![]() She knew many would be commemorative, such as the tattoo at the centre of veteran Adam’s chest (only first names are used in the exhibition). What stood out for Boyle was the range of meanings behind the tattoos. It’s a bit too much like a question about your underwear – who wants to know?”Īdam, whose tattoos in part commemorate a comrade killed in Afghanistan, is among those featured in the war memorial exhibitions. “I think people just wouldn’t have thought about it seriously as a matter for inquiry or of interest. If I had not found a pastime like tattooing, I would have probably ended up as another poor coot did by hanging myself or going off my rocker.”īoyle says Passfield is an unusual example of a soldier talking about tattoos because service people generally weren’t asked about it in oral history interviews – “unsurprising when you think there was such a longtime stigma of tattoos”. “I could not take prison life lightly, as a good many could. In an oral history interview, Passfield said “tattooing was not just a craze nor did I do it for the sake of the finished result – but simply because I had to be doing something to take my mind away from being wired in”. Boyle says: “When he wasn’t working on actual escape plans, his other form of escape – a mental escape, if you will – was to tattoo himself using handmade and bartered tools and needles.” When Alfred Passfield was examined on enlistment in 1939, he had only one distinguishing mark – an acne scar on his shoulder – but by the war’s end he would be, in his own words, “covered from neck to ankle with pictures”.Īfter being captured by the Germans on the island of Crete, Passfield made eight escape attempts. For others, tattoos became a means of survival. Photograph: Australian War Memorialįor many soldiers, their skin became a visual history of their career and a record of where they had served. The exhibition has toured regional galleries since November 2021 and is now at Sydney’s Manly Art Gallery and Museum before its final leg in Melbourne in November.Īlfred Passfield, who tattooed himself with handmade tools to help keep his sanity while held prisoner by the Germans during the second world war. The stories behind the tattoos in Australia’s military are being told for the first time in an exhibition, Ink in the Lines, by the war memorial. Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads ![]() “We’ve had glimpses of this sort of unofficial history within the official history, but no one had ever talked about it,” Boyle says. When Sgt John Spence signed up on 29 July 1915, the officer noted six tattoos: an eagle and Australian flag on his back, the Australian coat of arms on his chest, “Advance Australia” on his left arm and “unity” on his right – as well as a swallow on both. The enlistment papers of servicemen attest to how many had tattoos, Boyle says, because the medical officer assessing their fitness for duty would note any distinguishing marks such as appendix or smallpox vaccination scars – including tattoos. ![]() Australian soldiers use an electric needle for tattooing on board their ship bound for Egypt during the first world war. ![]()
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