[doodle bug]

Hi can anyone help with this headstamp I M R A L 1938 this 303 round came from a metal link belt for a mg of some kind. I also need to find a website/good book dealing with cartridge ID many thanks. doodle bug?

[SDC]

The best English-language site for cartridge-collectors is http://www.cartridgecollectors.org/forumintro.htm , but I think you're likely misreading parts of the headstamp; in .303, this headstamp almost certainly reads R (arrow) L 1938 W1, showing that it is an armour-piercing cartridge (the W1), made by Royal Laboratories in 1938. The thing that looks like an "A" is actually a "broad arrow", an English mark signifying "government property". There are a number of possible machine guns that this could have been fired from during WW2, but to know which one would take a picture of the links.