Breda M37 Machine gun, ammunition feeder strip, serial #10766, Roma 1940, painted "VIII", no breech block. It consists of steel strips (cassettes) of 20 rounds. The feed of the Breda MG is rather strange as it employs heavy rigid strips holding 20 cartridges. The feed direction is from the left side only. After each discharge, empty cases are replaced in the strip before the next round is indexed, so in the field someone has to remove the empty cases from the strips before being able to reload these. A special loading machine was provided to help with the unloading/loading of used strips. The Breda Modello 37 was an Italian heavy machine gun (Mitragliatrice Breda MOD.37) adopted in 1937. It was the standard machine gun for the Royal Italian Army during World War II. The M37 was meant as company/battalion support as compared to the more troublesome M1930 meant for squad/platoon support, and proved far more effective in combat, though possessing some of the same problematic features of Breda 30.