From experience as an army reservist and from modern documentaries/books, soldiers are taught to retain their spent magazine on their kit after performing a reload. Usually if they are in a rush they would keep them in an easy access "dump bag" attached to their webbing/vest.
I'm curious about what the standard operating procedure was for armies during combat in the past. Hollywood and video games want us to believe that empty magazines were tossed on the ground when you run out of ammunition. Were soldiers during World War II/Korea or during the Vietnam war taught to throw away their spent magazines during the heat of combat? Or were they taught to keep them somewhere accessible when reloading? If they tossed them, did they pick them up afterwards? Was there an ample supply of magazines for soldiers to take during resupply?
Examples: M1 Carbine magazines BAR magazines M1 Thompson magazines M1 Garand metal clips MP40 magazines M14 / M16 magazines
Thank you for your analysis.
Although we are encouraged to retain the magazines, technically there is no obligation to do so. They are categorised, in the US military, as expendable items. Of course, someone has still got to pay for them, which is why in training in particular they are retained, and if your supply system is limited, you may wish to retain them for pragmatic reasons, but if you have more pressing things on your mind than placing your magazine back in your webbing when people are shooting at you, nobody will fault you for it. There was certainly no accounting for magazines when I returned from either Iraq or Afghanistan.
In WW2, magazines weren't much of an issue, with most weapons (even those with detachable magazines such as Less Enfield) being reloaded by use of stripper clips or en-bloc clips. I cannot respond specifically to BARs/M1 Carbines, but I suspect that pragmatically, they are easily replaced if lost.