Military wristwatches are thought to have got their name from a German military request for a soldier in a watch house (in other words a guard tower). Girard-Perregaux. One story says an unnamed German naval officer needed to know the time, however he was usually using both his hands. Another story is that Wilhelm I placed an order at a Berlin trade show. These new wrist watches saw their first action in the Boer war. Later seen in World War 1, rudimentary wrist watches were small sized pocket watches with metal lugs soldered on so that a fabric strap could hold the watch to a wrist. Some may have had no cover over the watch crystal, while some had a metal cover, some with the metal cover had pieces of the cover cut, so that you could see the watch under the cover without opening it.