Lord Kitchener - Your Country Needs You!

Lord Kitchener
(1850-1916)

Horatio Kitchener was born on the 24th June 1850 in County Kerry, Ireland. He was educated in Switzerland and at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich. 

In 1871 he joined the Royal Engineers. Between 1884-1885 he took part in a unsuccessful operation to relieve General Charles Gordon at Khartoum. In 1898 he was appointed Governor General of eastern Sudan. In 1898 he was made Governor of Sudan after he succeed in the reoccupation of Khartoum.

In 1900 he was appointed chief of staff to Lord Roberts, the commander of the Boer War. Kitchener later had to deal with the Boer resistance after Roberts was recalled back to England. The one of the measures he put in place was the use of a civilian prison camp - the first ever use of the term 'Concentration Camp'.

Lego Lord Kitchener's
enlistment poster.

In 1902 after he returned to England, he was made Viscount and Commander-In-Chief of India. In 1911 he became proconsul of Egypt, served there and in Sudan until 1914. In 1914 he was appointed Earl, before war broke out. He was then made Secretary of State for War. Unlike many others, Kitchener saw that the war was likely to last for years, so he started to enlist and train huge numbers of volunteers. 

As many of his cabinet colleagues did not share is warship ideas, he was relieved of his responsibilities. He later lost further reputation over his support of the failed Dardanelles operation and the 'Shell Crisis' of 1915. 

On the 5th June 1916 he drowned, when his ship, HMS Hampshire was sunk by a mine near the Orkney Islands, on his way to Russia on a mission.