Wondering what this inscription means

Colonial Service (India) ?

Not definitive, but more information here:

https://www.watchuseek.com/threads/the-watches-issued-to-the-cs-i.4900423/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Civil_Service

gatorcpa

This in my opinion is the more persuasive info - be it only because the Indian Civil Service was represented by the acronym ICS -and not CSI.and because also the contemporary letter is very powerful testimony IMHO.

very nice watches OP.

Canteen Services is indeed a possibility.

https://gutlin.com/products/a-steel-cased-1940-s-longines-canteen-services-india-wrist-watch

That info you posted @JimInOz is the one that @Bubba and @size11s are referring to;
and which is discussed at length in the MWR thread @size11s @Bubba posted above.

In summary, until recently all trusted sources were repeating what had been asserted initially in a reference book by Zygmunt Wesolowski, “A concise guide to military timepieces”. The CS(I) watch was considered as issued watch but to « Civil Service India », not to the military.

Konrad Knirim’s authoritative book on military time pieces used the same info, he himself messaged me to confirm his source was Wesolowski.
Some people were a bit skeptical, @rodabod had found a ministry of defense document referring to similar looking acronyms « C.S(A) » and C.S.(M) »- which could not be readily identified and the official Indian civil service acronym at the time was « ICS » (credit Dave from MWR).

Then a gentleman @etiennelaine on MWR (and OF) in 2019 posted the listing offered on Gutlin- with documents linking the watch to its owner Jeff Greensticket from the 44th Indian Airborne division during WWII, who won a lottery allowing the purchase of the watch from « Canteen Services india ».

No need to repeat the full discussion, which is on MWR.

I’ll add that the moderate price offered for this patinated watch and the fact the people writing the listing were clearly unaware of the literature give the documents additional credibility if any were needed. It’s not some sales puffery cooked up to push the price.

Unfortunately I've lost my MWR password so I just did a bit of internet searching and came up with it.
I surmised that it probably was the subject letter discussed at MWR so I posted it here for others without MWR access.

If they sold food, medication, matches, candles, clothing and cigarettes and belts, moaquito repellent or mosquito nets, would there be any surviving and bearing a CS(I) mark ? Watches are extremely durable items which people paid attention to because they were supposed to last a lifetime and they were expensive.

Maybe knives? But how do you know no one found a knife with a CS(I) mark?

I would suppose that most of the watches purchased at Canteen Services would have been by Indian Defence Force personnel, and being a valuable item, would have been passed down through the family and not put on the market where military watch collectors could access them.
I also think that they would only have been purchased by those with enough rank and enough money, not for the average private soldier.

The subject "letter watch" is an outlier, and was the result of winning a raffle that enabled the purchase. I wonder where the other two got to.

Similar to UK servicemen buying watches from NAAFI or US servicemen from PXs.

Just my thoughts.

I’m sure we can get that resolved if you wanted access again 😉