Other Ranks: Watches at the Front?

[IPT]

6 hours ago, Beechhill said:

Probably. Please do specify. Navigating a second language can be challenging. 

 

Unwashed privates would have been a hygiene problem. 

[rolt968]

Thank you everyone. There have been a lot of useful replies. Thank you for the photograph and list of property. It all makes me realise that I have been working with some assumptions.

I take the point about a wrist watch being specified as such. I remember that to older people at least they still were when I was a child.

I doubt if a soldier would leave a relatively(?) cheap watch bought while in the army to his son.

The man I have been working on was a gamekeeper and almost certainly enlisted via the Derby Scheme. I wonder if that gave him time to realise that he should leave his watch behind at home.

 

RM

 

 

 

Edited 17 November , 2018 by rolt968

[pierssc]

Interesting piece on “Trench watches” at http://www.vintagewatchstraps.com/trenchwatches.php

[David Filsell]

Henry Williamson uses the term wrislet watch in his writing. I think the evidence would suggest that ownership of such watches at he time was rare amongst the working classes. They were by the standards of the time expensive, fragile  and lacking in reliability . There was a time when the sheer number of high street an village church clocks provided accurate guidance on time.

[TTracer44]

Soldiers could also acquire watches from the POW’s either taken or given,

I worked with a soldier from WW1 who had been in Egypt and he and a friend came across a dead German Officer, he had the boots and his mate had the watch, well that’s the way he told it to me.

Den

[Muerrisch]

18 minutes ago, pierssc said:

Interesting piece on “Trench watches” at http://www.vintagewatchstraps.com/trenchwatches.php

What a brilliant piece: thank you very much indeed, a fascinating read.

 

As for the working classes not having watches [wrist, wristlet or pocket] I am not convinced. As a status symbol, of successful striving, the pocket watch with chain and a golden guinea was in many a working class family, sometimes worn, sometimes pawned. I have two handed down from what might be called "upper working class" roots, in that the wearers were never out of work.

Then of course the introduction of the Derby scheme and then conscription brought many such, and the middle classes, into the trenches.

My last thought before dinner is that the admittedly common availability of public clocks in England was not much use in battered France and Flanders, and no use in the trenches.

[Beechhill]

3 hours ago, IPT said:

 

Unwashed privates would have been a hygiene problem. 

Oh dear. And I chose "privates" to avoid using "in the ranks" twice. 

Cheers. 

[Muerrisch]

It was said of a colonial regiment that only the privates were black

 

"How exotic!"

[GWF1967]

5 hours ago, Muerrisch said:

As for the working classes not having watches [wrist, wristlet or pocket] I am not convinced. As a status symbol, of successful striving, the pocket watch with chain and a golden guinea was in many a working class family, sometimes worn, sometimes pawned. I have two handed down from what might be called "upper working class" roots, in that the wearers were never out of work.

Then of course the introduction of the Derby scheme and then conscription brought many such, and the middle classes, into the trenches.

My last thought before dinner is that the admittedly common availability of public clocks in England was not much use in battered France and Flanders, and no use in the trenches.

A quick trawl through my first twenty or thirty images in a drawer of R.A. postcards found these. Plenty of watch fobs are also on display.

Not sure how many of the watches in my collection actually saw service, all came with veterans medals, tags etc. 

Edited 17 November , 2018 by GWF1967

[Muerrisch]

Brilliant. QED surely.

Mind you, there may be those doubters who would claim that the artillery, on at least 2d per day more than the infantry, could afford a watch disproportionately.

Edited 17 November , 2018 by Muerrisch

[Ex-boy]

Far from the front, but I have a picture of my maternal grandmother, taken in 1916, just after her wedding, wearing a 'wristwatch' which looks like a small pocket watch on a strap. I will see if I can post it, even if I have to put in in the gallery like the previous one I tried.

 

Steve.

 

Having tried to post, it will not even allow it in the gallery as it is in the wrong format.

Edited 19 November , 2018 by Ex-boy

[david murdoch]

Certainly from photos both my Grandfathers had wrist watches and both have wrist watch stories. My grandfather (father's side) was from a quite well off family and given a watch (possibly for his 18th). This was by accounts an "officers watch" with a face guard. This met with a German bullet in early 1918 breaking my grandfathers wrist and my father remembers he had a scar under where he wore his watch. I have a later photo  of him with his wound stripes and he obviously had a replacement watch.

I have photos of my other grandfather in Mesopotamia wearing a watch on a heavy leather  backing strap. According to  mother when she was small, her father wore a Turkish officers watch he "acquired" which interested her as a small child as it had hand painted roses on the face. She remembers he used to repair it himself  until it finally expired during WW2.

I have a group photo from Aleppo 1918 and basically every visible wrist has a watch - both MGC other ranks and ASC drivers.

Edited 19 January , 2019 by david murdoch

[Ahughes]

Excuse me adding so late to this. I have done a lot of research in my local paper while researching men and women who served in the war and there are numerous entries of men home on leave being presented with wristlet watches by sports clubs, workingmen's clubs and places of worship. All the recepients were working class, mostly coal miners and Privates.

regards,

Angela