The Military Tattoo

This piece sits in the middle of the collection because endurance is not passive; it is an active, learned skill, practised over decades. We learn that endurance carries a cost.

Paul winked at his colleague Michelle and nodded in the direction of their teenaged charges.

Back in Australia, he had been obliged to wear a suit each day with all the understated decorum of a senior teacher. But she had sensed a trace of irreverence. For all his professionalism, he might be a rebel under the surface, though she had never raised it with him. Here, clad in black jeans and T-shirts, she noticed his powerful arms, tattooed from the wrists up.

Well, looks can be deceiving, she’d thought. Brains and brawn — or baraqué, they’d say in French.

‘Is everyone here?’ Paul did a quick head count. ‘Girls, where’s Alicia? And Jane?’

‘Oh sir, they were on the platform…’

A rash of giggles and blushes burst forth.

He swung around as footsteps and suitcase wheels clattered over the vast tiled interior of Strasbourg-Ville station. He gave the latecomers a studied glance.

‘Sorry sir, we er…’

They stopped short and dropped their eyes.

‘Well,’ he said, after a measured pause, ‘try to stay with the group. You wouldn’t want to hold us all up, would you?’

He gave Michelle a little nudge and looked over the girls’ heads at the scores of pink-cheeked French soldiers lining the platforms, now spilling into the vast halls.

Golden beams of light from the towering glass ceiling haloed them as they glided on the escalators, parallel to the ogling girls. As if on a conveyor belt, the soldiers stood armed, erect, focused, eyes front.

These young boys — hardly out of school — had been deployed because of recent terrorist attacks. Their smoothly muscled arms, sleeves rolled up, and their boyish faces belied the heavy-duty weapons they had been entrusted with.

‘Attention! Attention!’

Intermittent announcements urged vigilance, civic responsibility and national security, setting off Michelle’s anxiety. She scanned the student group, counting them off once again. She’d be glad to have them out of the station — a favourite target.

Seeing them took her back to another time, another land.

When she was living on military bases in Canada, Britain, Germany — it didn’t matter. You don’t forget the first brush with young male beauty, the first innocent surges of physical attraction, the sense of the forbidden.

And you don’t forget the vulnerability of very young men — their need for belonging.

Michelle had seen these young inductees on the parade ground, at the Military Tattoo — hundreds, sometimes thousands of them, identical and immaculately turned out, marching rifles upright, like a precision machine to barked orders and the military band.

At the time, she’d felt proud to be part of that.

She’d seen them crowded in their barracks. She’d cheered them on at sporting grounds, watched them playing rough, playing to fit in. Their every movement, their smooth skin and newly developed muscles bore testimony to the beauty of boyhood — and the promise of manhood.

No wonder Michelle, like the girls in her charge, felt the pull of their presence.

At their age, she had paid scant attention to her mother’s, ‘You’ll get yourself killed!’ or, as her sergeant father put it, ‘You don’t want to be known as the local “bike”, do you?’

Her sister had snort-laughed.

Her father continued undeterred. ‘Well, even if there’s no truth to it, they’ll brag to their buddies. Stay away from them.’

Michelle blushed, recalling the catcalls from the young men’s cars on the base.

And her sister’s words burned in her memory:
‘They think we’re just a bit of fresh meat.’

But she hadn’t been immune either.

Later, she’d been sent away out of harm’s way. Harm meaning, her heavy-drinking soldier boyfriend. He then shot up the chapel windows in a rage.

What could these young girls know of the hardening process already underway? Of the chasm being forged between their separate worlds?

Soon, these boys would no longer belong to the world of the mothers and sisters who loved them.

The Army would make ‘men’ of them — burying their boyhood dreams and passions under the armour of state-approved manhood.

Visions of Verdun flooded Michelle’s mind.

The thousands of white crosses.
And most harrowing of all, the ossuary filled with white bones — each chamber sorted according to body parts.

The bones of those boys. Sons. Brothers.

Born of so many mothers a century ago.

Of course, the French did not want to endure that horror again.

Now they were prepared.

On the day of the visit, the girls had seemed to shrink into themselves. Today, they seemed dumbstruck — but for other reasons.

Michelle looked first at the girls, then at the boys — and the weight of sadness descended on her.

‘Get a move on, girls!’

Paul’s voice shook Michelle back to the present.

She stood sentinel outside the public conveniences and ushered the students through the massive doorway into the blazing sunlight on the plaza.

A slow stream of French soldiers followed, taking up positions along the walls of the station.

Paul summoned the straggling girls.

Three had their heads together, giggling.

‘Sir… would you ask those soldiers if we can have a photo with them?’

All necks craned.

Paul looked at his watch.
‘Well, if they’re OK with it… you go and ask them. Just be polite — and be quick.’

A flurry of excitement followed.

‘But sir…’

They paused, hoping for help.

‘Miiiisss… would you ask them for us please?’

‘Just give it a go. Allez-hop!’ Michelle replied.

‘Oh miss… it’s so embarrassing… would you ask them? Pleeeease’.

Followed by a ridiculous crocodile of teenaged girls, Michelle approached the soldiers.

The young men blinked in slight alarm at the sudden swarm.

‘Pardon, les gars! On peut faire une photo? C’est permis?’

They shrank back slightly, one or two clutching their weapons.

Then one of them spoke, pointing behind the group.

‘But what about that tough guy over there? The one with all the tattoos. Is that OK with him?’

Michelle swivelled her head and burst into laughter.

They were referring to Paul — patiently waiting, arms crossed, his tattoos in full display.

‘Ah, lui? Pas de problème, c’est mon collègue.’

She took pains to reassure them of her colleague’s docile nature.

Thus, another generation of girls, another generation of soldier-boys — one moment in their lives, with all its contradictions — was captured for posterity, in this crease in time and place.

Text and Audio copyright @2026 Magz Morgan. All rights reserved.