Photo Credit: slake25
This beautiful World War I trench watch has a sterling silver case with import hallmarks from the London Assay office (circa 1918) and a 15-jewel Longines movement. The dial bears the mark of the retailer – J.C. Vickery of London – instead of the watch manufacturer, which was common for the time.
Our story about trench watches begins, oddly enough, back in the mid-1990s when I was still in high school. Unlike most high school students of my time (or any time for that matter), I loved antiques. Happily, my grandmother also loved antiques. So we would often take Saturday expeditions together to the nearest flea market, antique store or junk shop in search of that next great vintage treasure.
One weekend, my grandmother and I visited an antique shop that we both enjoyed frequenting – Three Sisters and Me. Now long defunct, at the time this antique store was an eclectic mix of country primitives, odd Victorian pieces and vintage kitchenware. My grandmother and I loved digging through the shop’s nooks and crannies, picking up whatever struck our fancy.
While browsing through its dusty shelves, I came across a plastic Ziploc grab-bag of vintage jewelry with a $5 price tag. Now most of the items in this lot were costume jewelry or cheap trinkets – exactly what you’d expect for something priced at only a few dollars. But I saw enough sterling silver items in the grab-bag to pique my interest. If nothing else, I would be able to scrap the contents and make myself a small profit.
So with my grandmother’s encouragement, I laid down a five dollar bill on the shop counter and became the happy new owner of an odd, if not intriguing bag of junk jewelry. It was only later on when I was back at my grandmother’s house that I discovered the secret treasure that bag held.
As I dug through my newfound entertainment for the afternoon, I saw it – a World War I era Waltham trench watch. It featured a sterling silver “Admiral Benson” cushion-shaped case with wire lugs and an onion-style, fluted winding crown. Despite not keeping time, the watch’s 15-jewel, manual-wind Waltham movement was still a miniature work of art. The white enamel military dial, although cracked with age, still retained its original skeleton hands – complete with traces of radium lume! The 6 o’clock sub-seconds and red 12 o’clock marker enhanced the dial’s bold, yet elegant Arabic numerals. You simply knew that this piece, like so many other trench watches of its era, had been the prized possession of some unnamed Allied soldier on the Western Front.
Unfortunately, this story has a sad ending. Due to my own ignorance and the folly of youth, I chose to scrap this amazing trench watch for its silver content. After I carefully inspected the piece, I came to the determination that the watch’s defects were too great to justify the expense of a full restoration. Its crystal was missing. The case lugs were slightly bent. The movement was both rusty and non-functional. And the enamel dial had significant damage.
I have regretted that decision for the last 25 years of my life. And I will probably regret it for the next 25 years, as well.
My remorse isn’t due to any financial loss incurred, although that is part of my cautionary tale. If fully restored (at the cost of perhaps a few hundred dollars), I estimate that my $5 trench watch would be worth between $500 and $1,000 today. No, I regret it because my poor decision represents the loss of yet another irreplaceable piece of World War I horological history.
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Although made by the millions for the greatest war the world had ever known up until that point, trench watches are incredibly rare today. Untold numbers were lost or blown up on the battlefield, thrown out when fashions changed or allowed to rust away over the course of the last 100 years. As proof, a search for the term “trench watch” on the popular online watch site Chrono24 returns just 33 results out of over 474,000 watches for sale in total!
Frankly speaking, it is a wonder that any of these historically important World War I artifacts have survived intact for today’s vintage watch connoisseurs to enjoy. But before I speak further about the details of trench watches, a short history lesson is in order.
The Great War
At the opening of the conflict in August 1914, the British diplomat Sir Edward Grey famously remarked that “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.” And in their place sprang up the bonfires of war, with all its accompanying horrors: disease, famine and deprivation.
The war split the great European powers into two opposing factions. On one side was the Entente (also known as the Allied Powers) – Great Britain, France, Russia and, later in the war, Italy and the United States. On the other side stood the Central Powers – Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. Millions of young men from these countries (and many other smaller belligerents) dutifully marched off to war when called to serve.
But the realities of modern warfare circa 1914 were quite different than anyone had expected. Military men and politicians on all sides had almost universally predicted a short, glorious war dominated by the Napoleonic cavalry charges of the early 19th century. However, the invention of the machine gun in the late 19th century had largely invalidated traditional military tactics when no one was looking.
As a result, World War I quickly devolved from dynamic cavalry battles to static trench warfare. Conditions were almost unbearably awful for all participants. Soldiers lived in a maze of zig-zagging trench systems intended to provide interlocking fields of fire while also minimizing the concussive force and shrapnel damage from the inevitable lucky artillery round. Mud, often ankle-deep and ice cold, was an omnipresent problem in these trenches – so much so that the malady known as “trench-foot” quickly entered the popular lexicon of the day.
The worst part of the war for the average infantryman wasn’t the trenches, as horrid as those could be. No, it was the death that awaited them outside the trenches when they were ordered “over the top” for a mass charge into the enemy’s waiting machine guns. In between the two opposing trench systems lay “no man’s land” – a cratered, treeless moonscape filled with barbed wire that could easily be raked by enemy machine gun fire or bombarded with artillery shells. Snipers, hand grenades and (later in the war) poison gas rounded out the omnipresent dangers on a World War I battlefield.
In spite of these travails most soldiers performed admirably, bravely charging into no man’s land on the orders of their commanding officers. A common saying at the time about the British army was that it was “lions led by donkeys”. This refers to how the British generals, like Douglas “Butcher” Haig, repeatedly ordered bloody charges across no man’s land, unmoved by their apparent futility.
Every Second Counted on the World War I Battlefield
In this grim new world of trench warfare, timing was paramount. A handful of seconds might be the only thing separating a soldier from life – and a jubilant homecoming – and death – just another corpse on the battlefield.
For example, if a commander ordered his unit over the top a mere 15 or 20 seconds too early during an infantry assault, the outcome was often total annihilation for the unfortunate group. Enemy machine gunners would naturally target any isolated unit out in no man’s land and wipe it out.
Seconds also counted for a new artillery strategy introduced during World War I called the creeping barrage. In this new tactic, a volley of artillery fire was laid down on enemy position. But instead of being static like artillery fire was early in the war, the creeping barrage methodically “walked” the rounds through no man’s land, then through the enemy’s perimeter defenses before finishing deep in the enemy trench system.
In order for the creeping barrage to be effective, friendly infantry forces had to charge just behind the incoming shells. This meant that they would arrive at the first line of enemy trenches just as the barrage “walked” further into the enemy lines. By using this technique, infantry soldiers could (in theory) avoid the murderous volley of machine gun fire that normally cut units to ribbons in no man’s land.
But in order to work, the timing of the creeping barrage had to be absolutely perfect. If you charged out of your own trench line too soon, you would be torn to shreds by your own artillery fire. If you waited too long, the enemy infantry that had taken cover during the artillery salvo would have time to come out of their bunkers and man their machine guns nests while you were still traversing no man’s land.
And of course, it wasn’t just the common infantryman who needed to know the time down to the second either. Everyone from staff officers to pilots were dependant on a reliable watch in order to be able to coordinate the tremendous complexities of a modern war waged on an unprecedented, global scale.
So for a military man during World War I, a good watch was an absolute necessity. But the old style pocket watches that had dominated fashion up until 1914 were ill-adapted to the demands of this new type of warfare. A pocket watch required two hands to operate efficiently. Removing the watch from a pocket occupied one hand, while opening the watch face (if it was a hunter case), winding it, or resetting the time used a second hand. This situation was unacceptable to fighting men who not only needed to be able to reference the time quickly and easily, but also needed to have their rifles in hand at all times.
The Advent of the “Wristlet”
The natural solution to this problem was the wristwatch, or wristlet as it was often called at the time. Now, wristwatches weren’t invented during World War I. They had already existed for a number of years, albeit as a relatively uncommon style of timepiece with effeminate connotations. In other words, wristwatches were widely considered to be a woman’s watch prior to 1914.
World War I trench watches both masculinized and perfected their predecessor wristlets. Initially, the trench watch took the form of a conventional pocket watch with wire lugs attached at the 6 and 12 o’clock positions (or, alternatively, the 3 and 9 o’clock positions) to allow for the attachment of a leather strap. This facilitated wearing the watch on the wrist – hence the name wristlet.
But watch manufacturers soon found that certain modifications were needed in order to get the most out of this radical new watch design. One of the first changes was the relocation of the winding crown from the 12 o’clock position (where it resides on most pocket watches) to 3 o’clock, where it remains to this day on nearly all wristwatches.
The addition of radium lume to the watch hands and numerals on the watch face also proved to be indispensable. Radium is a naturally radioactive element which, when combined with zinc sulfide, produces a glowing, phosphorescent material that could be applied like paint. Radium lume enhanced trench watches were a boon on the battlefield, where it was common for soldiers to need to precisely know the time in preparation for night actions.
As an added bonus, although the glow from a radium lume dial was easy to make out for the watch’s owner, it was much too faint to be visible to enemy snipers hundreds of yards away. This was in stark contrast to lit matches, which gave away the position of many an unfortunate soldier during the war.
Trench watches also had to overcome the rough realities of battlefield conditions. Dust, mud and water were omnipresent hazards in trench warfare. As a result, many watch manufacturers dedicated substantial resources to making their trench watches as dust-proof and moisture-resistant as possible. They soon discovered that screw-back cases were generally superior to hinged-back or snap-back cases in terms of water and dust resistance. However, plenty of hinged-back and snap-back trench watches were manufactured during the Great War due to their reduced complexity and lower cost.
One of the best known and most highly prized of the World War I era, water-resistant trench watch cases is the Borgel case. First patented by François Borgel in Geneva, Switzerland in 1891, the Borgel case was a screw-back case design that proved to be ideally suited to the rigors of trench warfare.
It should be noted, however, that although Borgel screw-back cases were relatively water-resistant by early 20th century standards, they are not water-proof by modern standards. Please don’t wear your 100 year old trench watch in the pool, shower or Jacuzzi, as you are likely to ruin a wonderful timepiece! True water-proof watches didn’t come into existence until the creation of the legendary Rolex Oyster in 1926.
Another issue that trench watches had to overcome was the propensity of their glass crystals to shatter. This was especially problematic due to the ubiquity of artillery salvos on the battlefield. Exploding shells would not only send primary shrapnel in all directions, but could also spawn secondary shrapnel – fragments of wood, steel or even bone dislodged from anything sitting close to the initial explosion. Secondary shrapnel had a lower velocity than primary shrapnel and was, therefore, less likely to cause mortal wounds. But it could still easily break the glass crystal on a soldier’s trench watch, rendering it inoperable at a critical moment.
Watch manufacturers solved this problem in two ways. First, they equipped traditional mineral glass crystal watches with shrapnel guards – a cut-out metal grille that protected the watch face while still allowing the user to tell the time. With their battlefield connotations and iconic styling, trench watches with shrapnel guards are cherished by both militaria collectors and military watch aficionados alike.
The second way that watchmakers improved the survivability of trench watches was through the development of the so-called “unbreakable crystal”. These were watch crystals made from clear celluloid plastic instead of the normal mineral glass. Contrary to the name, unbreakable crystals weren’t truly shatter-proof – just much more robust than mineral glass.
Celluloid, the world’s first thermoplastic, was originally commercialized in the 1860s and 1870s. However, this wonder-material wasn’t patented for use in watch crystals until 1915, coming to market one year later in 1916. Unfortunately, celluloid is unstable over long periods of time, with a tendency to yellow and warp. Therefore, as a rule, surviving trench watches don’t retain their original unbreakable celluloid crystals.
Trench Watches for the Troops
Trench watches were in huge demand throughout the duration of World War I. Millions of troops on all sides of the conflict desperately wanted – no, needed – to have a wristwatch in order to be better soldiers. But with the exception of select signal corps members, wristwatches were not issued as standard military kit – a soldier was expected to buy his own.
The problem was that a good trench watch was expensive! Period advertisements show that the lowest price a British soldier could realistically hope to pay for a wristwatch was somewhere around £2. Better quality timepieces with more features often retailed for between £4 and £5. If you wanted something truly extravagant, like a solid karat gold case, you could expect the price to be even higher.
To put these sums in perspective, the average British infantry private received a meager salary of 1 shilling a day during the Great War – only £1.5 per month. So a trench watch was beyond the reach of most enlisted men.
British officers, on the other hand, were much better paid than their subordinates. A British infantry lieutenant could expect to draw a princely salary of 8 shillings, 6 pence a day, or £12.75 per month – more than 8 times what a private earned! So the officer corps – lieutenants, captains, majors and colonels – constituted the main source of demand for trench watches during the conflict.
This didn’t stop average enlisted men from coveting trench watches, though. Some members of the lower ranks received wristwatches as gifts from friends or family, while others scrimped and saved in order to be able to afford one. A considerable number of trench watches were also “liberated” from captured enemy soldiers or even looted from corpses strewn about the battlefield. A wristwatch might also be gambled or bartered away during the exigencies of war.
Trench Watch Characteristics
Trench watches were produced by every major watch company of the time and probably all of the minor ones too. Established Swiss and American firms had the highest production volumes, with other makers contributing smaller numbers. Some of the brands commonly seen among antique trench watches include modern-day heavyweights like Omega, Rolex and Longines. The primary American makers were Waltham, Elgin and Illinois. Other notable manufacturers were Zenith and Cyma.
Because wristwatches were just emerging prior to World War I, watchmakers of the time didn’t use special, wristwatch-specific movements for trench watches. Instead, they adapted existing pocket watch movements and simply implanted them into wristwatch cases.
These movements were usually smaller, women’s-sized pocket watch movements (such as 3/0s, 0s and 6s) out of necessity. However, larger movements housed in over-sized cases (generally between 36 and 39 mm in diameter) were occasionally used. 15 or 17 jeweled movements were common in higher quality trench watches, while cheaper, more pedestrian examples would typically employ lower-jewel movements. Seconds functionality was also highly prized in a military-grade trench watch – usually sub-seconds at the 6 o’clock position.
Trench watch cases were generally made from the same materials as pocket watches of the time. An expensive solid karat gold watch might grace the wrist of a senior officer, while gold-filled or sterling silver examples would be more common among junior officers. Steel or nickel-alloy base metal cases were also produced for soldiers looking for the cheapest, most utilitarian option available.
Trench watches almost always had either black or white enamel dials, or some combination of the two. White enamel dials, in particular, were ubiquitous, often with radium outlined or enhanced hour markers and/or numerals. This allowed maximum contrast between the numerals and the background, which was vital to easily telling the time during the chaos of combat.
While both Roman and Arabic numeral dials can be found on trench watches, the latter tend to dominate. This is because Arabic numerals are easier to read at a glance under difficult conditions, with little possibility of confusion. In addition, some watch manufacturers highlighted or outlined the 12 o’clock number (regardless of whether it was Roman or Arabic) in red to help soldiers remained oriented.
Trench Watches After the Guns Fell Silent
At the end of World War I in November 1918, blessed peace came once again to Europe. Workers returned to their factories. Farmers returned to their land. And soldiers returned to their wives. But the world of watches had changed forever.
Old style pocket watches, which had dominated timekeeping for more than a century, looked hopelessly outdated beside the sleek new trench watches. Wristwatches, with their convenience and forward-looking design language, were in vogue. And pocket watches, with their ponderous sizes and large movements, were out. Pocket watch sales declined dramatically throughout the 1920s and 1930s, finally tapering off more or less completely in the 1940s.
The wristwatch was ascendant, albeit demilitarized and reimagined for the Roaring 1920s – a decade of unparalleled wealth, fashion and glamour. But due to massive over-production during the war years, retailers continued to sell World War I trench watches from old inventory well into the 1920s and even up to the early 1930s.
Post Script
A few years before her death at the age of 95, my beloved grandmother, who had been by my side during so many antiquing adventures, confided in me about her very earliest childhood memory. On November 11, 1918, she distinctly recalled marching around outside her family home banging her mother’s pots and pans together to celebrate the end of World War I. It was the first Armistice Day and my grandmother was 5 years old.
May she forever fly with the angels, along with all those lost to us in the Great War.
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