aka Bathe Your Bearings in Blood
Story, first published: Amazing Stories, Dec. 1950
as Bathe Your Bearings in Blood
"Skirmish" is such an untypical anti-technology story, concerning an invasion of aliens who animate a revolt of the machines against their human masters, that one wonders why it was reprinted and anthologized so often. It ends with the newspaperman hero taking a stand to fight against the machines and his defiance only a "skirmish" in humanity's battle for freedom.
Ewald, Robert J.: When the Fires Burn High and the Wind is from the North, p.57