Many in the military fear that “putting their skin in the game” will be forgotten, and some have taken steps to keep memories of their fallen comrades alive. These may be found in an old form of art, the tattoo, specifically the memorial tattoo.

Mary Beth Heffernan, a photographer and associate professor of sculpture and photography at Occidental College, documented U. S. Marine memorial tattoos on film and incorporated them into a gallery exhibit, “The Soldier’s Skin: An Endless Edition.” The exhibit was shown at the Pasadena City College Art Gallery between October 10 and November 17, 2007, which was organized in conjunction with the citywide Pasadena Festival of Art and Ideas. Marines may be a specialized form of soldier, but most Marines prefer to be thought of as Marines rather than soldiers, as referenced in the exhibit’s title. The endless edition refers to Heffernan displaying her photolithographs arranged in stacks on a floor. To me, it brings tombstones to mind. Heffernan encourages viewers to take home copies from the stack, free of charge and reflect on them.

This image of a tattoo on the back of U. S. Marine, Joshua Hall. was photographed by Heffernan on February 3, 2006. It was reproduced as a 24” x 27” poster in unlimited quantity for the show in 2007. Memorialized on dog tags, along with his grandfather and uncle who died in war, are other fallen Marine brothers in arms.

Other Heffernan images may be found on the following links:  http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-1027-heffernan-pg,0,5619148.photogallery?coll=la-tot-entertainment; and http://www.artscenecal.com/ArticlesFile/Archive/Articles2007/Articles1007/MBHeffernanA.html.

The cover of Heffernan’s exhibit catalog features a young girl holding a 19” x 27” poster showing the tattoo on the front of Owen McNamara’s body, taken on February 6, 2006. During his second tour in Iraq, McNamara was twenty years old. While attending a promotion ceremony, ten of his fellow Marines were killed at a booby-trapped patrol base. The tattoo which covers most of his upper torso has inscribed, “In Memory of Our Fallen Brothers,” positioned above a helmet carrying his unit’s identification, sitting on top of a rifle with its bayonet stuck into the ground dated, “Dec. 1, 2005,” flanked by two dog tags bearing “Never” “Forget.” Empty boots are arranged at the base with five shell casings on either side with the last names of his fallen brothers floating above each of the casings. McNamara was wounded on his first tour in Iraq, and he has a tattoo on his arm to capture this memory.

Even though Heffernan focused on the particular, the images tell us much more about war and the current need of Marines to honor the fallen and preserve their memories in a society that prefers to ignore their sacrifices. For some Marines, Heffernan notes, tattoos are rites of passage and much more. Marines are aware of their mortality and some design tattoos in advance that their friends will have inscribed if they are killed.

Heffernan offers some other thoughts on the Marine memorial tattoos. She sees them as a type of ritual wounding. Pain, healing, and inscription are seen as part of the memorial. It allows for a type of communion with fallen brothers through their own suffering, during the creation of the tattoo. Sometimes the pain goes on for hours. As the body heals and the expression is made, Heffernan notes, the trauma associated with them hardens and closes. Summing up, Heffernan states,

Most of all, the memorial is an attempt to assign stable meaning to an event that is beyond representation: death that is random, violent, disorienting, unfathomably gruesome. The active duty marine who memorializes his brother’s death shimmers in an uneasy present between the threat of his own death and his buddy’s past life. By scripting his mourning onto the surface of his body, the marine permanently flags his own trauma and loss; the soldier’s skin becomes a site of mourning the past and warning the future.

Heffernan has been interested in skin as the site that separates the self from the other, and nature from culture. She spent three months in 2006 researching the project in tattoo parlors located in Twentynine Palms, a small town in southeastern California, near a Marine base. Some of the Marines she witnessed have served multiple tours in combat.

Why do many Marines feel the need to memorialize their fallen comrades on their skin? The answer to this question may be found in the essence of the phrase, “skin in the game,” and in a desire to not have these “skins” forgotten. In a sense, the skin of these Marines allows for the preservation of personal, interpersonal and collective memories. The skins capture life and death, the memories of them, and they tell a political story for those who are inclined not to forget.