Kitchener

DURING WWI, DESPERATE for recruits, Britain’s W War Office printed a large poster of Field Marshall Kitchener’s stern, mousta ed face and pointing finger, with he words “needs YOU” and hung it public places throughout Britain i . Wisely, they had chosen h the ace of the public’s most beloved war hero. The poster was hugely successful.

Herbert Kitchener was born in Ireland in 1850. He attended Woolwich Military Academy in London and became an officer of the Royal Engineers, initially assigned research work in Palestine. In 1887 he was posted in East Sudan. An intensely ambitious officer, in 1892 Kitchener was made Sirdar (commander-in-chief) of the Anglo-Egyptian army (Egypt being a British Protectorate). He defeated the Dervishes at the battle of Firket, for which he was knighted.

In 1884, Britain’s famously charismatic general, Charles Gordon, formerly Governor of Sudan, had been sent back there to rescue Egyptian garrisons under attack by the Mahdi’s army. Besieged in Khartoum, Gordon had bravely exited a building to address the Mahdists. He was speared and beheaded, and his head publically displayed aloft on a spike. A shocked and infuriated Britain wanted this atrocity avenged. Kitchener was determined to conquer the Sudan as that avenger.

Now a major-general, Kitchener built a railway-line toward Khartoum as a supply