The hands of this watch are fixed at 7:36 am, a timeless testimony to Thomas’s death by an explosion that left no visible marks on his body: a mute companion to the last, the clock had faithfully recorded the moment when its master’s heart stopped beating.
Das then asks the question, why do objects like Thomas's pocket watch, preserved at the Imperial War Museum in its final state, marking the death of its owner, 'move and disturb us so much'?
He answers thus: '[t]hese objects not only congeal time but also conceal processes of touch’ and further, they
evoke the body of the user, traces of hands, quiescent but palpable. […] [T]hese objects have a precious, living quality for they are the archives of touch and intimacy – they have once held, protected or brushed against the bodies of their possessors in their youths or in the trenches and the hospitals, and through this intimate caress, these mute, insensate objects seem to have been touched to life, bequeathed with the very pulse of their owners’ being.
This final comment – the metaphorical animation of an ‘insensate object’ - is, perhaps, a step too far, nice though it is. However, Das does make an intuitive and thought-provoking statement on our love and fascination with historical artefacts – not just from the First World War, but in general – and how these objects can, somehow, bring us into closer contact with the subjects of history, in this case a soldier and poet who lost his voice through his untimely death in the trenches.
It is a simple and obvious point, but one that only occurs after you have read it. There in lies its power.
