Murderous Tommies

Product Description

Much has been written about the soldiers executed during WW1 for military offences 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 & executed for murder. The British Army has always been reticent about publicising courts martial & 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 offences other than homicide & 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 & balanced narrative about the activities & courts-martial of all the murderous Tommies of the Western Front. This book provides for a full account of the cases involving twelve soldiers & one officer whose homicidal misdeeds were committed in France & 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 & 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 judgement as well as those involved in confirming the death sentences.