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Back in the late 1970s, my old man was about to enter the military, and he needed a watch.
A recent college graduate with a degree in, ahem, theater — the apple, which has a degree in music, doesn’t fall far from the tree — he didn’t have much cash for this purchase. Turning to my grandfather, the old old man, himself a teacher and not a wealthy guy, kindly obliged by purchasing him a timepiece for use during his service. The watch? A base-metal automatic Timex. I remember when my father first told me this story, on the eve of my own entrance into his old battalion; we both laughed.
It turned out the joke was on us. We dug out his old Timex — complete with a leather strap and a camouflage fabric watch cover he sewed from an old paratrooper uniform and the elastic from a pair of underwear — from a box in the basement. It still worked. “Takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’,” as they say. My father wore that thing through three years of duty in the Middle East, going on operations in it, jumping out of countless aircraft in it, crossing rivers in it, crawling through mud in it. It’s not a dive watch, mind you — it has a push-pull crown, a base-metal bezel and a snap-back case. But it survived everything he could throw at it with aplomb, and it’s certainly never been serviced.
You could imagine my surprise when I received an email stating that Timex was teaming up with Bespoke Post, a retailer of cool clothing and outdoor gear, to reissue a vintage Viscount watch from the ‘70s.
Taking a glance at the image included in the release, I instantly registered my father’s watch: tonneau-shaped case, black dial with white “crosshair” motif, lumed white sword handset with orange seconds hand, Arabic and dart indices, yellow 1/5th-seconds track, red 24-hour track. I called up my dad to see if he could dig out his OG version, and lo and behold, it was a perfect match. (Timex teamed up with brand devotee and menswear god Todd Snyder on a similar reissue a few years back, but that version featured a round rather than tonneau case.)
Of course, Timex and Bespoke Post made some changes: The 36mm case is now entirely stainless steel including the bezel, and it ships on a two-piece olive Cordura strap with quick-release spring bars. (My dad wore his version on a leather Bund-style strap that he bought in a PX.) It retains the original’s acrylic crystal — likely for cost-saving measures, but still a cool touch — and the crown and caseback feature Bespoke Post branding that celebrates the collab.
The 11 Best Modern Military-Inspired Watches
From Mk II to Hamilton, these mil-spec models recall an era when watches were tools first and foremostFinally, it’s powered not by an automatic movement, but by a quartz version. Which, for $159, seems fine by me. With 50m of water resistance, it certainly lags behind the quoted specs of many more modern field watches — but as my father’s old “beater” watch has clearly proven, 50m and a push-pull crown is plenty for most circumstances. (Including, evidently, special operations in enemy territory.)
In 2027, it will be 50 years since my father joined his paratrooper battalion (and 12 years since I joined the same one). We tend to romanticize — especially as “watch” guys — the stories and gear of yore. The truth is that the era of the purpose-built mil-spec watch is long over, with most guys (myself included) wearing G-Shocks during their service nowadays. But the notion that an inexpensive, off-the-shelf field watch was (and is) more than enough to get one through some pretty hairy, high-speed stuff — and the notion that it’s still being produced, and is just as affordable as ever? That’s an idea that we should all celebrate.
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