I have been asked to post a picture of this watch which belonged to my Great great uncle Thomas Nairne Scott Moncreiff Howard who served in the British Army from 1899 to some time in the 1920s, retiring as a Brigadier General, although he served again in WW2 in the Home Guard in England. He will have used this watch throughout WW1 in the trenches of the Western Front in France and Belgium where he was 4 times Mentioned in Dispatches and won a Distinguished Service Order and bar (in other words twice)

For anyone interested the movement looks like this

Hi Richard: Welcome to IHC185. Thank you for sharing such a wonderful timepiece and its history with us.What a wonderful family heirloom. Does it have any military markings on it and do you know the maker? John

Hello,
there are no military marks that I can find but the silver maker's marks on the case are GS - George Stockwell.

Hi Richard. I find your watchvery interesting. I have looked at my limited resources as well as online re. who is the maker of the movement but to no avail. It is similar in some aspects to some movements made by Valjoux but i am not sure so will not climb out on that limbe. It is certainly of good qualiy and in remarkable condition. Hopefully someone else with more knowledge of this will chip in here.
I suggest you check out Vintagewatchstraps.com/importmarks.php
This site has a lot of info. re old watches from WW1 era (as well as others). It will provide you with more info about George Stockwell (not the maker of your watch) and how he fits in the picture. I find it amazing that in WW1 a watch of ths caliber was running around in the trenches and survived in this condition. The stories it could tell!!
If you could add couple more pics of the Hallmarks and of the movement it would be nice. Regards, John

Hi John, this is the best I can do for the marks on the outer case. Interestingly you can sesame marks scratched on to the right of the hall marks. These are the other way up but have been deliberately and neatly made.Lower right (inn picture is upside down a triangle 13081 above it (as we look) is V66818 also upside down. Just to the left of the serial number is the number 10 and above it (upside down) 418. I have no idea what these marks are.

Here is the inner cover. A bit of a blurry photo I'm afraid but the same hallmarks. On this case there is the number 448 scratched above the GS mark(reading bottom to top) and what looks like EOI-1-. Again no clue what these marks are.

I hope that this picture of the movement is helpful. I have looked carefully with a magnifier and cannot see any marks other than the speed adjustment FAST and SLOW.

Hi Richard: The lightly scratched letters and numbers were done by people who serviced the watch at various times. They would have recorded what was done to the watch when serviced then scratched in the no's so they had a permanant record of when and what was done to it. Sometimes you will see a watch with 20 plus marks all done by the same person. I encourage you to visit the site I mentioned above. It will keep you busy for hours, David has forgotten more about this stuff than I ever new. If I find anything re who made the movement I will let you know, To be clear, most watches were not made by one person, One company would make the movement and supply it to another co. who would put it in a case that they made or perhaps a third party supplied. Then it would probably be retailed by another party. Unfortunatly on your watch there is no obvious answer to who made any of the componets. There may be some marking on the movement that are accesible by removing the dial but I would not recommend that unless it requires a service. The GS stamped on it represents the firm that the had the silver case Hallmarked in london to allow it imported to England,. They have nothing to do with the actual manufacture of the watch. Again, check Davids site. His explanation is much better than mine .John

quote:

Vintagewatchstraps.com/importmarks.php

Thanks John - very interesting

That is a very nice watch and you are very fortunate to have such a fine keepsake from your great great uncle. However, it is not a military watch by most collector's definitions. I do not doubt that he carried it during his time in the military but the common definition of a military watch is a timepiece that was procured by the military under a contract with particular specifications and then issued to soldiers or sailors who had a specific need for the timepiece within their assigned duties. Since watches were costly and easily portable, militaries were pretty careful to mark them as being military property such as with the British broad arrow and sometimes much more including military serial number procurement contract number etc. Such markings were both for inventory control of official government equipment, but also to reduce theft. Your watch appears to be a privately purchased timepiece from a jewelry store by your ancestor for their personal use, perhaps because he may not have qualified by his job description to be issued an official timepiece at the time. All of that aside, you should treasure this watch and have fun imagining the great stories it might tell if it could only speak.

From the hallmarks, it was assayed in London in the year 1909.