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The watch was worn by Gerald Imeson on the evening of March 24, 1944.
New York:
A Rolex watch worn by a British prisoner in the course of the real-life “Nice Escape” from the Nazi Stalag Luft III prisoner-of-war camp bought for $189,000 on Thursday in New York.
The ultimate sum for the timepiece, bought to an nameless purchaser, was lower than the $200,000 and $400,000 anticipated by Christie’s.
The watch was worn by Gerald Imeson on the evening of March 24, 1944, when a bunch of Allied troopers undertook the daring escape that impressed the 1963 film starring Steve McQueen.
Imeson had ordered the watch from Rolex in Switzerland, who shipped it by way of the Crimson Cross to the jail camp close to the present-day Polish city of Zagan, Christie’s stated.
The metal watch with a black luminous dial and arms was “instrumental within the planning and execution” of their bid for freedom, the public sale home added.
Christie’s stated it believed Imeson’s watch helped calculate the time it will take the prisoners to crawl by tunnels used within the breakout in addition to timing the patrols of the camp guards.
Imeson wore the Oyster Chronograph watch as he waited 172nd in line to flee, in keeping with Christie’s.
Of the 200 prisoners who participated within the plan, 76 briefly escaped. Imeson was not amongst them. All however three of the boys have been captured and 50 have been executed.
Imeson was liberated from one other POW camp on the finish of the struggle in 1945.
He wore the watch till his demise in 2003 on the age of 85. It was first auctioned in Britain in 2013.
The watch was bought together with a number of different gadgets, together with a Royal Air Power whistle and a membership card for The Goldfish Membership — reserved for pilots and crew who’ve crash landed into the ocean and survived.
(Apart from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is revealed from a syndicated feed.)
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