Richard Harris wears an unidentified watch

Late in The Wild Geese, four mercenaries stand outside a mud-walled hut in British DPM camo and red para berets, the raid already gone wrong around them. One of them is Captain Rafer Janders, played by Richard Harris, the man who mapped the whole operation before the first shot was fired. Andrew McLaglen lined up Richard Burton, Roger Moore, Hardy Kruger and Harris for it, a quartet of leading men playing soldiers for hire.

You would expect a cast like that to leave behind a parade of identifiable watches, which is what makes Harris's wrist so frustrating half a century on. In the clearest surviving cast still, the four of them bunched before that hut, the only wristwatch you can actually see belongs to Kruger, a dark field piece worn alongside what looks like a wrist compass. Harris's forearms are bare. The man who planned the mission down to the minute is the one whose own watch the camera never bothered to find.