Bollywood and Bolsheviks

The S.T.EN. Gun

“ We will never surrender !” France fell to the German Blitzkrieg in May 1940 . The retreating British Army ended up being rescued from the beaches of Dunkirk by a flotilla of little ships leaving behind much of their equipment . A German invasion was expected ! Winston Churchill the British prime minister made his famous “ we will fight them on the beaches – we will never surrender ! “ speech and the Battle of Britain was on ! The UK desperately needed submachineguns . The Government ordered well made expensive Thompsons from the still neutral United States but there was never enough available . In order to rapidly equip a sufficient fighting force to counter the threat of invasion , the Royal Small Arms Factory , Enfield ( North London ) was commissioned to produce an alternative quickly and in large numbers . Whats in a name S.T.En. There Major R. V. Shepherd OBE and Mr. Harold John Turpin came up with the Design which became...

Bonny and Clyde and the Browning Automatic Rifle

Bonnie and Clyde and the BAR ! Clyde Barrow, holding a Browning automatic rifle. BAR's could fire a twenty-shot magazine loaded with armor-piercing ammunition in under three seconds. During the depression of the 1930's in the USA criminals were looked at in a different way by many of the people who had been victimized and impoverished by the rich bankers and the emerging powerful corporations. Many people saw them as people driven to the edge that were only taking back what was stolen from them and striking back at a society and Government that let the Depression cause so much harm to so many . Two of the most famous criminals of that time were Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow . They were known to be quite skilled with their weapons, and unlike most criminals, they practiced with them and maintained them . Sadly they are considered to be responsible for the deaths of at least Nine law enforcement officers and five civilians during...

CHARM - Why I had to act !

As everybody who knows me is aware I am pretty passionate about the victims of war , particularly those ordinary decent people who are called upon to take to arms when one group of people end up fighting another for a cause often nothing whatsoever to do with most of the individual people who end up doing the fighting . " Theirs not to reason why theirs but to do or die " as I believe Tennyson put it ! As I have become older and possibly wiser I have become less motivated by personal wealth and aggrandizement and more motivated into what would give meaning to my life - what can I do for others - how would things be different and better because of my own existence . "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." John F. Kennedy As a minor student of history I came to realize how lucky my generation was in relation to others of the past and how the curse of war absolutely dominates the historical narrative thr...

The man from the Clapham Omnibus

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