Yesterday I had a fun session at the library trawling
through Australian Red Cross newsletters and I came across this classic example
of Stalag Luft III ingenuity: a jam tin clock. It apparently worked!
Constructed
from Red Cross cocoa tins, bits of wood, tin, pencils, nails filched from
heaven knows where, thread and melted-down silver paper it must have taken ages
to delicately put together. According to the newsletter, all the gear wheels
were carved from plywood with a penknife (I bet that was contraband!) and the
shafts were pencils which had gramophone needles fitting in the ends for
bearings. The weight was a cigarette tin filled with earth and the numbers. The
numbers were painted on, and the hands painted to match. All did not run smoothly
(I won’t beg forgiveness for that terrible pun) and the anonymous clock maker ‘had
a bit of bother to engage the teeth correctly’. But at the time of the photo
and letter, ‘seems quite OK now’. Apparently, according to the maker, ‘It has
amazed the whole camp, and ran for two days without stopping’.
Even though he said it himself (and I tend to agree) ‘it
does look good’, the clockmaker was not going to let time lay idle in his hands
(groannnnn). ‘We are setting about working out a method of making it chime at
the hours’. I wonder if he achieved his aim?
