Murderous Tommies

de Julian Putkowski, Mark Dunning

"Much has been written about the solfdiers executed during WWI 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 and executed for murder. The British Army has always been reticent about publicising courts martial and eighty yers elapsed before the government was compelled to premature,ly 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 adwn for offences other than homicide, and virtiually nobody was inclined to seek a posthumous pardon or judicial review for the murderous Tommies. This meant that neither the victim's nor the convicted men's families were able to discover details about the murder cases. Though identifiable online via much-visited war cemetery websites, until now there has been no readily accessible ... 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 twelve [other ranks] and one [officer] whose homicidal misdeeds were committed in France and Flanders while hostilities were in progress. ..."--Book jacket.