Of Importance and Noted

Traditionally private letters and diaries have provided the few insights we’ve had into military life at a personal level. Now Eamonn O’Keeffe, an eleven-year veteran of the Fort York Guard currently in his third year studying history at Oxford, has opened up another source that’s seldom been plumbed before: the proceedings of military courts-martial. With the publication of his groundbreaking article, “‘Such Want of Gentlemanly Conduct:’ The General Court Martial of Lieutenant John de Hertel,” in the Fall 2016 issue of Canadian Military History, we get an intimate glimpse into a drunken altercation, an event that took place in Fort York’s Blue Barracks in May 1815. http://scholars.wlu.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1829&context=cmh Plenty of intrigue ensued, including allegations that one officer was beaten with a broomstick and thrown out of a window at Fort York for his “boyish indiscretions.”