Gallet Watch Repair

Overhaul Service of a Swiss Gallet & Co Gold Wristwatch and Story

Story below submitted by Colonel Golding’s son.

My father was a career British army officer in the Royal Tank Regiment (RTR), a mechanical engineer who was involved principally in tank design; he was a member of the team sent over to the States by the Brits after Pearl Harbor to help ramp up American tank production – – -hard to believe that in 1941 the U.S. Army was smaller than Portugal’s – – -which was how he met my American mother, who lived in Detroit where much of American tank production was centered.

Royal Tank Regiment

I had assumed that the watch had been given to my father by his father when he first joined the British Army in the early nineteen thirties, but clearly – – -since it has a Gallet movement imported into the US by J. Racine & Co. (“JXR”)- – – it must have been a gift from my mother to my father after they had met and become involved.

Breakfast Invitation, Gen. Marshall

The story related to me by one of the dwindling band of my mother’s friends at her funeral in 1995 (my father had died at the age of ninety three years earlier), who was present when they met at a formal dance in Detroit sometime in 1942, was that he walked in the door, their eyes locked across the room, and that was that!

Ardale and Anna 1948

They married after the end of the war, I was born in Washington D.C. in 1947, and he was recalled to the UK in 1948 to be stationed at the research center at Fort Halstead in Kent. Before he took early retirement to be part of the diplomatic group based in Paris, France that integrated German forces into NATO in the mid to late nineteen fifties, he was a member of the UK’s Ordnance Board, a technical advisory board to the UK’s equivalent of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Ian, Sam, Ardale 1988

Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of him wearing the watch, but here is a photograph of him taken by my mother in 1943 which came to light recently, and a few others for historical context, as it were, including one with my father, myself, and my son Sam (when he was four.)

I like to think that my mother gave my father the watch about the time this picture was taken in 1943!

Ardale 1943

In the 1943 photo he is wearing a RTR badge on his beret, while the badge in the picture from 1969 of him squeezed into his uniform at my mother’s request when they were throwing stuff out fifteen years after he’d retired is a Colonel’s badge, his final rank.

Colonel Golding 1969

This picture from 1918 shows him as a sixteen year old cadet – – -he missed the First World War by a whisker, and if he was alive today I would ask him what it had been like living through the flu pandemic of 1918/19.

Ardale 1918

Ardale and Anna 1980

Like every watch, it has a story, and for me it represents the love my parents had for each other – – -they were together for fifty years, and I count myself a very lucky man to have had parents like them.

Anna and Ardale Hidden Forest 1989

This beautiful 14K gold wristwatch was overhauled and serviced. The watch was disassembled and cleaned. The watch was reassembled and lubricated. The case cleaned and hand polished. Watch placed on extended testing. Overhaul service complete.