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I took this photograph of my Grandfather in 1973 the year before he died, and never really thought about the subject matter too much before I got down to serious family tree research a couple of years ago. He was born in 1901 and joined the Lincolnshire regiment just before his 18th birthday in 1919.
He left in 1924 and had this tattoo done at some time as a young man.
When I took more notice of the tattoo (it says 'Peace at last' in the scrolls) it appeared to me that it was not celebrating the end of the 1st World War, but the Boer War for some reason. I'm reasonably happy that the figures represent combatants from the British Army and the Boers and have found numerous pictures on the internet of men dressed like these two.
What I can't understand is why he would have had such a large tattoo of this event when it would have been obvious to him at the time that it was not commemorating the war that had just finished, or anything to do with Europe. He spent three years of his service in India but can't imagine he had it done there choosing an out of date picture to have copied?
I haven't found anything similar on the internet so far....any experts out there who can give me a clue?
I took this photograph of my Grandfather in 1973 the year before he died, and never really thought about the subject matter too much before I got down to serious family tree research a couple of years ago. He was born in 1901 and joined the Lincolnshire regiment just before his 18th birthday in 1919.
He left in 1924 and had this tattoo done at some time as a young man.
When I took more notice of the tattoo (it says 'Peace at last' in the scrolls) it appeared to me that it was not celebrating the end of the 1st World War, but the Boer War for some reason. I'm reasonably happy that the figures represent combatants from the British Army and the Boers and have found numerous pictures on the internet of men dressed like these two.
What I can't understand is why he would have had such a large tattoo of this event when it would have been obvious to him at the time that it was not commemorating the war that had just finished, or anything to do with Europe. He spent three years of his service in India but can't imagine he had it done there choosing an out of date picture to have copied?
I haven't found anything similar on the internet so far....any experts out there who can give me a clue?
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