Field Marshal Lord Kitchener
Herbert Kitchener conquered Sudan, ran the Boer War concentration camps, and raised the largest volunteer army in British history. Born in County Kerry in 1850 to a retired colonel, he trained at Woolwich as an engineer, served with a French field ambulance in 1870, and spent years surveying Palestine and Cyprus, learning Arabic. He was made commander of the Egyptian army in 1892 and spent six years preparing the reconquest of Sudan, building a railway across the desert to solve the supply problem that had defeated previous expeditions. At Omdurman in September 1898 his force killed some ten thousand Mahdist fighters with Maxim guns and artillery for about fifty of its own dead, and he had the Mahdi's tomb destroyed and the body thrown in the Nile, which caused disquiet at home. In South Africa he succeeded Roberts in 1900 and faced a guerrilla war he could not end by manoeuvre. His response was blockhouses, barbed wire, sweeping columns, farm burning, and the internment of Boer and African civilians in camps where inadequate rations, sanitation and medical care killed some 28,000 Boers, most of them children, and an estimated 20,000 Africans. He became Secretary of State for War in August 1914 and was almost alone in predicting a war of several years requiring millions of men. He called for volunteers, and 2.4 million came forward before conscription; his pointing figure on the recruiting poster is among the best-known images of the century. He drowned in June 1916 when HMS Hampshire struck a mine off Orkney. His body was never recovered, which fed conspiracy theories for decades.
- Lived: 1850 CE – 1916 CE
- Nationality: British
- Roles: field_marshal, secretary_of_state
