This alarm clock is a casualty of war: embedded in its face is a large fragment of a shell fired on Hartlepool by a German warship on 16 December 1914. For the first time since the civil wars of the 17th century, British civilians were killed by direct enemy fire. Distinctions between combatants and non-combatants were to disappear in 20th century warfare. The clock provides a good starting point for looking at the nature of World War I as a new sort of warfare and at the impact of the war on people in Britain.