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by Joy Shiller
They were intricately drawn hula dancers in grass skirts, Oriental
ladies in kimonos, and pin-up girls in short-shorts. They were mermaids,
serpents, and red hearts pierced with black arrows. They were the
insignias of the armed forces and waving American flags. They were
the names of women, ships, and military units. Some were cartoonlike
and humorous. Others were realistic and serious. They told
the stories of love affairs, intoxicated nights, exotic places, courage,
patriotism, and fatalism. They were the tattoos that bore the memories
permanently inked into the skin and onto the minds of those who had
heroically served our country during the Second World War.
While still a teenager I embarked upon a career as a nurse. I
remember seeing them on the arms of many of my younger patients. It
was a mere seventeen years after the war and by this time some of the
women’s names from the past had either been altered or obliterated.
For others, there was a tendency to hide them under shirt-sleeves.
Even if changed or concealed, most men still expressed a sense of pride
in the artwork on their arms. Although I found the tattoos curious, as
a young nurse, I seldom explored their stories.
As the years of my nursing career progressed, these veterans
comprised an increasingly higher percentage of my patients. They
were then at the stage of life in which many disease entities surfaced.
Without exception, they equated dealing with the severity of illness or
impending major surgery with the danger they had faced during the
war. After all, if they survived battle, they could certainly survive the
circumstances they were now going through. So often, during bouts
of critical illness, they would become confused and their minds would
revert back to the Pacific or European theaters. Over the years, while
caring for so many of these men, I watched the brilliant colors on their
once muscular arms gradually fade. The precise lines of the images and
words were slowly losing their clarity. Still, I seldom asked about the
stories behind their tattoos.
It has now been over six decades since the end of the war and I am
in my final days as a nurse. The World War II veteran now represents
only an occasional patient of mine. The few remaining tattoos I see
seldom have any residual color. The images and words on fragile, thinskinned
arms are hardly discernable. Occasionally, I care for a patient
who has no recollection of the war or the stories associated with his
tattoos. I know this man once valiantly fought for my freedom and it
hurts to see a mind that has faded just like the colors of his arms.
Throughout my life as a nurse, I have bathed, infused intravenous
fluids, and given injections to thousands of arms that were once
brilliantly decorated. So many times, I held the hand of the arm that
told a story of the mind-set and circumstances of one young individual
on one night in the midst of a war. The actual details of the majority
of these stories will never be told in a book, seen in a movie, or heard
in a documentary.
I watched the once brilliant colors and images that once adorned
my patients arms gradually fade into obscurity along with their stories.
My patients’ arms had so much to tell and now, except for an isolated
few, they speak no more. I regret that I seldom asked.
Joy Shiller, RN, BSN, MS, CAPA
is a staff nurse
and clinical
mentor at the Methodist Hospital
in Houston.
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