Lord Kitchener ‘wants you’

In the TV comedy Dad’s Army when Corporal Jones is not telling everybody “don’t panic, don’t panic” he often refers to his service under Kitchener when they were fighting against the “fuzzy wuzzies” in the Sudan.

Kitchener had been part of the failed attempt to rescue Gordon at Khartoum. He later became commander in chief of the British Army in Egypt and led the reconquest of the Sudan. He became a national hero, was given the title Lord Kitchener of Khartoum and later created an Earl.

 

He returned to England where his fame had spread, a fame which he used to make many useful and powerful connections. In later years, he was not adverse to using these connections to further his career.

Kitchener was, in fact, Irish having been born in Ballylongford in Kerry in 1850. The family had moved to the area in a scheme, introduced after the Famine, to encourage landlords to purchase estates. According to some sources, Kitchener senior ran a very strict household and while he was an improving landlord, much of it was at the expense of wholesale evictions.

Frances Anne Kitchener suffered from tuberculosis and in 1864, hoping to improve her condition, the family moved to Switzerland where she unfortunately died that same year. The young Kitchener continued his education in Switzerland, then at the Royal Military Academy from where he became an officer in the Royal Engineers.

During the Boer War, he became commander of the army in South Africa and was instrumental in the introduction of the policy of destroying Boer farms to deprive them of food and support. He then developed concentration camps where thousands of Boer women and children were interred. After the war, a report found that almost 30,000 people, mostly children, died in those camps as a result of starvation disease and exposure. Following the Boer War he was stationed in India where he tried to get himself appointed viceroy but was thwarted by other officials.

At the outbreak of World War I he was appointed to the cabinet as secretary of state for war and his was the face used in the World War I recruitment posters, pointing his finger with the message “Your Country Needs You”.

He organised the largest ever volunteer army and was one of the few who warned the war could last for years. He was not very well liked by his cabinet colleagues and his popularity began to wane.

He was blamed for the wrong shells being used and also a severe shortage of military supplies on the Western Front and he offered to resign following his support for the disastrous campaign in the Dardanelles where 250,000 men were killed before he ordered their withdrawal.

The prime minister would not accept his resignation and decided to send him to Russia to help rally that country in their battles on the Eastern Front. The HMS Hampshire was scheduled to sail round the north coast of Norway to Russia but on June 5, 1916, struck a German mine off the Orkney Islands. Kitchener was among the casualties.

Lord Kitchener, the man who developed concentration camps during the Boer War and British secretary for war during World War I was born in Ballylongford, Kerry on June 24, 1850, 162 years ago this week.