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= Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener =
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Introduction
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Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener (; 24 June
1850 - 5 June 1916) was a British Army officer and colonial
administrator. Kitchener came to prominence for his imperial
campaigns, his involvement in the Second Boer War, and his central
role in the early part of the First World War.
Kitchener was credited in 1898 for having won the Battle of Omdurman
and securing control of the Sudan, for which he was made Baron
Kitchener of Khartoum. As Chief of Staff (1900-1902) in the Second
Boer War he played a key role in Lord Roberts' conquest of the Boer
Republics, then succeeded Roberts as commander-in-chief - by which
time Boer forces had taken to guerrilla fighting and British forces
imprisoned Boer and African civilians in concentration camps. His term
as Commander-in-Chief (1902-1909) of the Army in India saw him quarrel
with another eminent proconsul, the Viceroy Lord Curzon, who
eventually resigned. Kitchener then returned to Egypt as British Agent
and Consul-General ('de facto' administrator).
In 1914, at the start of the First World War, Kitchener became
Secretary of State for War, a Cabinet Minister. One of the few to
foresee a long war, lasting for at least three years, and having the
authority to act effectively on that perception, he organised the
largest volunteer army that Britain had seen, and oversaw a
significant expansion of material production to fight on the Western
Front. Despite having warned of the difficulty of provisioning for a
long war, he was blamed for the shortage of shells in the spring of
1915 - one of the events leading to the formation of a coalition
government - and stripped of his control over munitions and strategy.
On 5 June 1916, Kitchener was making his way to Russia on to attend
negotiations with Tsar Nicholas II when in bad weather the ship struck
a German mine 1.5 mi west of Orkney, Scotland, and sank. Kitchener was
among 737 who died; he was the highest-ranking British officer to die
in action in the entire war.
Early life
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Kitchener was born in Tarbert near Listowel, County Kerry, in Ireland,
son of army officer Henry Horatio Kitchener (1805-1894) and Frances
Anne Chevallier (1826-1864); daughter of John Chevallier, a clergyman,
of Aspall Hall, and his third wife, Elizabeth ('née' Cole).
Both sides of Kitchener's family were from Suffolk, and could trace
their descent to the reign of William III; his mother's family was of
French Huguenot descent. His father had only recently sold his
commission and bought land in Ireland, under the Encumbered Estates
Act of 1849 designed to encourage investment into Ireland after the
Irish Famine. In later life Kitchener only once revisited his
childhood home, in the summer of 1910 at the invitation of Henry
Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne; he astonished the
estate's owners by recalling the Irish names of many of the fields.
Although sometimes labeled by military historians as Irish or
Anglo-Irish (a group which provided a disproportionate number of
senior British officers - see Irish military diaspora), Kitchener did
not regard himself as such and was known to quote the saying
misattributed to the Duke of Wellington that "a man may be born in a
stable, but that does not make him a horse".
In 1864 the family moved to Switzerland, where the young Kitchener was
educated at Montreux, then at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich.
Pro-French and eager to see action, he joined a French field ambulance
unit in the Franco-Prussian War. His father took him back to Britain
after he caught pneumonia while ascending in a balloon to see the
French Army of the Loire in action.
Commissioned into the Royal Engineers on 4 January 1871, Kitchener was
reprimanded by the Duke of Cambridge, the commander-in-chief, as his
service in France had violated British neutrality. He served in
Palestine, Egypt and Cyprus as a surveyor, learned Arabic, and
prepared detailed topographical maps of the areas. His brother, Lt.
Gen. Sir Walter Kitchener, had also entered the army and was Governor
of Bermuda from 1908 to 1912.
Survey of western Palestine
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In 1874, aged 24, Kitchener was assigned by the Palestine Exploration
Fund to a mapping-survey of the Holy Land, replacing Charles
Tyrwhitt-Drake, who had died of malaria. By then an officer in the
Royal Engineers, Kitchener joined fellow officer Claude R. Conder;
between 1874 and 1877 they surveyed Palestine, returning to England
only briefly in 1875 after an attack by locals at Safed, in Galilee.
Conder and Kitchener's expedition became known as the Survey of
Western Palestine because it was largely confined to the area west of
the Jordan River. The survey collected data on the topography and
toponymy of the area, as well as local flora and fauna.
The results of the survey were published in an eight-volume series,
with Kitchener's contribution in the first three tomes (Conder and
Kitchener 1881-1885). This survey has had a lasting effect on the
Middle East for several reasons:
* It serves as the basis for the grid system used in the modern maps
of Israel and Palestine;
* The data compiled by Conder and Kitchener are still consulted by
archaeologists and geographers working in the southern Levant;
* The survey itself effectively delineated and defined the political
borders of the southern Levant. For example, the modern border between
Israel and Lebanon is established at the point in upper Galilee where
Conder and Kitchener's survey stopped.
In 1878, having completed the survey of western Palestine, Kitchener
was sent to Cyprus to undertake a survey of that newly acquired
British protectorate. He became vice-consul in Anatolia in 1879.
Egypt
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On 4 January 1883 Kitchener was promoted to captain, given the Turkish
rank binbasi (major), and dispatched to Egypt, where he took part in
the reconstruction of the Egyptian Army.
Egypt had recently become a British puppet state, its army led by
British officers, although still nominally under the sovereignty of
the Khedive (Egyptian viceroy) and his nominal overlord the Ottoman
sultan. Kitchener became second-in-command of an Egyptian cavalry
regiment in February 1883, and then took part in the failed Nile
Expedition to relieve Charles George Gordon in the Sudan in late 1884.
Fluent in Arabic, Kitchener preferred the company of the Egyptians
over the British, and the company of no-one over the Egyptians,
writing in 1884 that: "I have become such a solitary bird that I often
think I were happier alone". Kitchener spoke Arabic so well that he
was able to effortlessly adopt the dialects of the different Bedouin
tribes of Egypt and the Sudan.
Promoted to brevet major on 8 October 1884 and to brevet
lieutenant-colonel on 15 June 1885, he became the British member of
the Zanzibar boundary commission in July 1885. He became Governor of
the Egyptian Provinces of Eastern Sudan and Red Sea Littoral (which in
practice consisted of little more than the Port of Suakin) in
September 1886, also Pasha the same year, and led his forces in action
against the followers of the Mahdi at Handub in January 1888, when he
was injured in the jaw.
Kitchener was promoted to brevet colonel on 11 April 1888 and to the
substantive rank of major on 20 July 1889 and led the Egyptian cavalry
at the Battle of Toski in August 1889. At the beginning of 1890 he was
appointed Inspector General of the Egyptian police 1888-92 before
moving to the position of Adjutant-General of the Egyptian Army in
December of the same year and Sirdar (Commander-in-Chief) of the
Egyptian Army with the local rank of brigadier in April 1892.
Kitchener was worried that, although his moustache was bleached white
by the sun, his blond hair refused to turn grey, making it harder for
Egyptians to take him seriously. His appearance added to his mystique:
his long legs made him appear taller, whilst a cast in his eye made
people feel he was looking right through them. Kitchener, at 6 ft,
towered over most of his contemporaries.
Sir Evelyn Baring, the 'de facto' British ruler of Egypt, thought
Kitchener "the most able (soldier) I have come across in my time". In
1890, a War Office evaluation of Kitchener concluded: "A good
brigadier, very ambitious, not popular, but has of late greatly
improved in tact and manner ... a fine gallant soldier and good
linguist and very successful in dealing with Orientals" [in the 19th
century, Europeans called the Middle East the Orient].
While in Egypt, Kitchener was initiated into Freemasonry in 1883 in
the Italian-speaking La Concordia Lodge No. 1226, which met in Cairo.
In November 1899 he was appointed the first District Grand Master of
the District Grand Lodge of Egypt and the Sudan, under the United
Grand Lodge of England.
Sudan and Khartoum
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Kitchener won victories at the Battle of Ferkeh in June 1896 and the
Battle of Hafir in September 1896, earning him national fame in the
United Kingdom and promotion to major-general on 25 September 1896.
Kitchener's cold personality and his tendency to drive his men hard
made him widely disliked by his fellow officers. One officer wrote
about Kitchener in September 1896: "He was always inclined to bully
his own entourage, as some men are rude to their wives. He was
inclined to let off his spleen on those around him. He was often
morose and silent for hours together ... he was even morbidly afraid
of showing any feeling or enthusiasm, and he preferred to be
misunderstood rather than be suspected of human feeling." Kitchener
had served on the Wolseley expedition to rescue General Charles George
Gordon at Khartoum, and was convinced that the expedition failed
because Wolseley had used boats coming up the Nile to bring his
supplies. Kitchener wanted to build a railroad to supply the
Anglo-Egyptian army, and assigned the task of constructing the Sudan
Military Railroad to a Canadian railroad builder, Percy Girouard, for
whom he had specifically asked.
Kitchener achieved further successes at the Battle of Atbara in April
1898, and then the Battle of Omdurman in September 1898. After
marching to the walls of Khartoum, he placed his army into a crescent
shape with the Nile to the rear, together with the gunboats in
support. This enabled him to bring overwhelming firepower against any
attack of the 'Ansar' from any direction, though with the disadvantage
of having his men spread out thinly, with hardly any forces in
reserve. Such an arrangement could have proven disastrous if the
'Ansar' had broken through the thin khaki line. At about 5 a.m. on 2
September 1898, a huge force of 'Ansar', under the command of the
Khalifa himself, came out of the fort at Omdurman, marching under
their black banners inscribed with Koranic quotations in Arabic; this
led Bennet Burleigh, the Sudan correspondent of 'The Daily Telegraph',
to write: "It was not alone the reverberation of the tread of horses
and men's feet I heard and seemed to feel as well as hear, but a
voiced continuous shouting and chanting-the Dervish invocation and
battle challenge "Allah e Allah Rasool Allah el Mahdi!" they
reiterated in vociferous rising measure, as they swept over the
intervening ground". Kitchener had the ground carefully studied so
that his officers would know the best angle of fire, and had his army
open fire on the 'Ansar' first with artillery, then machine guns and
finally rifles as the enemy advanced. A young Winston Churchill,
serving as an army officer, wrote of what he saw: "A ragged line of
men were coming on desperately, struggling forward in the face of the
pitiless fireblack banners tossing and collapsing; white figures
subsiding in dozens to the ground ... valiant men were struggling on
through a hell of whistling metal, exploding shells, and spurting
dustsuffering, despairing, dying". By about 8:30 am, much of the
Dervish army was dead; Kitchener ordered his men to advance, fearing
that the Khalifa might escape with what was left of his army to the
fort of Omdurman, forcing Kitchener to lay siege to it.
Viewing the battlefield from horseback on the hill at Jebel Surgham,
Kitchener commented: "Well, we have given them a damn good dusting".
As the British and Egyptians advanced in columns, the Khalifa
attempted to outflank and encircle the columns; this led to desperate
hand-to-hand fighting. Churchill wrote of his own experience as the
21st Lancers cut their way through the 'Ansar': "The collision was
prodigious and for perhaps ten wonderful seconds, no man heeded his
enemy. Terrified horses wedged in the crowd, bruised and shaken men,
sprawling in heaps, struggle dazed and stupid, to their feet, panted
and looked about them". The Lancers' onslaught carried them through
the 12-men-deep 'Ansar' line with the Lancers losing 71 dead and
wounded while killing hundreds of the enemy. Following the
annihilation of his army, the Khalifa ordered a retreat and early in
the afternoon, Kitchener rode in triumph into Omdurman and immediately
ordered that the thousands of Christians enslaved by the 'Ansar' were
now all free people. Kitchener lost fewer than 500 men while killing
about 11,000 and wounding 17,000 of the 'Ansar'. Burleigh summed the
general mood of the British troops: "At Last! Gordon has been avenged
and justified. The dervishes have been overwhelming routed, Mahdism
has been "smashed", while the Khalifa's capital of Omdurman has been
stripped of its barbaric halo of sanctity and invulnerability.
Kitchener promptly had the Mahdi's tomb blown up to prevent it from
becoming a rallying point for his supporters, and had his bones
scattered. Queen Victoria, who had wept when she heard of General
Gordon's death, now wept for the man who had vanquished Gordon, asking
whether it had been really necessary for Kitchener to desecrate the
Mahdi's tomb.The body of the Mahdi was disinterred and beheaded. This
symbolic decapitation echoed General Gordon's death at the hands of
the Mahdist forces in 1885. The headless body of the Mahdi was thrown
into the Nile. Kitchener is sometimes claimed to have kept the Mahdī's
skull and rumoured that he intended to use it as a drinking cup or ink
well. Other historians state that he had the head buried unmarked in a
Muslim cemetery. In a letter to his mother, Churchill wrote that the
victory at Omdurman had been "disgraced by the inhuman slaughter of
the wounded and ... Kitchener is responsible for this". There is no
evidence that Kitchener ordered his men to shoot the wounded 'Ansar'
on the field of Omdurman, but he did give before the battle what the
British journalist Mark Urban called a "mixed message", saying that
mercy should be given, while at the same time saying "Remember Gordon"
and that the enemy were all "murderers" of Gordon. The victory at
Omdurman made Kitchener into a popular war hero, and gave him a
reputation for efficiency and as a man who got things done. The
journalist G. W. Steevens wrote in the 'Daily Mail' that "He
[Kitchener] is more like a machine than a man. You feel that he ought
to be patented and shown with pride at the Paris International
Exhibition. British Empire: Exhibit No. 1 'hors concours', the Sudan
Machine". The shooting of the wounded at Omdurman, along with the
desecration of the Mahdi's tomb, gave Kitchener a reputation for
brutality that was to dog him for the rest of his life, and
posthumously.
After Omdurman, Kitchener opened a special sealed letter from
Salisbury that told him that Salisbury's real reason for ordering the
conquest of the Sudan was to prevent France from moving into the
Sudan, and that the talk of "avenging Gordon" had been just a pretext.
Salisbury's letter ordered Kitchener to head south as soon as possible
to evict Marchand before he got a chance to become well-established on
the Nile. On 18 September 1898, Kitchener arrived at the French fort
at Fashoda (present day Kodok, on the west bank of the Nile north of
Malakal) and informed Marchand that he and his men had to leave the
Sudan at once, a request Merchand refused, leading to a tense
stand-off as French and British soldiers aimed their weapons at each
other. During what became known as the Fashoda Incident, Britain and
France almost went to war with each other. The Fashoda Incident caused
much jingoism and chauvinism on both sides of the English Channel;
however, at Fashoda itself, despite the stand-off with the French,
Kitchener established cordial relations with Marchand. They agreed
that the tricolor would fly equally with the Union Jack and the
Egyptian flag over the disputed fort at Fashoda. Kitchener was a
Francophile who spoke fluent French, and despite his reputation for
brusque rudeness was very diplomatic and tactful in his talks with
Marchand; for example, congratulating him on his achievement in
crossing the Sahara in an epic trek from Dakar to the Nile. In
November 1898, the crisis ended when the French agreed to withdraw
from the Sudan. Several factors persuaded the French to back down.
These included British naval superiority; the prospect of an
Anglo-French war leading to the British gobbling up the entire French
colonial empire after the defeat of the French Navy; the pointed
statement from the Russian Emperor Nicholas II that the Franco-Russian
alliance applied only to Europe, and that Russia would not go to war
against Britain for the sake of an obscure fort in the Sudan in which
no Russian interests were involved; and the possibility that Germany
might take advantage of an Anglo-French war to strike France.
Kitchener became Governor-General of the Sudan in September 1898, and
began a programme of restoring good governance. The programme had a
strong foundation, based on education at Gordon Memorial College as
its centrepieceand not simply for the children of the local elites,
for children from anywhere could apply to study. He ordered the
mosques of Khartoum rebuilt, instituted reforms which recognised
Fridaythe Muslim holy dayas the official day of rest, and guaranteed
freedom of religion to all citizens of the Sudan. He attempted to
prevent evangelical Christian missionaries from trying to convert
Muslims to Christianity.
At this stage of his career Kitchener was keen to exploit the press,
cultivating G. W. Steevens of the 'Daily Mail' who wrote a book 'With
Kitchener to Khartum'. Later, as his legend had grown, he was able to
be rude to the press, on one occasion in the Second Boer War
bellowing: "Get out of my way, you drunken swabs". He was created
Baron Kitchener, of Khartoum and of Aspall in the County of Suffolk,
on 31 October 1898.
Anglo-Boer War
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During the Second Boer War, Kitchener arrived in South Africa with
Field Marshal Lord Roberts on the RMS 'Dunottar Castle' along with
massive British reinforcements in December 1899. Officially holding
the title of chief of staff, he was in practice a second-in-command
and was present at the relief of Kimberley before leading an
unsuccessful frontal assault at the Battle of Paardeberg in February
1900. Kitchener was mentioned in despatches from Roberts several times
during the early part of the war; in a despatch from March 1900
Roberts wrote how he was "greatly indebted to him for his counsel and
cordial support on all occasions".
Following the defeat of the conventional Boer forces, Kitchener
succeeded Roberts as overall commander in November 1900. He was also
promoted to lieutenant-general on 29 November 1900 and to local
general on 12 December 1900. He subsequently inherited and expanded
the successful strategies devised by Roberts to force the Boer
commandos to submit, including concentration camps and the burning of
farms. Conditions in the concentration camps, which had been conceived
by Roberts as a form of control of the families whose farms he had
destroyed, began to degenerate rapidly as the large influx of Boers
outstripped the ability of the minuscule British force to cope. The
camps lacked space, food, sanitation, medicine, and medical care,
leading to rampant disease and a very high death rate for those Boers
who entered. Eventually 26,370 women and children (81% were children)
died in the concentration camps. The biggest critic of the camps was
the English humanitarian and welfare worker Emily Hobhouse. She
published a prominent report that highlighted atrocities committed by
Kitchener's soldiers and administration, creating considerable debate
in London about the war. Kitchener blocked Hobhouse from returning to
South Africa by invoking martial law provisions.
Historian Caroline Elkins characterized Kitchener's conduct of the war
as a "scorched earth policy", as his forces razed homesteads, poisoned
wells and implemented concentration camps, as well as turned women and
children into targets in the war.
The Treaty of Vereeniging ending the war was signed in May 1902
following a tense six months. During this period Kitchener struggled
against the Governor of the Cape Colony (Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount
Milner), and against the British government. Milner was a hard-line
conservative and wanted to Anglicise the Afrikaans-speaking people
(the Boers) by force, and both Milner and the British government
wanted to assert victory by forcing the Boers to sign a humiliating
peace treaty; Kitchener wanted a more generous compromise peace treaty
that would recognize certain rights for the Afrikaners and promise
them future self-government. He even entertained a peace treaty
proposed by Louis Botha and the other Boer leaders, although he knew
the British government would reject the offer; their proposal would
have maintained the sovereignty of the South African Republic and the
Orange Free State while requiring them to sign a perpetual treaty of
alliance with the UK and grant major concessions to the British, such
as equal language rights for English with Dutch in their countries,
voting rights for Uitlanders, and a customs and railway union with the
Cape Colony and the Natal. During Kitchener's posting in South Africa,
Kitchener became acting High Commissioner for Southern Africa, and
administrator of Transvaal and Orange River Colony in 1901.
Kitchener, who had been promoted to the substantive rank of general on
1 June 1902, was given a farewell reception at Cape Town on 23 June,
and left for the United Kingdom in the SS 'Orotava' on the same day.
He received an enthusiastic welcome on his arrival the following
month. Landing in Southampton on 12 July, he was greeted by the
corporation, who presented him with the Freedom of the borough. In
London, he was met at the train station by the Prince of Wales, drove
in a procession through streets lined by military personnel from 70
different units and watched by thousands of people, and received a
formal welcome at St James's Palace. He also visited King Edward VII,
who was confined to his room recovering from his recent operation for
appendicitis, but wanted to meet the general on his arrival and to
personally bestow on him the insignia of the Order of Merit (OM).
Kitchener was created Viscount Kitchener, of Khartoum and of the Vaal
in the Colony of Transvaal and of Aspall in the County of Suffolk, on
28 July 1902.
Court-martial of Breaker Morant
=================================
In the Breaker Morant case, five Australian officers and one English
officer of an irregular unit, the Bushveldt Carbineers, were
court-martialed for summarily executing twelve Boer prisoners, and
also for the murder of a German missionary believed to be a Boer
sympathiser, all allegedly under orders approved by Kitchener. The
celebrated horseman and bush poet Lt. Harry "Breaker" Morant and Lt.
Peter Handcock were found guilty, sentenced to death, and shot by
firing squad at Pietersburg on 27 February 1902. Their death warrants
were personally signed by Kitchener. He reprieved a third soldier, Lt.
George Witton, who served 32 months before being released.
India
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In late 1902 Kitchener was appointed Commander-in-Chief, India, and
arrived there to take up the position in November, in time to be in
charge during the January 1903 Delhi Durbar. He immediately began the
task of reorganising the Indian Army. Kitchener's plan "The
Reorganisation and Redistribution of the Army in India" recommended
preparing the Indian Army for any potential war by reducing the size
of fixed garrisons and reorganising it into two armies, to be
commanded by Generals Sir Bindon Blood and George Luck.
While many of the Kitchener Reforms were supported by the Viceroy,
Lord Curzon of Kedleston, who had originally lobbied for Kitchener's
appointment, the two men eventually came into conflict. Curzon wrote
to Kitchener advising him that signing himself "Kitchener of Khartoum"
took up too much time and space - Kitchener commented on the pettiness
of this (Curzon simply signed himself "Curzon" as a hereditary peer,
although he later took to signing himself "Curzon of Kedleston"). They
also clashed over the question of military administration, as
Kitchener objected to the system whereby transport and logistics were
controlled by a "Military Member" of the Viceroy's Council. After what
Curzon's most recent biographer described as "prolonged intrigue" and
"deceitful methods", including correspondence which Kitchener asked
the recipients to destroy after reading, the Commander-in-Chief won
the crucial support of the government in London, and the Viceroy had
no option but to resign.
Later events proved Curzon was right in opposing Kitchener's attempts
to concentrate all military decision-making power in his own office.
Although the offices of Commander-in-Chief and Military Member were
now held by a single individual, senior officers could approach only
the Commander-in-Chief directly. In order to deal with the Military
Member, a request had to be made through the Army Secretary, who
reported to the Indian Government and had right of access to the
Viceroy. There were even instances when the two separate bureaucracies
produced different answers to a problem, with the Commander-in-Chief
disagreeing with himself as Military Member. This became known as "the
canonisation of duality". Kitchener's successor, General Sir Garrett
O'Moore Creagh, was nicknamed "no More K", and concentrated on
establishing good relations with the Viceroy, Lord Hardinge.
Kitchener presided over the Rawalpindi Parade in 1905 to honour the
Prince and Princess of Wales's visit to India. That same year
Kitchener founded the Indian Staff College at Quetta (now the Pakistan
Command and Staff College), where his portrait still hangs. His term
of office as Commander-in-Chief, India, was extended by two years in
1907.
Kitchener was promoted to the highest Army rank, Field Marshal, on 10
September 1909 and went on a tour of Australia and New Zealand. He
aspired to be Viceroy of India, but the Secretary of State for India,
John Morley, was not keen and hoped to send him instead to Malta as
Commander-in-Chief of British forces in the Mediterranean, even to the
point of announcing the appointment in the newspapers. Kitchener
pushed hard for the Viceroyalty, returning to London to lobby Cabinet
ministers and the dying King Edward VII, from whom, whilst collecting
his field marshal's baton, Kitchener obtained permission to refuse the
Malta job. However, Morley could not be moved. This was perhaps in
part because Kitchener was thought to be a Tory (the Liberals were in
office at the time); perhaps due to a Curzon-inspired whispering
campaign; but most importantly because Morley, who was a Gladstonian
and thus suspicious of imperialism, felt it inappropriate, after the
recent grant of limited self-government under the Indian Councils Act
1909, for a serving soldier to be Viceroy (in the event, no serving
soldier was appointed Viceroy until Lord Wavell in 1943, during the
Second World War). The prime minister, H. H. Asquith, was sympathetic
to Kitchener but was unwilling to overrule Morley, who threatened
resignation, so Kitchener was finally turned down for the post of
Viceroy of India in 1911.
From 22 to 24 June 1911, Kitchener took part in the coronation of King
George V and Queen Mary. Kitchener assumed the role of Captain of the
Escort, responsible for the personal protection of the royals during
the coronation. In this capacity, Kitchener was also the Field
Marshal, In Command of the Troops, and assumed command of the 55,000
British and imperial soldiers present in London. During the Coronation
ceremony itself, Kitchener acted as Third Sword, one of the four
swords tasked with guarding the monarch. Later, in November 1911,
Kitchener hosted the King and Queen in Port Said, Egypt while they
were on their way to India for the Delhi Durbar to assume the titles
of Emperor and Empress of India.
Return to Egypt
======================================================================
In June 1911 Kitchener then returned to Egypt as British Agent and
Consul-General in Egypt during the formal reign of Abbas Hilmi II as
Khedive.
At the time of the Agadir Crisis (summer 1911), Kitchener told the
Committee of Imperial Defence that he expected the Germans to walk
through the French "like partridges" and he informed Lord Esher "that
if they imagined that he was going to command the Army in France he
would see them damned first".
He was created Earl Kitchener, of Khartoum and of Broome in the County
of Kent, on 29 June 1914.
During this period he became a proponent of Scouting and coined the
phrase "once a Scout, always a Scout".
Raising the New Armies
========================
At the outset of the First World War, the prime minister, Asquith,
quickly had Kitchener appointed Secretary of State for War; Asquith
had been filling the job himself as a stopgap following the
resignation of Colonel Seely over the Curragh Incident earlier in
1914. Kitchener was in Britain on his annual summer leave, between 23
June and 3 August 1914, and had boarded a cross-Channel steamer to
commence his return trip to Cairo when he was recalled to London to
meet with Asquith. War was declared at 11pm the next day.
Against cabinet opinion, Kitchener correctly predicted a long war that
would last at least three years, require huge new armies to defeat
Germany, and cause huge casualties before the end would come.
Kitchener stated that the conflict would plumb the depths of manpower
"to the last million". A massive recruitment campaign began, which
soon featured a distinctive poster of Kitchener, taken from a magazine
front cover. It may have encouraged large numbers of volunteers, and
has proven to be one of the most enduring images of the war, having
been copied and parodied many times since. Kitchener built up the "New
Armies" as separate units because he distrusted the Territorials from
what he had seen with the French Army in 1870. This may have been a
mistaken judgement. The British reservists of 1914 tended to be much
younger and fitter than their French equivalents a generation earlier.
Cabinet Secretary Maurice Hankey wrote of Kitchener:
However, Ian Hamilton later wrote of Kitchener "he hated
organisations; he smashed organisations ... he was a Master of
Expedients".
Deploying the BEF
===================
At the War Council (5 August) Kitchener and Lieutenant General Sir
Douglas Haig argued that the BEF should be deployed at Amiens, where
it could deliver a vigorous counterattack once the route of German
advance was known. Kitchener argued that the deployment of the BEF in
Belgium would result in having to retreat and abandon much of its
supplies almost immediately, because the Belgian Army would be unable
to hold its ground against the Germans; Kitchener was proved right
but, given the belief in fortresses common at the time, it is not
surprising that the War Council disagreed with him.
Kitchener, believing Britain should husband her resources for a long
war, decided at Cabinet (6 August) that the initial BEF would consist
of only 4 infantry divisions (and 1 cavalry), not the 5 or 6 promised.
His decision to hold back two of the six divisions of the BEF,
although based on exaggerated concerns about German invasion of
Britain, arguably saved the BEF from disaster when Sir John French (on
the advice of Sir Henry Wilson who was much influenced by the French)
might have been tempted to advance further into the teeth of the
advancing German forces, had his own force been stronger.
Kitchener's wish to concentrate further back at Amiens may also have
been influenced by a largely accurate map of German dispositions which
was published by Repington in 'The Times' on the morning of 12 August.
Kitchener had a three-hour meeting (12 August) with Sir John French,
Archibald Murray, Wilson and the French liaison officer Victor Huguet,
before being overruled by the Prime Minister, who eventually agreed
that the BEF should assemble at Maubeuge.
Sir John French's orders from Kitchener were to cooperate with the
French but not to take orders from them. Given that the tiny BEF
(about 100,000 men, half of them serving regulars and half reservists)
was Britain's only field army, Kitchener also instructed French to
avoid undue losses and exposure to "forward movements where large
numbers of French troops are not engaged" until Kitchener himself had
had a chance to discuss the matter with the Cabinet.
Meeting with Sir John French
==============================
The BEF commander in France, Sir John French, concerned by heavy
British losses at the Battle of Le Cateau, was considering withdrawing
his forces from the Allied line. By 31 August, French
commander-in-chief Joseph Joffre, President Raymond Poincaré (relayed
via Bertie, the British Ambassador) and Kitchener had sent him
messages urging him not to do so. Kitchener, authorised by a midnight
meeting of whichever Cabinet Ministers could be found, left for France
for a meeting with Sir John on 1 September.
They met, together with René Viviani (French Prime Minister) and
Alexandre Millerand (now French War Minister). Huguet recorded that
Kitchener was "calm, balanced, reflective" whilst Sir John was "sour,
impetuous, with congested face, sullen and ill-tempered". On Francis
Bertie's advice Kitchener dropped his intention of inspecting the BEF.
French and Kitchener moved to a separate room, and no independent
account of the meeting exists. After the meeting Kitchener telegraphed
the Cabinet that the BEF would remain in the line, although taking
care not to be outflanked, and told French to consider this "an
instruction". French had a friendly exchange of letters with Joffre.
French had been particularly angry that Kitchener had arrived wearing
his field marshal's uniform. This was how Kitchener normally dressed
at the time (Maurice Hankey thought Kitchener's uniform tactless, but
it had probably not occurred to him to change), but French felt that
Kitchener was implying that he was his military superior and not
simply a cabinet member. By the end of the year French thought that
Kitchener had "gone mad" and his hostility had become common knowledge
at GHQ and GQG.
Strategy
==========
In January 1915, Field Marshal French, with the concurrence of other
senior commanders (e.g. General Sir Douglas Haig), wanted the New
Armies incorporated into existing divisions as battalions rather than
sent out as entire divisions. French felt (wrongly) that the war would
be over by the summer before the New Army divisions were deployed
because Germany had recently redeployed some divisions to the east.
French took the step of appealing to the Prime Minister, Asquith, over
Kitchener's head, but Asquith refused to overrule Kitchener. This
further damaged relations between French and Kitchener, who had
travelled to France in September 1914 during the First Battle of the
Marne to order French to resume his place in the Allied line.
Kitchener warned French in January 1915 that the Western Front was a
siege line that could not be breached, in the context of Cabinet
discussions about amphibious landings on the Baltic or North Sea
Coast, or against Turkey. In an effort to find a way to relieve
pressure on the Western front, Kitchener proposed an invasion of
Alexandretta with Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC), New
Army, and Indian troops. Alexandretta was an area with a large
Christian population and was the strategic centre of the Ottoman
Empire's railway network - its capture would have cut the empire in
two. Yet he was instead eventually persuaded to support Winston
Churchill's disastrous Gallipoli Campaign in 1915-1916. (Churchill's
responsibility for the failure of this campaign is debated; for more
information see David Fromkin's 'A Peace to End All Peace'.) As late
as mid-October 1915, however, Kitchener told a parliamentary committee
that withdrawal from the peninsula would be "the most disastrous event
in the history of the empire". The eventual failure, combined with the
Shell Crisis of 1915 - amidst press publicity engineered by Sir John
French - dealt Kitchener's political reputation a heavy blow;
Kitchener was popular with the public, so Asquith retained him in
office in the new coalition government, but responsibility for
munitions was moved to a new ministry headed by David Lloyd George. He
was a sceptic about the tank, which is why it was developed under the
auspices of Churchill's Admiralty.
With the Russians being pushed back from Poland, Kitchener thought the
transfer of German troops west and a possible invasion of Britain were
increasingly likely. He told the War Council (14 May) that he was not
willing to send the New Armies overseas. He wired French (16 May 1915)
that he would send no more reinforcements to France until he was clear
the German line could be broken but sent two divisions at the end of
May to please Joffre, not because he thought a breakthrough possible.
He had wanted to conserve his New Armies to strike a knockout blow in
1916-17, but by the summer of 1915 realised that high casualties and a
major commitment to France were inescapable. "Unfortunately we have to
make war as we must, and not as we should like" as he told the
Dardanelles Committee on 20 August 1915.
At an Anglo-French conference at Calais (6 July) Joffre and Kitchener,
who was opposed to "too vigorous" offensives, reached a compromise on
"local offensives on a vigorous scale", and Kitchener agreed to deploy
New Army divisions to France. An inter-Allied conference at Chantilly
(7 July, including Russian, Belgian, Serb and Italian delegates)
agreed on coordinated offensives. However, Kitchener now came to
support the upcoming Loos offensive. He travelled to France for talks
with Joffre and Millerand (16 August). The French leaders believed
Russia might sue for peace (Warsaw had fallen on 4 August). Kitchener
(19 August) ordered the Loos offensive to proceed, despite the attack
being on ground not favoured by French or Haig (then commanding First
Army). The Official History later admitted that Kitchener hoped to be
appointed Supreme Allied Commander. Basil Liddell Hart speculated that
this was why he allowed himself to be persuaded by Joffre. New Army
divisions first saw action at Loos in September 1915.
Reduction in powers
=====================
Kitchener continued to lose favour with politicians and professional
soldiers. He found it "repugnant and unnatural to have to discuss
military secrets with a large number of gentlemen with whom he was but
barely acquainted". Esher complained that he would either lapse into
"obstinacy and silence" or else mull aloud over various difficulties.
Alfred Milner told Howell Arthur Gwynne (18 August 1915) that he
thought Kitchener a "slippery fish". By autumn 1915, with Asquith's
Coalition close to breaking up over conscription, he was blamed for
his opposition to that measure (which would eventually be introduced
for single men in January 1916) and for the excessive influence which
civilians like Churchill and Richard Haldane had come to exert over
strategy, allowing 'ad hoc' campaigns to develop in Sinai, Mesopotamia
and Salonika. Generals such as Sir William Robertson were critical of
Kitchener's failure to ask the Imperial General Staff (whose chief
James Wolfe-Murray was intimidated by Kitchener) to study the
feasibility of any of these campaigns. These operations were certainly
feasible but assumed a level of competence that the British armed
forces proved unable to achieve at that time. Tactical incompetence in
the Gallipoli campaign meant that even a fairly straightforward task
ended in disaster.
Kitchener advised the Dardanelles Committee (21 October) that Baghdad
be seized for the sake of prestige then abandoned as logistically
untenable. His advice was no longer accepted without question, but the
British forces fell short of their objective and were eventually
besieged and captured at Kut.
Archibald Murray (Chief of the Imperial General Staff) later recorded
that Kitchener was "quite unfit for the position of secretary of
state" and "impossible", claiming that he never assembled the Army
Council as a body, but instead gave them orders separately, and was
usually exhausted by Friday. Kitchener was also keen to break up
Territorial units whenever possible whilst ensuring that "No 'K'
Division left the country incomplete". Murray wrote that "He seldom
told the absolute truth and the whole truth" and claimed that it was
not until he left on a tour of inspection of Gallipoli and the Near
East that Murray was able to inform the Cabinet that volunteering had
fallen far below the level needed to maintain a BEF of 70 divisions,
requiring the introduction of conscription. The Cabinet insisted on
proper General Staff papers being presented in Kitchener's absence.
Asquith, who told Robertson that Kitchener was "an impossible
colleague" and "his veracity left much to be desired", hoped that he
could be persuaded to remain in the region as Commander-in-Chief and
acted in charge of the War Office, but Kitchener took his seals of
office with him so he could not be sacked in his absence. Douglas Haig
- at that time involved in intrigues to have Robertson appointed Chief
of the Imperial General Staff - recommended that Kitchener be
appointed Viceroy of India ("where trouble was brewing") but not to
the Middle East, where his strong personality would have led to that
sideshow receiving too much attention and resources. Kitchener visited
Rome and Athens, but Archibald Murray warned that he would likely
demand the diversion of British troops to fight the Turks in the
Sinai.
Kitchener and Asquith were agreed that Robertson should become CIGS,
but Robertson refused to do this if Kitchener "continued to be his own
CIGS", although given Kitchener's great prestige he did not want him
to resign; he wanted the Secretary of State to be sidelined to an
advisory role like the Prussian War Minister. Asquith asked them to
negotiate an agreement, which they did over the exchange of several
draft documents at the Hotel de Crillon in Paris. Kitchener agreed
that Robertson alone should present strategic advice to the Cabinet,
with Kitchener responsible for recruiting and supplying the Army,
although he refused to agree that military orders should go out over
Robertson's signature alone - it was agreed that the Secretary of
State should continue to sign orders jointly with the CIGS. The
agreement was formalised in an Order in Council in January 1916.
Robertson was suspicious of efforts in the Balkans and Near East and
was instead committed to major British offensives against Germany on
the Western Front - the first of these was to be the Somme in 1916.
1916
======
Early in 1916 Kitchener visited Douglas Haig, newly appointed
Commander-in-Chief of the BEF in France. Kitchener had been a key
figure in the removal of Haig's predecessor Sir John French, with whom
he had a poor relationship. Haig differed with Kitchener over the
importance of Mediterranean efforts and wanted to see a strong General
Staff in London, but nonetheless valued Kitchener as a military voice
against the "folly" of civilians such as Churchill. However, he
thought Kitchener "pinched, tired, and much aged", and thought it sad
that his mind was "losing its comprehension" as the time for decisive
victory on the Western Front (as Haig and Robertson saw it)
approached. Kitchener was somewhat doubtful of Haig's plan to win
decisive victory in 1916, and would have preferred smaller and purely
attritional attacks, but sided with Robertson in telling the Cabinet
that the planned Anglo-French offensive on the Somme should go ahead.
Kitchener was under pressure from French Prime Minister Aristide
Briand (29 March 1916) for the British to attack on the Western Front
to help relieve the pressure of the German attack at Verdun. The
French refused to bring troops home from Salonika, which Kitchener
thought a play for the increase of French power in the Mediterranean.
On 2 June 1916, Kitchener personally answered questions asked by
politicians about his running of the war effort; at the start of
hostilities Kitchener had ordered two million rifles from various US
arms manufacturers. Only 480 of these rifles had arrived in the UK by
4 June 1916. The number of shells supplied was no less paltry.
Kitchener explained the efforts he had made to secure alternative
supplies. He received a resounding vote of thanks from the 200 Members
of Parliament (MPs) who had arrived to question him, both for his
candour and for his efforts to keep the troops armed; Sir Ivor
Herbert, who, a week before, had introduced the failed vote of censure
in the House of Commons against Kitchener's running of the War Office,
personally seconded the motion.
Russian mission
=================
In the midst of his other political and military concerns, Kitchener
had devoted personal attention to the deteriorating situation on the
Eastern Front. This included the provision of extensive stocks of war
material for the Imperial Russian Army, which had been under
increasing pressure since mid-1915. In May 1916, the Chancellor of the
Exchequer Reginald McKenna suggested that Kitchener head a special and
confidential mission to Russia to discuss munition shortages, military
strategy and financial difficulties with the Imperial Russian
Government and the 'Stavka' (military high command), which was now
under the personal command of Tsar Nicholas II. Both Kitchener and the
Russians were in favour of face to face talks, and a formal invitation
from the Tsar was received on 14 May. Kitchener left London by train
for Scotland on the evening of 4 June with a party of officials,
military aides and personal servants.
Lost at sea
=============
Kitchener sailed from Scrabster to Scapa Flow on 5 June 1916 aboard
HMS 'Oak'. He had lunch with Admiral Sir John Jellicoe,
commander-in-chief of the Grand Fleet, on board his flagship HMS 'Iron
Duke'; Kitchener was keen to discuss the recent Battle of Jutland and
stated that he was looking forward to his three-week diplomatic
mission to Russia as a break from domestic pressures. He then set out
for Russia on board the armoured cruiser HMS 'Hampshire'. At the last
minute Jellicoe changed 'Hampshire's' route on the basis of a
mis-reading of the weather forecast and ignoring (or not being aware
of) recent intelligence and sightings of German U-boat activity in the
vicinity of the amended route. Shortly before 7:30 pm that same day,
while steaming for the Russian port of Arkhangelsk during a force 9
gale, 'Hampshire' struck a mine laid by the newly launched German
U-boat 'U-75' (commanded by Kurt Beitzen) and sank west of the Orkney
Islands. Recent research has set the death toll of those aboard
'Hampshire' at 737. Only twelve men survived. Among the dead were all
ten members of Kitchener's entourage. Kitchener himself was seen
standing on the quarterdeck during the approximately twenty minutes
that it took the ship to sink. His body was never recovered.
The news of Kitchener's death was received with shock all over the
British Empire. A man in Yorkshire committed suicide at the news; a
sergeant on the Western Front was heard to exclaim "Now we've lost the
war. Now we've lost the war"; and a nurse wrote home to her family
that she knew Britain would win as long as Kitchener lived, and now
that he was gone: "How awful it is - a far worse blow than many German
victories. So long as he was with us we knew even if things were
gloomy that his guiding hand was at the helm."
General Douglas Haig commanding the British Armies on the Western
Front remarked on first receiving the news of Kitchener's death via a
German radio signal intercepted by the British Army, "How shall we get
on without him". King George V wrote in his diary: "It is indeed a
heavy blow to me and a great loss to the nation and the allies." He
ordered army officers to wear black armbands for a week.
C. P. Scott, editor of 'The Manchester Guardian', is said to have
remarked that "as for the old man, he could not have done better than
to have gone down, as he was a great impediment lately".
Conspiracy theories
=====================
Kitchener's great fame, the suddenness of his death, and its
apparently convenient timing for a number of parties gave almost
immediate rise to a number of conspiracy theories about his death. One
in particular was posited by Lord Alfred Douglas (of Oscar Wilde
fame), positing a connection between Kitchener's death, the recent
naval Battle of Jutland, Winston Churchill, and a Jewish conspiracy.
Churchill successfully sued Douglas in what proved to be the last
successful case of criminal libel in British legal history, and the
latter spent six months in prison. Another claimed that 'Hampshire'
did not strike a mine at all, but was sunk by explosives secreted in
the vessel by Irish Republicans.
General Erich Ludendorff, Generalquartiermeister and joint head (with
Paul von Hindenburg) of Germany's war effort stated in the 1920s that
Russian anti-Tsarists had betrayed the plan to visit the Russians to
the German command: His mysterious death was the work neither of a
German mine nor a German torpedo, but of the power which would not
permit the Russian Army to recover with the help of Lord Kitchener
because the destruction of Czarist Russia had been determined upon.
Lord Kitchener's death was caused by his ability. In 1926, a hoaxer
named Frank Power claimed in the 'Sunday Referee' newspaper that
Kitchener's body had been found by a Norwegian fisherman. Power
brought a coffin back from Norway and prepared it for burial in St
Paul's Cathedral. At this point, however, the authorities intervened,
and the coffin was opened in the presence of police and a
distinguished pathologist. The box was found to contain only tar for
weight. There was widespread public outrage at Power, but he was never
prosecuted.
Frederick Joubert Duquesne, a Boer soldier and spy, claimed that he
had assassinated Kitchener after an earlier attempt to kill him in
Cape Town failed. He was arrested and court-martialled in Cape Town
and sent to the penal colony of Bermuda, but managed to escape to the
U.S. MI5 confirmed that Duquesne was "a German intelligence officer
.... involved in a series of acts of sabotage against British shipping
in South American waters during the [First World] war"; he was wanted
for: "murder on the high seas, the sinking and burning of British
ships, the burning of military stores, warehouses, coaling stations,
conspiracy, and the falsification of Admiralty documents".
Duquesne's unverified story was that he returned to Europe, posed as
the Russian Duke Boris Zakrevsky in 1916, and joined Kitchener in
Scotland. While on board HMS 'Hampshire' with Kitchener, Duquesne
claimed to have signalled a German submarine that then sank the
cruiser, and was rescued by the submarine, later being awarded the
Iron Cross for his efforts. Duquesne was later apprehended and tried
by the authorities in the U.S. for insurance fraud, but managed to
escape again.
During the Second World War, Duquesne ran a German spy ring in the
United States until he was caught by the FBI in what became the
biggest roundup of spies in U.S. history: the 'Duquesne Spy Ring'.
Coincidentally, Kitchener's brother was to die in office in Bermuda in
1912, and his nephew, Major H.H. 'Hap' Kitchener, who had married a
Bermudan, purchased (with a legacy left to him by his uncle) Hinson's
Islandpart of the former Prisoner of War camp from which Duquesne had
escapedafter the First World War as the location of his home and
business.
Legacy
======================================================================
Kitchener is officially remembered in a chapel on the northwest corner
of St Paul's Cathedral in London, near the main entrance, where a
memorial service was held in his honour.
In Canada, the city of Berlin, Ontario, named in respect to a large
German immigrant settler population, was renamed Kitchener following a
1916 referendum.
Since 1970, the opening of new records has led historians to
rehabilitate Kitchener's reputation to some extent. Robin Neillands,
for instance, notes that Kitchener consistently rose in ability as he
was promoted. Some historians now praise his strategic vision in the
First World War, especially his laying the groundwork for the
expansion of munitions production and his central role in the raising
of the British army in 1914 and 1915, providing a force capable of
meeting Britain's continental commitment.
His commanding image, appearing on recruiting posters demanding "Your
country needs you!", remains recognised and parodied in popular
culture.
In the 1972 movie 'Young Winston', Kitchener is portrayed by John
Mills.
In the 2021 movie 'The King's Man', Kitchener is portrayed by Charles
Dance.
Memorials
======================================================================
*As a British soldier who was lost at sea in the First World War and
has no known grave, Kitchener is commemorated on the Commonwealth War
Graves Commission's Hollybrook Memorial at Hollybrook Cemetery,
located at Southampton, Hampshire.
*Blue plaques have been erected to mark where Kitchener lived in
Carlton Gardens, Westminster and at Broome Park near Canterbury.
* The NW chapel of All Souls at St Paul's Cathedral, London, not
normally open to visitors, was rededicated the Kitchener Memorial in
1925. The memorial is however clearly visible from the main entrance
lobby. The recumbent white marble figure was designed by Detmar Blow.
The figure, plus the statues of Saint George and Saint Michael and the
Pieta in the chapel were sculpted by William Reid Dick.
* A month after his death, the Lord Kitchener National Memorial Fund
was set up by the Lord Mayor of London to honour his memory. It was
used to aid casualties of the war, both practically and financially;
following the war's end, the fund was used to enable university
educations for soldiers, ex-soldiers, their sons and their daughters,
a function it continues to perform today. A Memorial Book of tributes
and remembrances from Kitchener's peers, edited by Sir Hedley Le Bas,
was printed to benefit the fund.
* The Lord Kitchener Memorial Homes in Chatham, Kent, were built with
funds from public subscription following Kitchener's death. A small
terrace of cottages, they are used to provide affordable rented
accommodation for servicemen and women who have seen active service or
their widows and widowers.
* A statue of Kitchener mounted on his favourite charger, Democrat, is
on Khartoum Road (near Fort Amherst) in Chatham, Kent. The statue was
erected in Khartoum in 1920. It was moved to the UK in 1959 after the
independence of Sudan. It was unveiled at this site by the Secretary
of State for War, Christopher Soames. The statue was designed by the
Hull born sculptor Sydney March.
* The Kitchener Memorial on Mainland, Orkney, is on the cliff edge at
Marwick Head (HY2325), near the spot where Kitchener died at sea. It
is a square, crenellated stone tower with the inscription: "This tower
was raised by the people of Orkney in memory of Field Marshal Earl
Kitchener of Khartoum on that corner of his country which he had
served so faithfully nearest to the place where he died on duty. He
and his staff perished along with the officers and nearly all the men
of HMS 'Hampshire' on 5 June 1916."
* In the early 1920s, a road on a new council estate in the Kates Hill
area of Dudley, Worcestershire (now West Midlands) was named Kitchener
Road in honour of Kitchener.
* The east window of the chancel at St George's Church, Eastergate,
West Sussex has stained glass commemorating Kitchener.
* In December 2013, the Royal Mint announced their plans to mint
commemorative two-pound coins in 2014 featuring Kitchener's "Call to
Arms" on the reverse.
* A memorial cross for Kitchener was unveiled at St
Botolph-without-Bishopsgate church in 1916 (near Liverpool Street
station), perhaps one of the first memorials of the First World War in
England.
* One of the three houses of the Rashtriya Indian Military College,
Dehradun, India was named after Kitchener.
* A memorial tree was dedicated to Kitchener a month after his death
along the Avenue of Honour in the former town of Eurack, Victoria and
remains today while the surrounding township no longer exists.
* Half-a-dozen local communities inscribed Kitchener's name on to the
memorials they were already building to their own dead, alongside the
names of ordinary soldiers and sailors who had answered his 1914
appeal for volunteers and would never return.
* After a Court decision Kitchener's house, Wildflower Hall in Shimla,
India, came into the possession of the Government of Himachal Pradesh
in November 2023. An appeal by the hotel owner was rejected in
February 2024. Kitchener had the house built in 1902. In 1925 the
original house was demolished and in 2001 replaced by a hotel owned by
the Oberoi Group.
Debate on Kitchener's sexuality
======================================================================
Kitchener was a lifelong bachelor. From his time in Egypt in 1892, he
gathered around him a cadre of eager young and unmarried officers
nicknamed "Kitchener's band of boys", who included his friend Captain
Oswald Fitzgerald, his "constant and inseparable companion", whom he
appointed his aide-de-camp to Queen Victoria (1888-1896). They
remained close until they died together on their voyage to Russia.
Rumour occasionally circulated that Kitchener was homosexual, and
after his death a number of biographers suggested or hinted that he
might have been a latent or active homosexual.
Professor C. Brad Faught, chair of the Department of History at
Tyndale University College, discusses Kitchener's sexuality in a 2016
biography. While acknowledging Kitchener's "vestigial femininity" in
collecting porcelain and organising dinner parties, plus emotional
repression typical of his class and time, Faught concludes that the
absolute absence of evidence either way leaves "an issue about which
historians can say almost nothing useful". Biographer George H. Cassar
argues that Kitchener's letters to his sister include evidence of
heterosexual attraction and that if there were any credible evidence
that Kitchener was homosexual, it would have been used by his many
opponents during his lifetime.
Decorations
=============
Kitchener received numerous campaign and commemorative decorations
from the British government, as well as several medals from allied
nations.
His other decorations included:
British
*Knight Companion of the Order of the Garter (KG) - 3 June 1915
*Knight of the Order of St Patrick (KP) - 19 June 1911
*Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB) - 15 November 1898
(KCB - 17 November 1896; CB - 8 November 1889)
* Member of the Order of Merit (OM) - 12 July 1902
*Knight Grand Commander of the Order of the Star of India (GCSI) - 25
June 1909
*Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George (GCMG) -
29 November 1900 (KCMG - 12 February 1894; CMG - 6 August 1886)
*Knight Grand Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire (GCIE) - 1
January 1908
Foreign
*Order of Osmanieh, Ottoman Empire first class - 7 December 1896
(second class - 30 April 1894; third class - 11 June 1885)
*Order of the Medjidie, Ottoman Empire first class - 18 November 1893
(second class - 18 June 1888)
* Grand Cordon with Paulownia Flowers of the Order of the Rising Sun,
Empire of Japan - 11 November 1909
*Order of Karađorđe's Star with swords, Kingdom of Serbia - 1918
Honorary regimental appointments
==================================
*Honorary Colonel, Scottish Command Telegraph Companies (Army Troops,
Royal Engineers) - 1898
*Honorary Colonel, East Anglian Divisional Engineers, Royal Engineers
- 1901
*Honorary Colonel, 5th (7th Royal Lancashire Militia) Battalion,
Lancashire Fusiliers - 11 June 1902; later 3rd (Reserve) Battalion,
Lancashire Fusiliers
*Honorary Colonel, 4th, later 6th Battalion, Royal Scots - 1905
*Colonel Commandant, Royal Engineers - 1906
*Honorary Colonel, 7th Gurkha Rifles - 1908
*Honorary Colonel, 1st County of London Yeomanry - 1910
*Colonel-in-Chief, Corps of New Zealand Engineers - 1911
*Regimental Colonel, Irish Guards - 1914
Honorary degrees and offices
==============================
*Freedom of the borough, Southampton, 12 July 1902
*Freedom of the borough, Ipswich, 22 September 1902
*Freedom of the city, Sheffield, 30 September 1902.
*Freedom of the borough, Chatham, 4 October 1902
*Honorary Freedom of the City of Liverpool, 11 October 1902
*Honorary Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers
*Honorary Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Grocers, 1 August 1902.
See also
======================================================================
* Anglo-Egyptian conquest of Sudan - a reconquest of territory lost by
the Khedives of Egypt in 1884 and 1885 during the Mahdist War
* Frances Parker - niece and a New Zealand-born British suffragette.
* I Was Lord Kitchener's Valet - a clothing boutique which achieved
fame in 1960s "Swinging London"
* Kitchener's Army - an all-volunteer army formed in the United
Kingdom from 1914
* Kitchener bun - a type of sweet pastry made and sold in South
Australia
* Kitchener, Ontario - Canadian city renamed from Berlin after
Kitchener's death
* 'Scapegoats of the Empire' - a book by George Witton
* Statue of the Earl Kitchener, London
Sources
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Further reading
======================================================================
* (in 3 vols.)
*
* Chesterton, G. K. (1917). 'Lord Kitchener'. London: The Field &
Queen. [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25795/25795-h/25795-h.htm
archived]
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* new edition Cassell (2006).
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External links
======================================================================
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* [http://www.kitchenerscholars.org/pages/fund.htm Kitchener Scholars'
Fund]
* [http://www.melik.org.uk The Melik Society]
*
[https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person.php?search=ss&sText=Kitchener&LinkID=mp02564
National Portrait Gallery] 112 portraits
* [http://www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/beresiner16.html Lord
Kitchener: Active Soldier, Active Freemason]
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License
=========
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