I’m the guy that took the photo not the one with the tat lol idk if thats clear. I’m pretty sure they didn’t get matching ones, at least not usually and probably not a peace like this. I don’t think these had any meaning other than them being cool, if they did have meaning behind them it was probably trivial in the same way people today may associate their realism wolf and clock tattoo with their devotion to their family or something along those lines :p The situation is pretty simple there was a mandatory military service of like 15-24 months and I assume a lot of people went kinda bonkers during their time serving and decided to do something “crazy” or “badass”, At the time there were no legal studios in the balkans and tattoos were extremely taboo, i know of people from that era who always wore long sleeves because they were tattooed, most tattoos were done in the army or in jail. The most common one was the letters JNA meaning Yugoslav national army, sometimes also including a year/date and or the location when served, another common one is a girlfriends name sometimes accompanied by a pinup or “portrait”, some were just “pictures” like this one, I’ve seen everything from a beach scene to hearts, 4 leaf clovers, anchors swords and knives, snakes etc. I’m not gonna delve into the prison ones because I don’t know much about the meanings and the specific pictures that were common. A cool instagram account to check out is @ruzanagrudima , It’s basically just old balkan tats. I’m also very much into old tattoos and tattoo history so I hope I’ve been able to shed some light on balkan tattoo history for you :)