Kitchener, Horatio Herbert

(1850–1916) won fame in 1898 by winning the Battle of Omdurman and securing control of the Sudan, after which he was given the title Lord 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 the Boer forces had taken to guerrilla fighting and British forces imprisoned Boer civilians in concentration camps.
In 1914, at the start of the First World War, Lord Kitchener became Secretary of State for War. One of the few to foresee a long war, he organized the largest volunteer army that Britain had seen, together with a significant expansion of materials production, to help fight Germany on the Western Front. His commanding image, appearing on recruiting posters demanding, ‘Your country needs you!’, remains recognized and parodied in popular culture to this day. Kitchener drowned in 1916 when his ship struck a German mine. He was one of the 600 killed on board the ship.