This is a fine example of a fairly scarce French Model 1924/29 light machine gun manufactured by the French Ordnance at the Chatellerault Arsenal. It has al all blued metal finish with It has a fixed walnut stock and pistol grip with a very short forend. Produced after WWI, the Model of 1924, was intended to replace the original WWI Chauchat Model 1915, light rifle, with this model the M29 design being an even better/improved design over the M1924. The M29 was based on design aspects taken from both the Browning and Berthier machine guns with the most notable improvement being the use of a newly designed 7.5 French "rimless" cartridge. This model proved to be a very successful and popular light machine gun that was used all the way up through WWII by Vichy French and even into the 1950s by the French colonies. It uses a top mounted 20 shot magazine with a gas operated, long stroke operating rod, very similar to the M240 in use by the U.S. Army today. It has all machined parts and components, so its very durable and robust. It has two unique features; one being that it has "two triggers", the front one is for semi-automatic fire and the rear trigger is "full-automatic". The other being it has an offset front sight with a large tangent rear sight that is mounted directly over the center of the rear of the receiver. The interesting aspect of the rear sight is that the aperture-peep swings over to the left and when not in use folds back over the center of the receiver to protect it. The receiver is marked: "Me 1924/M29/A8449" with the matching serial number "8449" stamped on top of the barrel. It comes with one original 20 shot magazine and the original folding bipod mounted on the front end of the barrel. Normally it was fitted with a mono-pod on the underside of the buttstock, however this one is missing.