Tell us about your museum. Well the museum itself was it's a private
collection of two individuals, myself and another colleague Paul Simms and we
have always had a lifelong interest within the events of the early part of
World War two. I'm more of a gun man and Paul is more of a paperwork and people
person and as a result with bits we bought for
you to have a look at today actually hits one of the gun down here we own
which is Bren gun which is mine and the tunic here which is one that belongs to
my colleague which he's kindly allowed us to bring down here for the week. And this
particular tunic was worn during the Dunkirk operation wasn't it?
The HMS Malcolm did several trips over to Dunkirk during the course of the
evacuation it was a destroyer and the destroyers were used to, because they
were fast they were able to get relatively close into shore and we had a
number of them and a lot of the older destroyers particularly were seen as
fairly expendable due to being First World War vintage. Malcolm itself as I
said did several trips over and on what they believed to be their final trip the
captain decided that it would be a fantastic idea to actually get dressed
in your finest and time for pink gins chaps haven't we done well and let us
celebrate the fact that we have survived several trips this hell
on earth which is Dunkirk so all of the officers get dressed into their finery
of their mess jackets only to rather than sit down to dinner get a signal to
tell them to these it's about time you actually went back because things have
got a lot worse please can we go back to Dunkirk so HMS Malcolm has the rare
distinction of being the only ship that we were aware of where the officers were
commanding the vessel dressed in their mess jackets for their final few trips
over and this is the we believe to be the very jacket that lieutenant then
Lieutenant Simmons was wearing at the time. What a very British story. It's a
private purchase so one assumes that lieutenant Simmons was a man of
personal means and the insignia on there at the moment
is that of Commodore because the despite the the small size of this it would
appear that Mr. Simmons luckily managed to keep his stature and slightness right
the way through his naval career because this was the still in use in in 1965
when he retired from the Navy as a as a Commodore. It's incredibly tiny I
don't think I could fit. It is so small. So do we know about his life in the Navy?
We do know that obviously he survived the events of Dunkirk he was at the time
his on HMS Malcolm and had a very fruitful career as most naval officers
would throughout the course of the war and moved from destroyers on to larger
vessels obviously getting promoted as he went. Okay well thank you very much and
what is this that we've got down here? This one here is a Bren gun this is the
mark one Bren this is the British Army standard light machine gun of 1939 back
in the late 1920s the British Army started to look for a means to replace
the Lewis machine light machine gun from World War one and also the Vickers heavy
machine gun and what they actually were looking for was to try and get a
general-purpose machine gun that could perform the roles at both do something
like a Vickers is is designed to be in a fixed position there's a crew of six it
is effectively bullet sized artillery is the best way to think about it it's not
something that you want to be lugging around any further than you actually
need to do whereas the Lewis was more portable it was as opposed to the
Vickers water-cooling it was air-cooled and as a result it was so portable could be
taken right up the front with troops that were advancing and the British army were
hopefully looking to try and achieve the best of both worlds with one gun. During
the course of the first set of trials it became abundantly clear that the only
gun that was going to be capable of performing the role that the Vickers did
was the Vickers so that was taken off the table but the Lewis itself was still
quite a cumbersome sizes weapon fairly heavy and they
were looking for something a little more light a bit more portable so a number of
manufacturers from around the world were invited to submit
their designs of machine guns and the Czechoslovakians entered in to the
competition a gun called the zb-26 after the trials it was deemed that it was
whilst it had faults these faults were not something work that could not be
dealt with by further development however it was by far and away
outperformed all the other guns put forward. The same process was then done
just as a checks and balance or supposed to go through the process again but this
time they the Czechs had gone away and they implemented the recommendations
that the British had put forward as a result of the trials this time it would
being the latest model which with the ZB 27 and as a result of that again by far
and away the best gun and at which point the the guys at Brno and Enfield
armories respectively decide that it's time to sit down and actually sort of
get the perfect gun for the British Army. This is very typical of procurement
during peacetime at this stage as now has always has been the British Army
don't rely on conscription you are a professional standing force and
therefore the quality of the equipment that you can put forward as opposed to
having every single male over a certain age being part of your military forces
you can afford to spend money and you can afford to have the best equipment
where possible and what resulted after a number of adaptations is this this is
the the mark one Bren and apart from the barrel itself which is due to faults that
were discovered during the fighting of the Battle of France the battle and gas
regulator on them there they had to be changed subsequently after the battle
other than that this is completely correct the specification of what the
British Army took over in 1939 when they went to France in preparation for world
war fighting on mainland European World War two. There were 30,000 of these
produced and when they finished after the retreat from Dunkirk and then the
subsequent re-retreat from the channel from the Atlantic ports through operation
Cycle and operation Ariel which are lesser-known than that of
Dunkirk and unfortunately tend to meld into the retelling as one congealed lump but
quite separate operations within their own respect. Of those 30,000 guns that
are being produced 26,000 are actually missing. Wow okay. Yeah so this is what
this is one of the lucky 4,000 survivors. Yes that's an incredible story only 4,000
wow, thank you so much for that well it's great I'm really
interested in this my granddad was a cook in the in the Navy so I wonder if
Mr. Simmons ate his food. You never know. Thank you very much. Thank
you.