Omega dress watches – like this gold 1969 Omega 550 “Tichy Chevrolet” dress automatic here – were regularly (akin to Seiko dress watches) gifted to loyal employees of companies in the United States.
 
And this Omega is no different.
 
Gifted by auto manufacturer Chevrolet to Frank J. Tichy, likely for 25 years of loyal service, the watch commemorates what appears to be his start date, November 1946.  But who was Tichy?  That’s where the story gets interesting…
 
Born in 1924, Tichy served during World War II as a member of the U.S. Army’s 575th Anti-Aircraft Battalion, 11th Armored Division, in General George S. Patton’s Third Army, which placed him right in the middle of a battle no lesser a man than British Prime Minister Winston Churchill would describe as “undoubtedly the greatest American battle of the war and will, I believe, be regarded as an ever-famous American victory.”
 
As a 20-year-old, Tichy fought in the Battle of the Bulge, memorialized in the horrific episode six of Band of Brothers (2001), history’s largest land military battle with over a million soldiers fighting.  Eight decades ago, the battle took place during the Ardennes Offensive – the last major German offensive on the Western Front – between mid-December 1944 and late January 1945 in the densely forested Ardennes region between Belgium and Luxembourg.  Intended to stop western Allied use of the Belgian ports and to split the Allied lines, the Germans sought to encircle and destroy four Allied armies and force the latter to negotiate a peace treaty in favor of Axis powers.
 
Allied forces were hunkered down for what they thought was to be a quiet period of war during the harsh winter of 1944.  Awoken on the morning of 16 December 1944 by a massive German artillery bombardment – to include shell fuses timed to explode in the trees to create additional fatal shrapnel, so-called "tree-bursts" – followed by advancing German armor and infantry columns 200,000 plus strong, the Germans achieved a total surprise attack, due to a combination of Allied overconfidence, misread Ultra intelligence reporting, preoccupation with Allied offensive plans elsewhere, and poor aerial recon due to bad weather. 
 
The Germans broke through perilously stretched Allied lines, pushing the latter into a retreat that appeared on military maps to be an inward bulge going west, hence the moniker.  The Battle of the Bulge would last weeks – despite determined German attacks, the perimeter held.  
 
The German commander, requesting Bastogne's surrender, recevied a reply from Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe, the acting commander of the 101st, that simply famously read "Nuts!"  Typed up and delivered to the Germans, the served as a huge morale booster to his troops, but had to be explained to both the Germans and non-American Allies. 
 
Allied forces would emerge victorious in late January 1945, seemingly by force of sheer willpower alone.  The win came at a high cost – 19,000 Americans killed, 47,500 wounded, and 23,000 missing; the Germans fared worse, with more than 100,000 killed, wounded, or taken POW.  But it was also a hugely pivotal battle, and served as the death kneel for the German war effort, which would end in unconditional surrender scarcely three months subsequent.
 
In 2014 at the age of 90, Tichy gave an interview about the battle, revealing nightmares, battle scars – both physical and psychological – and the satisfaction of knowing he answered the call to defend his country.  Confirming the shocking images Tichy witnessed over 70 years prior remained embedded in his memory, he recounted the images of bodies, both American and the enemy, "...stacked like cord wood.  We kept going back and forth in the Ardennes Forest and the little towns.  You’d win some ground and then lose it,” Tichy said.
 
The snow ofrom one of the worst recorded in that region of Europe aided the Germans in the early days of the battle, as Allied air power was unable to get off the ground because of the weather and were prevented from bombing the enemy's armor and artillery.  “We spent a lot of time in foxholes, and you would wake up covered in snow,” Tichy said, adding he did not mind the blanket of snow - "You were glad to be alive and to fight another day.”  
 
Lacking proper winter footwear, Tichy and other soldiers improvised, shedding their government-issued boots for galoshes they converted into insulated winter boots.  “I put on a couple pairs of socks, cut up a wool blanket and wrapped my feet in sections of it and then put on my galoshes.  Other guys would put on as many pairs of socks as they could and put on their galoshes.  I wore my galoshes from December through April and didn’t get frozen feet.”  Tichy estimated as many as half the troops on the front lines suffered from varying degrees of frostbite.
 
“When it snowed, we would shoot our [anti-aircraft halftrack-mounted] two 50-caliber guns and our one 37-caliber gun into the woods.  We would spray the woods to keep the enemy from advancing,” Tichy said.  “But some days, especially after Christmas, were clear and beautiful, and we shot at the enemy planes if they were in sight.  We never knew who got the planes because there were so many halftrack guns shooting at the planes.”
 
Tichy recalls General Patton, who led the Third Army, frequently offering encouragement to the soldiers.  “He’d be in his Jeep, all dressed up in his general’s outfit, with his white-gripped pistol.  He really stood out.  You could spot him.  He’d shout, ‘Keep them son-of-guns on the run,’” Tichy said.  “He was quite a man.  He was a great general.  I’m here living because of him.  He knew how to fight a war.”
 
After WWII ended, in 1946, Tichy – per his obituary – settled in Alden, New York (approx. 25 miles east of Buffalo), to work as a Chevrolet Axel Plant as an autoworker for the next 33 years.
 
Tichy recounted in his interview he was simply proud to have been given the chance to defend America, “The Germans were never the same after the Battle of the Bulge,” Tichy said. “We chased them back into their own country and kept on fighting them until we won the war.”  A lifelong aficionado of bird watching and stamp collecting, he would pass away after outliving his wife, and four brothers and sisters at the age of 98 in April 2023; numerous testimonials in his remembrance book would testify to his upstanding character.
 
This gold Omega dress watch comes with a leather strap, nylon strap, springbar tool, and rugged travel case.