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 Buhler.[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]
In popular culture

In Herman Melville's novella Billy Budd, the title character (a young sailor) was sentenced to death by a drumhead court for striking and killing the Master-at-arms on the HMS Bellipotent. This novella was adapted for stage, opera, film, and television performances.

This kind of court-martial is referenced in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Drumhead". Captain Picard compares the witch hunt-like investigation by Admiral Norah Satie to a drumhead trial.

See also

Kangaroo court

Lynching

References ^ Definition from ⇒Brewer's Dictionary
^ An example of an illustration from the Thirty Years War showing a drum used as a table at military executions: [1]
^ ⇒http://www.thisiskent.co.uk/letters/Scots-soldiers-parade-streets-Canterbury/article-538473-detail/article.html parade and drumhead service
^ ⇒http://www.maybole.org/Community/organisations/british/maybole_branch_rbl_scotland.htm Drumhead Service at Culzean Castle
^ ⇒http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/Templates/LargeImageTemplate.aspx?img=/NR/rdonlyres/CB6226B7-22D6-4B0C-9FF7-008FF21A3916/0/CCT08127OUTUNC0210.jpg Her Majesty the Queen presents the RAF with the new colour at a Drumhead service, RAF Fairford. [Photo: Cpl Scott Robertson RAF]
^ '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.
^ ⇒Transcript at tne Nizkor project
^ Years of Victory (1802-1812), Arthur Bryant, 1944

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