The Loose Association of Wargamers

Back cover image from the 1970’s Corgi edition of Sven Hassel’s “Assignment Gestapo”:

The MG looks like a twin-mounted Besa, but with a side-mounted drum magazine.
Anyone know what it is?

Vickers K?

Not seeing it...
Drum’s mounted on the side of the weapon, not on top like a K.
And the pistol grip seems to be of the... ahem... so-called ‘donkey dong’* shape peculiar to the Eastern bloc.
Most of the barrel length (and all of the gas tube) is covered in a casing like a Besa - the K had an exposed barrel & gas tube.

*I’m not making this up... that’s what they call them.

Don't overthink this, it's an artists impression of a fictional incident. If you blow the picture up, it shows a tripod mounting that looks a little like the 'heavy' stand for the MG 34/42 series, a top mounted pannier magazine & what look to be some form of spade/hand grip, but no stock.

That said, given that this is meant to be the Russian front, a DP LMG carried a drum magazine, although it carried a stock. The Germans captured plenty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_S ... chine_guns

Or it could be a Reibel MG, captured from the French & used by rear area units https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reibel_machine_gun although that had a side mounted drum.

Or one of the multitude of other weapons used by the various German allies and enemies that were reused by the chronically overstretched Wehrmacht....

EDIT the DShK HMG also looked a bit like that, although that was almost universally belt fed.

Reibel!
That twin mounting is the clincher!
Complete with“Donkey”-like appendage and side-mounted mags.
Thankyou!

As far as the ‘artists impression’ idea goes - I’d say it’s probaly a lot harder for an illustrator to ‘invent’ a piece of hardware that’ll pass muster from scratch than it is to open a textbook and copy a real example. (The tank on the front of that same cover is recognizably a Tiger, for example, and the rest of the Corgi SH covers feature equally identifiable kit.)

Yes, it's definately a machine gun.