page_title: Drummer (military)
section_title: Notable drummer boys
hierarchical_section_title: Drummer (military) / Notable drummer boys
context_page_description: A drummer was responsible for the army drums for use on the battlefield. Drums were part of the field music for hundreds of years, being introduced by the Ottomans to Europe. Chinese armies however had used drums even before that. With the professionalization of armies, military music was developed as well. Drums were not only used for the men to march in step, but were an important part of the battlefield communications system, with various drum rudiments used to signal different commands from officers to troops. By the second half of the 18th century, most Western armies had a standardized set of marches and signals to be played, often accompanied by fifers.
context_section_description: Nathan Futrell (1773–1829) was said to have been the youngest drummer boy in the American War of Independence; he joined the North Carolina Continental Militia at the age of 7.
  In 1793, Joseph Bara, a 14-year-old French Republican drummer at the time of the War in the Vendée, was killed by royalist counter-revolutionaries, supposedly while he was shouting "Long live the Republic!". His body was interred at the Panthéon along with other national heroes.
  André Estienne was a drummer with Napoleon Bonaparte's army at the Battle of the Bridge of Arcole in 1796, where he led his battalion across a river while holding his drum over his head, and on reaching the far bank, beat the "charge". This led to the capture of the bridge and the rout of the Austrian army. Despite being 19 years old, he became famous as Le Petit Tambour d'Arcole (French: The Little Drummer of Arcole), and is depicted in the Panthéon in Paris and on the Arc de Triomphe, also in paintings by Charles Thévenin and Horace Vernet.
  On 19 April 1855, at the Siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War, there was a bayonet attack by the British 77th Regiment of Foot on some rifle pits which the Russians were using to snipe at British positions. Accompanying the attack was an unnamed drummer boy of the 77th, who seeing a Russian boy trumpeter trying to escape, caught hold of him and beat him with his fists "in truly British fashion" until he surrendered. The boy presented the Russian trumpet to Sir George Brown and he was later rewarded by General Lord Raglan, the British commander.
  At the Siege of Lucknow during the Indian Rebellion of 1857, 12-year-old Drummer Ross of the 93rd Highlanders signalled the arrival of his regiment to the besieged garrison, by climbing the spire of the Shah Najaf Mosque and playing the regimental march on his bugle, while under heavy fire from the rebel forces.
  On 28 November 1857 at the Second Battle of Cawnpore, 15-year-old Thomas Flynn, a drummer with the 64th Regiment of Foot, was awarded the Victoria Cross. "During a charge on the enemy's guns, Drummer Flynn, although wounded himself, engaged in a hand-to-hand encounter with two of the rebel artillerymen". He remains the youngest recipient of the medal.
  Thirteen-year-old Charles King was the youngest soldier killed in the entire American Civil War (1861–1865). Charles enlisted in the 49th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry with the reluctant permission of his father at the age of 12 years, 5 months and 9 days. On September 17, 1862 at the Battle of Antietam he was mortally wounded near or in the area of the East Woods, carried from the field and died three days later. Twelve-year-old drummer boy William Black was the youngest recorded person wounded in battle during the American Civil War. John Clem, who had unofficially joined a Union Army regiment at the age of 9 as a drummer and mascot, became famous as "The Drummer Boy of Chickamauga" where he played a "long roll" and shot a Confederate officer who had demanded his surrender. An 11-year-old drummer in the Confederate Orphan Brigade, known only as "Little Oirish", was credited with rallying troops at the Battle of Shiloh by taking up the regimental colors at a critical moment.
  In Costa Rica, the Drummer boy Juan Santamaría died in an act of self-sacrifice in the war against the US Filibuster William Walker and is commemorated as his country's National Hero.
caption: Battle of Balaclava Drummer Boy, an 1854 painting by English artist Richard Buckner
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