“It wasn’t the watch I would’ve picked. Issued, scratched, and missing the lume on the minute hand. But it kept time. Always.”

That’s how Col. R. starts his story. Twenty-two years in, and the CWC G10 he was issued during a deployment in the early 2000s still ticks, even if his left wrist aches in the cold. We sat down in a small Virginia office to talk about the patrol that never made the news, the importance of time discipline in close contact operations, and the peculiar bond between warfighters and the gear that saw them through.

“For us, watches weren’t fashion,” he said. “They were the last analog sanity in a digital cluster.”

He recounts a night mission with twelve clicks to cover on foot. Navigation by map, watch, and moonlight. The GPS batteries had drained. The comms were patchy. What kept them moving on schedule? The second hand.

“We were thirty seconds behind at the first checkpoint. Ninety seconds ahead by the final one. It wasn’t luck.”

The G10’s brushed case still holds dust from that deployment. He doesn’t wear it every day now. But he keeps it on his desk, running, like a reminder.

“If it’s still ticking, so am I.”