Walter Davis joined the British army in 1915 and was sent to the Western Front. In his diary, the corporal wrote fatalistically that “one of these days I shall get it, but I am more used to it now and I don’t care what comes. If I am to die here, I shall, and if not here then somewhere else, for they are all going a few at a time”.

But when his bullet did arrive it struck his pocket watch, which absorbed t