page_title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener
section_title: Death
hierarchical_section_title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener / First World War / 1916 / Death
caption_attribution_description: English: Lord Kitchener's tomb, St Paul's Cathedral, London
context_page_description: Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener KG, KP, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCMG, GCIE, PC was an Irish-born senior British Army officer and colonial administrator who won notoriety for his imperial campaigns, most especially his scorched earth policy against the Boers and his expansion of Lord Roberts' internment camps during the Second Boer War and later played a central role in the early part of the First World War.
  Kitchener was credited in 1898 for winning the Battle of Omdurman and securing control of the Sudan for which he was made Baron Kitchener of Khartoum. As Chief of Staff 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 Boer forces had taken to guerrilla fighting and British forces imprisoned Boer civilians in concentration camps. His term as Commander-in-Chief of the Army in India saw him quarrel with another eminent proconsul, the Viceroy Lord Curzon, who eventually resigned. Kitchener then returned to Egypt as British Agent and Consul-General.
  In 1914, at the start of the First World War, Kitchener became Secretary of State for War, a Cabinet Minister.
context_section_description: Lord Kitchener sailed from Scrabster to Scapa Flow on 5 June 1916 aboard HMS Oak before transferring to the armoured cruiser HMS Hampshire for his diplomatic mission to Russia. At the last minute, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe changed the Hampshire's route on the basis of a mis-reading of the weather forecast and ignoring (or not being aware of) recent intelligence and sightings of German U-boat activity in the vicinity of the amended route.  Shortly before 19:30 hrs the same day, steaming for the Russian port of Arkhangelsk during a Force 9 gale, Hampshire struck a mine laid by the newly launched German U-boat U-75 (commanded by Kurt Beitzen) and sank west of the Orkney Islands. Recent research has set the death toll of those aboard the Hampshire at 737. Only twelve men survived. Amongst the dead were all ten members of his entourage. Kitchener was seen standing on the quarterdeck during the approximately twenty minutes that it took the ship to sink. His body was never recovered.
  The news of Kitchener's death was received with shock all over the British Empire. A man in Yorkshire committed suicide at the news; a sergeant on the Western Front was heard to exclaim "Now we’ve lost the war. Now we’ve lost the war"; and a nurse wrote home to her family that she knew Britain would win as long as Kitchener lived, and now that he was gone: "How awful it is – a far worse blow than many German victories. So long as he was with us we knew even if things were gloomy that his guiding hand was at the helm."
  General Douglas Haig commanding the British Armies on the Western Front remarked on first receiving the news of Kitchener's death via a German radio signal intercepted by the British Army, "How shall we get on without him." King George V wrote in his diary: "It is indeed a heavy blow to me and a great loss to the nation and the allies." He ordered army officers to wear black armbands for a week.
  C. P. Scott, editor of The Manchester Guardian, is said to have remarked that "as for the old man, he could not have done better than to have gone down, as he was a great impediment lately."
caption: Lord Kitchener's memorial, St Paul's Cathedral, London
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