Ground dug Bren parts

Hi

I thought I would share with you just a few of the Bren parts myself and my group have recovered from a British army dump in the UK. The volume of 100 rnd magazine winding arms at the dump is amazing, yet we have not found one single 100 rnd mag! Not sure why yet, but it is possible we just haven't hit the right spot. Curiously though, we do find lots of the mechanisms from the top of the mags.

We find both the mk 1 and mk 2 winding arms and, if we're really lucky, the frame used to load and wind the mags, (only 4 of these have been found so far, and I was lucky enough to get one).

We have also found hundreds of Bren oil bottles, a couple of examples of which are shown in one of the pics. We find the brass ones and the 'plastic' ones.

Hope you find the relics interesting.

RRPG

Pic 6, bottom left are CUP, return spring from the Sten Gun

They certainly are Peter. The site is full of Sten parts. Have a look at my thread in the general discussion forum as some of them are pictures there, including bits from the Mk 1 :)

Back in the early '60's as a 14/15 year old I used to visit the dump at RNZAF Wigram and over a period of about 3 months I got multiples of all the component parts of .30 AN/M2 Browning MG's with the exception of the body, but including barrels and barrel shrouds. The parts were all in unissued condition, well greased, and many of the small parts were in lots of 10 in small drawstring canvas bags. I also got a few Bren parts and assorted No 4 rifle and .38 S&W Victory parts as well. This was just the general base dump and the refuse was just tipped over a bank in a corner of the base near a creek (my access point). Clearly the base armoury was having a 'spring clean'. I never dug for anything as there was so much just lying around! I traded most of the parts off over the years, although I still have a reasonable selection of S&W Victory parts. There was another dump on the other side of the airfield that had old aircraft parts and fuselages. There was a fairly complete Devon there that I used 'to fly bombing missions' in with my mates when I was a primary school. The base was on the edge of the city of Christchurch, about a mile from my home.

Very interesting Woodsy :) Amazing what they threw away isn't it.......