The British Expeditionary Force (BEF in short: British Expeditionary Force) is a separate part of the British Army that served in France at the beginning of World War II in 1939-1940. Its name obviously referred to the British forces fighting in France in 1914-1918. The commander of the BEF in 1939-1940 was John Vereker Lord Gort. The first units of this formation went to France on September 4, 1939, the day after Great Britain joined the Second World War. At the end of 1939, the BEF numbered approximately 152,000. people, but at the time of the beginning of the German aggression against France and the Benelux countries, it already numbered approx. 395 thousand. people and was divided into three army corps. During the French campaign, he operated in north-eastern France, taking part in the fighting at Arras on May 21, 1940. During the fights with Germany, BEF lost approx. 68 thousand. killed, wounded and missing, and the remainder was evacuated from Dunkirk during Operation Dynamo.
During World War II, several dozen divisions were formed as part of the British Army, and at the end of the war they served in its ranks about 2.9 million people. In this one of the most important armies of the Second World War, in terms of numbers, the most important element was, of course, the infantry. The Standard British Infantry Division in 1939 was pretty well saturated with light and heavy machine guns, and at the start of the war it numbered approximately 13,900 officers and soldiers. Each British infantry team had a hand machine gun in stock, and such weapons were also assigned to divisional sapper units and other divisions - especially reconnaissance units. However, as the war progressed, the saturation of machine guns grew, and the 1944 infantry division already had (in addition to the machine gun ranks from the team up) a battalion of 7.7 mm Vickers medium machine guns consisting of 36 rifles. It can be estimated that at that time the British division was equipped with approx. 1,250 light machine guns, approx. 6,500 machine carbines and 40 medium machine guns. The basic types of machine guns of the British infantry in 1939-1945 were, among others: the Bren machine gun, the Vickers heavy machine gun, but also the Sten submachine gun.