Drumhead court-martial

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The drumhead court-martial of the Finnish 15th Brigade in July 1944

A drumhead court-martial is a court-martial held in the field to hear urgent charges of offences committed in action. The term is said to originate from the use of a drumhead as an improvised writing table,[1][2] as an altar for religious services, [3][4] or a traditional gathering point for a regiment for orders or decisions.[5]

The earliest recorded usage is in an English memoir of the Peninsular War (1807).[6] The term sometimes has connotations of summary justice, with an implied lack of judicial impartiality, as noted in the transcripts of the trial at Nuremberg of Josef Bühler.[7] According to Sir Arthur Wynne Morgan Bryant, such courts-martial have ordered lashings or hangings to punish soldiers (and their officers) who were cowardly, disobedient – or, conversely, acted rashly; and especially as a discouragement to drunkenness.[8]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Definition from Brewer's Dictionary
  2. ↑ An example of an illustration from the Thirty Years War showing a drum used as a table at military executions
  3. ↑ parade and drumhead service
  4. ↑ Drumhead Service at Culzean Castle
  5. ↑ Her Majesty the Queen presents the RAF with the new colour at a Drumhead service, RAF Fairford. (Photo: Cpl Scott Robertson RAF)
  6. ↑ 'Court martial, n. 1.b. drumhead court-martial', Oxford English Dictionary Online (2009), citing Sir Charles Shaw, Personal memoirs and correspondence, comprising a narrative of the war ... in Portugal and Spain (1837), II, 449.
  7. ↑ Transcript at tne Nizkor project
  8. ↑ Years of Victory (1802-1812), Arthur Bryant, 1944
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