drumhead court-martial

Perhaps because a drumhead had to be used as a meeting point or an improvised writing table.

drumhead court-martial (plural drumhead court-martials)

1. (military) A court-martial held in the field to hear urgent charges of offences committed in action.
   • 1922 February, James Joyce, Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC:

     So of course the citizen was only waiting for the wink of the word and he starts gassing out of him about the invincibles and the old guard and the men of sixtyseven and who fears to speak of ninetyeight and Joe with him about all the fellows that were hanged, drawn and transported for the cause by drumhead courtmartial and a new Ireland and new this, that and the other.

     Penguin, 1992, p. 394

   • 2006, Jorg Baberowski, “Law, the judicial system and the legal profession”, in Dominic Lieven, editor, The Cambridge History of Russia, volume 2, Cambridge University Press, page 366:

     Between the summer of 1906 and the beginning of 1907, Prime Minister Stolypin used the powers which the Emergency Laws gave him to have more than one thousand terrorists sentenced to death by drumhead courts martial (voennye polevye sudy).

   • See also citations under drum-head court.

• drum-head court

• drumhead tribunal