Mangoose
Arcane
Well now you're being pedantic, but I can't complain because I was being pedantic lol.You might be referring to fireteams, not firesquads. A squad is much bigger than a fireteam and a firing squad is something else entirely. More importantly, fireteams are a fairly limited phenomenon. For instance, if we look at something like the former Soviet military, the structure of which persists in modern CIS armies, the smallest military unit would indeed be a squad, consisting of up to sixteen individuals depending on its branch (designated medic squads traditionally consist of only four people, often unarmed, allowing for easier evacuation of the wounded). This changes the distribution of LMGs drastically. Furthermore, you will find very few shotguns in any given modern army or police unit. This is very much a US-centric phenomenon. Most armies rely almost exclusively on automatic rifles for most of their personnel, with specialised weaponry given to specialised roles. Not knives, clubs, anti-materiel rifles or shotguns. Even in your fairly specific example, three out of four men would be carrying a rifle.Except, they aren't. A firesquad is (usually) armed with one regular rifleman, squad leader with rifle (or perhaps shotgun) and grenade launcher, a light machine gun, and an assistant to the LMG (said assistant carrying a rifle). Light arms are for assault, and it doesn't really matter what they carry as long as they flank/assault the enemy while the enemy is suppressed (well, it does matter what they carry depending on the situation). "Heavy" arms is for fire support aka suppression, and the assistant has a rifle because he's at long range. If LMG guy falls assistant takes over, rifle doesn't matter. Fire and movement/maneuver, learn about it sometime.
I left it out quite purposefully, since it's largely irrelevant to W2, which has no suppressive fire mechanics and only a fairly rudimentary depiction of explosive weaponry, but there you go. X-COM was a much more interesting game in this regard. Here's a picture of a glorious Swiss army squad armed with glorious Swiss rifles next to their equally glorious Swiss APC:
Yeah, I should've said fireteams. Squad in US is either 2 or 3 fireteams (Army vs Marines).
But I guess I was trying to say that while rifles are prevalent in number they are not the only tactical focus. In the majority of cases - in every nation's army - ~half of the squad members support the heavy gun and ~half carry out the assault. Not that the gun group doesn't shoot, but they shoot to cover the assault group and to support the LMG. Ex: http://www.bayonetstrength.150m.com/Tactics/Formations/rifle_squad.htm
I suppose my point is not that rifles were not used, but that not all riflemen were preoccupied with the main purpose of killing with the rifle. Actually, the assault group doesn't necessarily actually "assault" with their rifles. If they can indirectly use their rifles and grenades to flush the enemy out of their position, that lets the fire group rain hell on them.