been a fluke. Browning was so dismayed by this skepticism, that he offered a second test a couple of weeks later, to prove it had not been a fluke. This time, all 5 generals responsible for oversight were present. In this test, to illustrate how the gun was capable of such extremely sustained fire, Browning fired the M1917 continually for a full 48 minutes, only pausing briefly at times to insert new belts of ammo.
Needless to say, the generals were all impressed, and they immediately approved the M1917 for adoption by the US Army. It was this amazing ability to constantly fire for such long sustained periods, that allowed these two 1917A1's to play such a major role in this battle on Guadalcanal that will be featured in this coming Sunday's episode of "The Pacific". The Japanese must have thought that these guns just could not continue to fire so long, without suffering any kind of malfunction. But the two guns did, and history was made.
So in an indirect, but very crucial way, John Moses Browning was also a hero that day. For his genius had created a machine gun so very tough and reliable, that it ended up performing perfectly in actual combat, just like it had done in Browning's hands during the evaluation tests.
The Japanese had nothing like the M1917A1 in their arsenal. All of their machine guns, both light and heavy, had bare barrels just cooled by the air. Their light machine guns were also limited to using 30 round magazines. The older Model 11 light machine gun was know for having serious reliability problems, and often malfunctioned as well. While the later Model 96 that replaced it was much more reliable, it was still limited greatly in its firepower by its air cooled barrel and use of 30 round magazines.
Japan's heavy machine guns were also quite limited, compared to the M1917A1. Besides being air cooled, the Type 92 heavy machine had a slow rate of fire ( only 200 rounds a minute, compared to 600 rounds per minute of the A1917A1 ) This limitation was mainly due to the gun using ammo strips that again only held 30 rounds
In contrast to these Japanese guns, the M1917A1 operated like a lawn mower, literally mowing down the enemy when they made Banzai charges. The Japanese were forced to change their fighting tactics after Guadalcanal. For the Banzai charges that had worked so well fighting in Korea and China, proved to be an utter disaster when employed against American positions held by soldiers armed with machine guns designed by John Browning.
Here are two official portraits that were taken of Browning with his beloved M1917. He was 60 years old when he invented it. It is too bad that he could not have been given a Medal of Honor too.
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