Murderous Tommies

Julian Putkowski · Mark Dunning

sept 2012 · Pen and Sword

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Much has been written about the soldiers executed during WW1 for military offenses, all of whom were conditionally pardoned in 2006. However, until now very little attention has been paid to the cases of men who were tried under the Army Act and executed for murder. The British Army has always been reticent about publicizing courts martial and eighty years elapsed before the government was compelled to prematurely declassify the written proceedings of First World War capital courts martial. Even then, public attention tended to concentrate on cases involving soldiers who had been shot at dawn for offenses other than homicide, and virtually nobody was inclined to seek a posthumous pardon or judicial review for the murderous Tommies. This meant neither the victims nor the convicted mens families were able to discover details about the murder cases. Though readily identifiable online via much-visited war cemetery websites, until now there has been no readily accessible, historically reliable and balanced narrative about the activities and courts-martial of all the murderous Tommies of the Western Front. This book provides for a full account of the cases involving the fourteen soldiers and one officer whose homicidal misdeeds were committed in France and Flanders while hostilities were in progress.Drawing on contemporary records, this carefully researched work chronicles the circumstances in which each of these men either slaughtered one of their comrades or an unarmed civilian. It examines the murderers motives and presents a balanced analysis of each case, including a detailed assessment of the extent to which each condemned man was granted a fair hearing by officers who sat in uneasy judgment as well as those involved in confirming the death sentences.

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Mark Dunning combines his successful career as a lawyer specialising in legal redress with a twenty year long research interest in British Army capital courts martial cases. In 2010 he was awarded an MA in Modern British History by the University of York. Julian Putkowski is a university lecturer residing in Hackney and a member of the Scientific Committee of the In Flanders Fields Museum, Ieper. Since 1978 his research about the British Army during the Great War has featured in many radio and TV programmes, including The Monocled Mutineer (BBC); Going Home (Opix), and Mutiny (Sweet Patootee). Julian writes authoritatively about mutinies and military misdeeds, and with Julian Sykes he co-authored Shot at Dawn and supported the campaign to secure posthumous pardons for the executed men.