Alexander Tostevin of the Royal Marines is awarded a Mention in Despatches for his bravery on sentry duty at Patrol Base Blenheim in Sangin

This morning I spent time going round the galleries changing batteries. Not really the job you’d expect curators to be doing, but its all part of looking after the objects in our care.

We have small telemetric boxes located around the museum galleries and stores which send a signal to a computer giving us readings of the temperature and relative humidity in that location. These readings are really important for us to monitor what is going on in the galleries and prevent damage.

There is a catch of course.  We have to make sure that the way we record all of this information is consistent, enabling things to be found.  For example do we record objects from the Second World War as that or ‘WW2’, or ‘World War 2’ ?

The Royal Marines have a long tradition of remembering their fallen comrades by holding kit sales in their memory. The Marines sell off the kit and uniform belonging to the Royal Marines who has been killed and give the proceeds to his family.

The family of Sergeant Leonard Stone donated his service papers, photographs and medals to the museum collection. The medal group contains the gallantry medal the Distinguished Service Medal for his actions whilst serving at sea in the Second World War.

When talking to groups of Royal Marines it can seem at times like they speak a foreign language. When I show objects from the stores I often get told that something is ‘hoofing’, that a piece of kit is ‘Gucci’ or that they’ve got a ‘dit’ to tell me about.

Some of our group visits are from Royal Marines themselves and we often find that the visits are very much a two way process, we add to our knowledge  and the Royal Marines realize that they are very much in the process of making history rather than being passive recipients of it.

3 Commando Brigade are currently in Afghanistan undertaking a handover from 16 Air Assault Brigade. The Royal Marines will be in Afghanistan for a six month tour returning to the UK in September.

To find out what the Royal Marines are up to in Afghanistan you can subscribe to the UK Forces Afghanistan blog which is updated daily with videos, interviews and reports. The first Royal Marine video features Lt Col Matt Stovin-Bradford RM who talked about his arrival in Afghanistan http://bit.ly/evxz8A .

Most of what the Museum owns is old in some way.  Some of it is in very good condition; some of it has had a hard life and so needs special care.  Some items simply arrive here damaged and broken; some of this damage needs to be repaired.

A lot of the items in the Museum’s Collections need special care or handling arrangements to ensure their survival, and that they are not inadvertently damaged by being handled incorrectly, stored in the wrong materials or in the wrong place – all of which can cause damage to them. There are some cases where it is the other way round - some items in the Collections can cause damage to the Museum or the people that work in it.