My father was the BAR man in his squad before battlefield seniority made him a platoon sergeant.
He said it was tops for showing careless Germans who thought they were out of accurate small arms range that they were wrong.
He also said it wasn’t up to snuff against the MG42, but he once took out a MG42 team via textbook blind fire at night. He presighted the BAR on a likely spot, and set up limiting stakes. When it got dark he heard the MG team setting up where he’d guessed, and put three magazines downrange and took off, and he could hear screaming from the target. In the morning they found a shot-up MG42, a perforated helmet, a lot of blood, bandages but no bodies, the Germans had taken the injured and dead with them.
He seemed to be a little proud of that, and indicated most BAR duels with German MG teams didn’t end well for the BAR gunner unless he’d gotten “the drop” on the Germans.
Tough business. Great old weapon. I got to fire one once, it was amazing.
That 20 round BAR magazine vs a belt fed MG-42’s 1200+ rpm must have been a real handicap.