HORATIO HERBERT KITCHENER anya----
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Earl of KHARTUM KITCHENER was born in Ireland and entered the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, at the age of 18. When he was 20 he served for a short time in the French Army during the Franco-Prussian war, and this gave him an influence with French soldiers and politicians which was still active during the Great War.
He was present at the bombardment of Alexandria in 1882 and took part in the expedition which attempted unsuccessfully to rescue General Gordon at Khartum in 1885. In 1898, when he had been Sirdar of the Egyptian Army for six years, he fought the Khartum campaign which ended in the destruction of the Mahdi at Omdurman.
In the South African War he was made chief of staff to Lord Roberts, who took command after the early disasters, and when Roberts returned home after the capture of Pretoria Kitchener became commander-in-chief and carried on the drawn-out guerilla war to a successful conclusion.
Kitchener had a personal prestige which has rarely been equalled in English public life, and he performed what had been considered the impossible feat of creating a huge army while war was actually in progress. He recruited and trained 70 divisions of 1,400,000 men known at the time and in history as ' men, Army.'
This was his great success as Secretary of,State for War ; the full duties of his office proved to be too great for one man and among other changes it became necessary to create a separate Ministry of Munitions.
He was drowned in June 1916, on his way to Russia in H.M.S. Hampshire. The news shocked the public perhaps more than any other event of the war, so deep was their faith in Kitchener. Although his death was sudden he had already made England into a great military power, and of all his services to his country this was the most valuable.