On the outside, this one looks like a common and inexpensive Swiss watch of the "Systeme Roskopf" type. It has a paper dial and a nickle plated steel case. Inside the back, on the covete is another matter......

(The fob was not found this with watch, it is stamped with the likeness of France's General Joffre of WWI fame.)

After the unmarked outer cover is popped open, a fine, die-cut, engraving can be seen on the inner cover.

The French rifleman in the forground has the long needle-like bayonet which the French used in WWI. Notable is that he has a cloth capi instead of the Adrian helmet adopted in 1915. This helps to authenticate the die being made sometime from August to December 1914.

In the air above the battle, the die maker engraved a French Bleriot monoplane. These were instrumental for locating the enamy and reporting troop movements. The troops shooting over an embankment in the background seem to portend the trench war which would last until November 1918.

Here we have the simple rugged Swiss movement, which has no jewels. The same basic movement was also used in WWI Austro-Hungarian aircraft clocks.

That is a very neat find there, Greg.

This thread and the one on the Williamson watches are very timely for me as I'm currently re-reading "Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour: Armistice Day, 1918, World War I and Its Violent Climax" by Joseph Persico.

A really superb book on the Great War that uses the violence and tragedy of the war's last hours as a metaphor for the entire war.

Thank you Clyde, It sounds like a good book on the subject. WWI is rather misunderstood today. Sad to say, those in power after 1918, learned the wrong lessons from WWI. Thus, WWI became a prelude to WWII.

Iron Time Watch Chains

In case you have not already noticed them, there are some other posts regarding WWI; The above post provides some history from the other side. The images include the front and back of a German WWI combat death notice.

Best regards,
Greg

Greg,

Thanks for the great link to the Iron Time Chains, it was fascinating.

Here's a link to Persico's book on Amazon. You can search inside the book and get a feel for it. The director of the Lincoln library gave it an excellent recommendation, calling it the single best volume he had read on the Great War. It is very, very good.

http://www.amazon.com/Eleventh-Month-Day-Hour-Armistice...5252?ie=UTF8&s=books

It is hard to tell from the photo of that nice stamped war scene exactly which type of aircraft is depicted, or whether it is just a generic one rendered with artistic license. There were many makers and models of French WW I and pre-WW-I monoplanes and many looked . From what I can see a good guess that it would be depicting a Bleriot XI, though there is also an early Deperdussin, a Nieuport and a Morane that have very similar lines. The Bleriot XI was the most common of these and so I would go with it. These Type XI machines were produced from 1909 until 1913, and was still being used in the French air force until October, 1914 when it had become too outdated. The design was originally created by Louis Bleriot in 1909 to win a prize to fly across the English Channel.