Radium even inspired a dance craze in 1904. Radium was found to glow in the dark and was used on theatre and vaudeville posters. From shirt collars to salts, toothpastes, cosmetics and even corsets, the manufacturers all made claims that they contained radium. Many different types of products appeared on the market claiming to harness the healthy properties of radium. It was these magical healing properties that attracted people to it, prompting others to produce new products from it, cashing in on a new health craze. Radium was seen as a miracle curative with long reaching health benefits. The other uses of radium were unforeseen by the Curies but as the discovery spread people conceived of brilliant, and not so brilliant, uses for it. In 1898, when Marie and Pierre Curie discovered radium it was considered a new wonder element, effective in the treatment of cancer. In the bundle of clothes, he found the pocket watch with the luminous dial. His personal effects were returned to him before he left for Canada. He was discharged from the military and transferred back to Canada.
However, his injuries were too severe for him to be redeployed to active service. After much treatment in hospital, Johnston was able to recover. At the General Hospital the doctors determined that he would need more medical attention and he was sent to England. The stretcher bearers were able to make their way to the wreckage and extracted Johnston from the site shortly after the attack and took him to the nearest field hospital, where doctors stabilized him before he was transferred to the General Hospital farther away from the front lines. Before stretcher bearers could recover him from the wreckage, the German army had deployed a chlorine gas attack on the same sector. It was over this sector on one September flight that a German fighter was able to hit Johnston’s plane, causing Johnston to crash in no-man’s land near the allied trenches. In 1917, Johnston and Brown started flying patrols over the Somme sector of northern France, shooting down German enemy aircraft. As such, he started carrying the watch in his uniform pocket. Shortly after receiving the new aircraft, Johnston found that the clip for his luminous dial pocket watch was faulty. The watches enabled pilots to better coordinate battle strikes since there was no radio communication once planes were in the air. Click on image to enlargeĮach Sopwith Camel airplane was equipped with an illuminated pocket watch that hung on the dash by a clip. The hazard of flying was the lack of safety gear in the event of a crash or being shot down as planes were mostly made of wood and canvas. Photograph of unknown First World War plane crash, c. 9 Naval Squadron and fitted out with brand new planes, Sopwith-Camels, each equipped with a luminous dial pocket watch. In August 1917, Johnston and Brown were posted in No. Captain Brown, flying overhead, notified a nearby French destroyer that retrieved Johnston from the water 45 minutes after his watery crash.Īfter his rescue, Johnston returned to the air in a new plane, which he crashed in early 1917. He crashed into the water and was able to extricate himself from the wreckage and started swimming.
He was flying a joint mission with Brown in November 1916 when Johnston was shot down over the English Channel with neither parachute nor life jacket. Johnston was sent on flying missions over London with his partner Captain Arthur Roy Brown, intercepting German Fokker Bombers headed for London. By 1916, they were fitted out with machine guns, used to prevent air raids and deter enemy reconnaissance. Airplanes were first only used for reconnaissance missions. He was transferred to the British Navy as there was no Air Force at the beginning of the war. He paid for his own air training in Ontario before he enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Forces as a pilot. It even had the popular illuminated dial, a feature that disguised a potential killer under its plastic cover – radium. The watch itself was not any different from other watches with the same mechanisms and faces. Canadian soldier John Hopkinson’s trench pocket watch from the First World War, also painted with radium on the dial. The watch was kept for years by the family without knowing what other secrets it held.
Johnston was then discharged from the military and returned to Canada, passing the watch on to his son as a memento of the air battles he fought against German air pilots, including Manfred von Richthofen, The Red Baron. He kept it as a souvenir the rest of his life. Unexpectedly among the items he received back was a pocket watch that was not his. Upon discharge from a military hospital, pilot William Clarence Johnston received his personal effects, recovered with him from a plane crash site by stretcher bearers in the middle of the Somme Battlefield in September 1917.
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