Black and grey tattoo of a skeleton drum major in a shako hat, mid high-step with a baton, with the script 'We'll Carry On' below, on the thigh.

Skeleton drum major with 'We'll Carry On'

Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A skeleton drum major in a plumed shako hat high-steps across the thigh, holding a baton and raising one arm, with small flourishes trailing from the plume. The figure is drawn with fine outlines and soft grey shading on the uniform, and a cast shadow sits under the boot. The cursive script 'We'll Carry On' runs beneath the figure in black, and the image is a close, straight-on photograph against a dark background.

Thigh Skeleton Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Every September the apples in Lower Marl dropped before the pickers were ready, and every September the old women said the drum major was up in the trees again, shaking them loose to keep time. Nobody had seen him since the bandstand burned, but the children knew his step. Two beats, a kick, a turn, and the whole row of Bramleys shivered.

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Tom Ashby, who had played the bass drum at the last Whit Walk before the war took the village's boys, was the one who went up the hill to look. He found the orchard floor thick with fallen fruit and, in the middle of it, a tall figure in a shako with a feather of smoke rising from the plume. Its jaw clacked. It held out a baton, not to threaten him but to offer it.

"Carry on," said the drum major, in a voice like a cart rolling over gravel. "They never let us finish the march."

Tom took the baton. He had not expected it to be light. Together they walked the rows at dusk, the drum major high-stepping ahead, Tom tapping the rhythm on the sacks, until the bruised windfalls lay stacked in rows like men standing to attention.

Next morning the pickers found the orchard swept, every fruit gathered, and a clean white baton propped against the gate. Tom was never seen again, but the apples have come down on the beat ever since.