K of K - KIA 5 June 1916

[George Armstrong Custer]

Today, June 5th, marks the 92nd anniversary of the loss of Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener - Kitchener of Khartoum, or 'K of K' or simply 'K' as he was known to contemporaries. Travelling aboard HMS Hampshire, K of K died when that vessel struck a mine in the sea a short distance off Marwick Head on Orkney - one of twenty-two laid there by German submarine U.75 just seven days earlier. Only 12 of the Hampshire's 650 crew survived. Here's a report of the sinking from 'The Times' of June 16th 1916, containing an extensive eyewitness account from one of the handful of survivors of Kitchener's final moments:

The Hampshire was proceeding along the west coast of the Orkneys: a heavy gale was blowing, with the seas breaking over the ship, which necessitated he being partially battened down. Between 7.30 and 7.45 pm the vessel struck a mine and began at once to settle by the bows, heeling over to starboard before she finally went down fifteen minutes after.

Efforts were made without success to lower some of the boats, one of them being broken in half during the process and her occupants being thrown into the water. The captain called out for Lord Kitchener to come up to the fore bridge near where the captain's boat was hoisted; he was also heard calling for Lord Kitchener to get into the boat, but no-one is able to say whether Lord Kitchener got into the boat or not, nor did anyone see any of the boats get clear of the ship. Though the rafts with these large numbers of men got safely away, in one case out of over 70 men on board, six only survived; the survivors all report that men gradually dropped off and even died on board the rafts from exhaustion, exposure, and cold. Some of the crew must have perished trying to land on the rocky [Orkney] coast. Leading seaman Charles Walter Rogerson, one of the twelve survivors, says: "I was the last of the survivors to see Lord Kitchener before leaving the ship."

"Lord Kitchener went down with the ship. He did not leave her. The captain was calling to Lord Kitchener to go to the boat, but owing to the noise of the wind and the sea Lord Kitchener apparently did not hear him. When the explosion occurred Lord Kitchener walked calmly from the captain's cabin, went up the ladder and on to the quarter-deck. He did not seem in the least perturbed, but calmly waited the preparations for abandoning the ship. Owing to the rough weather no boats could be lowered; those that were got out were smashed up at once. The ship sank by the head, and when she did she turned a complete somersault forward, carrying down with her all the boats and those in them. When I sprang into a raft he was still on the starboard side of the quarter-deck talking to the officers. I won't say he did not feel the strain of the perilous situation like the rest of us, but he gave no outward sign of nervousness. I got away on one of the rafts and we had a terrible five hours in the water. It was so rough that the sea beat down on us and many men were killed by the buffeting they received. Many others died from the fearful cold."

Another eyewitness account of the Hampshire's end was given by an Orcadian in 1981 to the late L. R. Phillips, then Chairman of the Lord Kitchener National Memorial Fund:

On the shore, near Marwick Head, a boy of sixteen named Fraser was working in his father's garden at about 7.50pm despite the cold and high wind, for the rain had stopped and three hours of daylight remained. "My father called me. 'If you want to see a battleship going by come and look!' We noticed there were no destroyers. We watched.

"We saw a small cloud of black smoke at water-line under the bridge. Then came a sheet of flame and yellow smoke from under the forward gun turret and all around it. But we heard nothing - the storm was too loud.

"The captain turned her to starboard and my father said, 'He's going to beach her. They'll be alright.' Then she stopped and the wind blew her back on to her previous course.

The observation of Fraser regarding the absence of escorting destroyers accompanying the stricken Hampshire is easily explained. After receiving Kitchener aboard, the Hampshire had left her anchorage at Scapa Flow at 4.45pm, and an hour later met two escort destroyers assigned for the voyage to Archangel. However, the prevailing gale shifted and increased in violence as the Hampshire and the two escort destroyers turned north. The destroyers were unable to keep up with the Hampshire in the teeth of the gale, and the latter's captain, Captain Saville, deciding that the chances of meeting a submarine were remote, ordered the destroyers to return to base. It is certainly arguable that if Saville had slackened his own progress in order to allow the escorts to keep pace with him that their presence would have given more of Hampshire's crew a chance of survival after abandoning ship.

Kitchener's death rocked the nation. He had been the avenger of his hero, the martyred Gordon of Khartoum, at the battle of Omdurman in 1898, and had been a favourite of Queen Victoria and her son and grandson, Edward VIII and George V. When Admiral Jellicoe, whom Kitchener had spent the early afternoon before his departure from Scapa Flow with, was handed a wireless message confirming that wreckage and bodies found were from the Hampshire, he 'buried his face in his hands and rested his head and shoulders on the desk in front of him, his whole body convulsed with sobs.' Jellicoe, of course, had fought the battle of Jutland just five days earlier - no wonder the news of K of K's loss was enough to snap his frayed nerves.

The day after the sinking of HMS Hampshire, George V wrote in his diary on Kitchener's death: 'It is indeed a heavy blow to me & a great loss to the nation & the Allies. I had every confidence in him & he was a great personal friend."

Someone else for whom the news of K of K's death came as a great personal shock - with added implications for the future - was Douglas Haig. Duff Cooper's 1935 biography of Haig relies upon the latter's diary entry for June 6th 1916 in describing how Haig heard of Kitchener's death the previous day. Haig had travelled over to England that morning for consultations with the Cabinet in London: "On reaching Dover, Military Landing Officer showed me telegram from police stating it was reported that Lord Kitchener on HMS Hampshire had been drowned. Ship struck a mine and sank. Sea very rough." Duff Cooper notes that 'He [Haig] adds no comment, but for him the blow was a severe one, because he had lost not only a friend but an ally.' Haig's 1988 biographer, Gerard De Groot, picks up on Haig's supposed lack of response to the news of K of K's death, writing: 'Haig was remarkably silent about the death of the man who had had such a profound influence upon his career. The war went on.' What both Duff Cooper and De Groot failed to pick up, however, was the fact that what Haig was told about Kitchener's death upon disembarking at Dover on 6th June was only confirmation of the details of what he already knew. Haig's intelligence officer, John Charteris, in his 1929 biography of his old chief makes it clear that Haig became aware of Kitchener's death before setting off for England on the 6th June, as well as describing Haig's initial reaction to the news. The irony is that Haig first received the news of his mentor K of K's death via German sources. Charteris writes: 'On 9 [sic] June an intercepted German wireless message announced the sinking of the Hampshire, and the death of Lord Kitchener. A few hours later the confirmation of the news came from London. The news filled Haig not only with genuine regret but with grave misgivings. [.......] From the moment that the report of Lord Kichener's death reached him Haig realized that the danger of civilian interference in military plans would once again become acute. His first remark when the news of Kitchener's death was brought to him was: "How shall we get on without him?"' Clearly, however, either Charteris himself got the 9th June date of the German intercept reaching Haig wrong, or it was misprinted in his book, for Haig's diary makes clear that he was in England for Cabinet meetings and a three-day break with his family from 6th June until 12th June. Charteris must surely mean that the news of the German intercept was taken to Haig early on 6th June, before he left GHQ for England. As an interesting footnote to Kitchener's death, Charteris adds a note on the incongruous fact of the BEF's GHQ first learning of the Hampshire tragedy from German intercepts: 'The fact that the first news came from German sources gave immediate rise to the rumour that the Hampshire had been sunk by a German submarine, and that the Germans had full information of Lord Kitchener's plan to embark in her. Actually the German's received the information from London, through neutral sources, owing to the premature issue to the Press of an official British communique. This communique was recalled almost as soon as issued, and another substituted a few hours later, but the London correspondent of a neutral newspaper had at once despatched the news to his own country, whence it had been transmitted to Germany.'

Kitchener's loss along with 638 of the Hampsire's crew was a great personal tragedy for their families, friends and colleagues. K of K's death was also arguably a great loss to the nation and future international relations. That he was a great pillar of Britain's imperial story cannot be seriously countered. However some also see his loss in 1916 as detrimental to the future conduct of the war and, perhaps more importantly for the story of the rest of the 20th century, to the peace process that was hammered out in its wake. In his post war report to George V, Haig wrote that during the war he was "supported while Kitchener lived." Later, Haig was to muse that perhaps victory would have come sooner "if he [Kitchener] had been with us to the end." As to the views which he would have brought to bear upon the peacemakers of 1919, Lord Derby left a memoir of Kitchener's dinner conversation with him on 1st June 1916 - just four days before K's death:

"There was only one thing that he really hoped to live for, and that was to be one of the English delegates when Peace was made. I asked him whether, saying that, he had any strong views that he would want to put forward and he said he had one very strong one, and that was, whatever happened, not to take away one country's territory and give it to another. It only meant a running sore and provocation for a war of revenge to get back the ground so lost. He was most emphatic about that....."

To Derby's caveat that this surely would not apply to a restitution of the territory lost by France to Germany in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871, K replied that "Yes, I should. I think that if you take Alsace and Lorraine away from Germany and give them to France there will be a war of revenge."

Let's end this tale of great loss at sea and its consequences in wartime on a lighter note, however. It's often reported in contemporary anecdotes of K of K that he had an unexpectedly gentle side behind the stern visage of an Empire-builder and that, moreover, he had a great sense of humour. His photographs and portraits, it must be said, don't often lend much credence to such reports - but here's that rarity, a photograph of an absolutely beaming K of K:

ciao,

GAC

[IanA]

Some views of the Kitchener Memorial at Marwick Head, Orkney. When I was there a pair of ravens were nesting on top of it.

[armourersergeant]

GAC,

Nice to see the story fleshed out a bit in different directions.

Ian, Thanks for the pics.

regards

Arm

[IanA]

Perhaps this one gives the context better. Perched on magnificent cliffs with views out over the Atlantic Ocean.

[George Armstrong Custer]

Superb pics of the memorial on Marwick Head, Ian. The last one showing the forbidding coastline makes clear why many of those survivors on 5th June who had survived exposure in the storm died when their rafts were smashed up on the rocky coastline by the pounding waves.

Interesting to note from your pic that the plaque was dedicated by the Kitchener National Memorial Fund in 1981. That was the same year the Fund's director, L. R. Phillips, was given the eyewitness account from the Orcadian Fraser, who had watched the sinking as a sixteen year old boy with his father - it seems likely then that this was given to Phillips on the occasion of the plaque dedication.

The ravens in the memorial tower - did Sooty fly up for a chat (or are ravens and jackdaws not on speaking terms)?

ciao,

George

[IanA]

The whole of the coastline around there is very harsh even without a storm.

A raven would have several jackdaws for breakfast. Corvidae or no corvidae.

[squirrel]

JAC,

thanks for posting this; much appreciated.

[staffsreg]

Note the grafitti on the memorial...

makes you weep!

Ivan

[redorchestra]

Thanks for posting that.

Has the wreck of HMS Hampshire ever been found?

[IanA]

Has the wreck of HMS Hampshire ever been found?

Yes. It is, of course, a war grave but I'm pretty sure the museum on Hoy has some bits of her scattered around including, if memory serves, a propellor.

[George Armstrong Custer]

Thanks for posting that.

Has the wreck of HMS Hampshire ever been found?

Yes, her exact location has always been known. She is a wargrave, of course, so she is a protected wreck and casual diving is prohibited. She lies at a depth of some 55 metres , upside down. As the eyewitness report in my first post describes her as somersaulting over before sinking, it's thought she went to the bottom from the surface upside down, and so she remains to this day. There is apparently a huge debris trail around the wreck, no doubt due to a combination of the mine damage (her bow area is largely destroyed), and the fact of her sinking to the bottom upside down - guns, superstructure and other components tearing free as she went. She has been dived upon, and one of her upside-down props illegally removed obstensibly as they were a hazard to fishing nets. After an outcry it was donated to a museum on Orkney:

ciao,

GAC

[IanA]

They leave that prop sitting out there, you know. Anyone could just walk off with it....

There is a plaque attached to the tower but the photo is, perhaps, tricky to read so here is a transcription:

"This tower was raised by the people of Orkney in memory of Field Marshal Earl Kitchener of Khartoum on that corner of his country which he had served so faithfully, nearest to the place where he died on duty. He and his staff perished along with officers and nearly all the men of HMS Hampshire on 5th June, 1916."

The door in the tower has been closed off so that access can no longer be gained.

[PBI]

http://www.cwgc.co.uk/

[George Armstrong Custer]

Ian - what a pity that the monument door has had to be blocked off. Presumably this is due to vandalism - even in that remote spot. I imagine the original idea of the monument's designers was to provide an elevation that those visiting it to pay their respects could climb and there contemplate the spot out to sea where the Hampsire went down.

Jellicoe, following his near collapse upon receiving confirmation that the Hampshire had been lost seems to have been somewhat haunted by the fact of K's death afterwards. Although Jellicoe cannot rationally be held in any way responsible for the Hampshire striking the mine that day, nontheless he must have been acutely aware that it was he who personally plotted the route she took, and the fact that the loss happened whilst K of K was under the aegis of his command. The normal route - which Jellicoe originally planned for her - would have seen the Hampshire sail north east from Scapa Flow for the voyage to Archangel. The rising intensity of the storm's north-easterly gale, however, caused Jellicoe to revise this plan. The alternative route for a warship such as the Hampshire would have been out of Scapa through the Pentland Firth, west to Cape Wrath and then north. However Jellicoe had reports to hand which indicated the presence of an enemy submarine on that route (later discovered to have been incorrect). He therefore ordered the Hampshire to use a route frequently used by supply tenders but seldom warships of Hampshire's size, through the Pentland Firth and then directly North keeping close to the western coast of the Orkney's. Jellicoe had no intelligence that U.75 had strung her 22 mines close inshore between the Brough of Birsay and Marwick Head a week earlier.

Years later, Jellicoe inscribed in his own hand a print of the last photograph taken of K of K, now in the possession of Allan Woodliffe. This was taken by a Daily Express journalist on board Jellicoe's flagship, the Iron Duke, at Scapa an hour before K's transfer to the Hampshire, and about 4 hours before the latter vessel struck the mine off Marwick Head. The Iron Duke's slickly reflective decks are testimony to the heavy rain which the storm had driven down all day:

Jellicoe has signed the photo in the top right corner, and identifies the figures in the picture along the top edge. Left to right, these are: Col. FitzGerald; Adm. Jellicoe; Lord Kitchener; Capt. Dyer. At the bottom of the picture Jellicoe has written: 'The last photo taken of "K of K", on board H.M.S. "Iron Duke" at Scapa Flow on 5th June 1916, about 1 hour before Lord Kitchener embarked on H.M.S. "Hampshire". I wonder what Jellicoe's thoughts were when he made these annotations..............

ciao,

GAC

[west coast]

just a thought, i presume kof k`s medals, decorations and uniforms would have gone down with the ship??. kitchners loss was a very big blow to britian at that time. i`v read that that as soon as war was imminent , he was one of the very few in high places that predicted the war would last at least three years ,never mind about getting back for christmas!!. cheers .mike .

[Nigel Marshall]

The death of Kitchener is something I've never really read much about. I found this thread fascinating.

GAC and Ian, many thanks for creating a great thread (so long ago!).

Cheers,

Nigel

[George Armstrong Custer]

Thanks, Nigel. Actually, since doing this thread I've unravelled the impact the news of K of K's death had upon another general, Sir Ian Hamilton, who, with blackly comic timing, was plotting with Churchill to sink K's reputation as the scapegoat for their Gallipoli fiasco, unaware that he had already gone to the bottom with the 'Hampshire.'

At the same time as the cold Orcadian waters were closing over K of K’s head on the evening of 5th June 1916, Sir Ian Hamilton was hosting a dinner party in his London home at 1 Hyde Park Gardens (shown below under renovation).

Amongst Hamilton's guests was his crony, Winston Churchill, and had he not been lying at the bottom of 70 metres of cold water, the topic of conversation across Hamilton’s dinner table could have been metaphorically described as being likely to set K of K’s ears burning. Hamilton himself takes up the story in his 1944 memoir ‘Listening for the Drums’:

“[O]n Monday, the 5th of June, Winston was dining with us at 1 Hyde Park Gardens when he told me that he had at last persuaded the Cabinet to lay the Gallipoli papers on the Table. He had selected about twenty instances of my cabled entreaties to the War Office to send high explosive instead of shrapnel; of protests against Sir John Maxwell holding up a whole Army meant for me on the pretext of guarding Cairo and the Suez Canal from the attack of a Bogy Man called the Senoussi. These appeals had all been bottled up by K of K and not one had been shown to the Cabinet when he had met them during the campaign and professed to expound the situation. Winston now wanted me to come over next morning and carefully check these items.”

Hamilton’s account of what passed at 1 Hyde Park Gardens that evening is confirmed in his wife’s contemporary diary:

“Winston dined with us tonight. He was much excited over his speech, and having induced the Government to promise to lay the papers about Gallipoli on the table....He said to me at once: ‘Well I’ve done it’.” [5 June 1916]

When Asquith, beleaguered by the shell crisis and the ongoing failures at Gallipoli, invited the Conservatives into coalition government in May 1915, one of the latter’s demands was for Churchill’s removal as First Lord of the Admiralty. As a result, Churchill and his family had to give up their residency at Admiralty House. They moved into 41 Cromwell Road, the home of his brother Jack, who ironically was then serving at the shambles of Gallipoli which had provided the pretext for Winston’s fall. Forty-one Cromwell Road was (and is) situated across the street from the Natural History Museum, and was to be Churchill’s home from June 1915 until the autumn of the following year. It was here that he reconvened with Ian Hamilton on the 6th June 1916 in order to go over the documents they intended to use to stitch up K of K as the primary cause of the failures at Gallipoli – still blissfully unaware that the latter had been resting in Davy Jones’s locker since the time of their dinner at 1 Hyde Park Gardens the evening before. Hamilton himself takes up the story in ‘Listening for the Drums’:

“ went over to 41 Cromwell Road at midday on the 6th of June, sending the motor back for Haller Brooke, Ronnie Brooke and my wife as Clemmie Churchill had invited us all to lunch. . Lady Blanche Hozier was staying in the house also Milly Sutherland, the Duchess.”

Leaving the womenfolk to their own devices before lunch, Hamilton and Churchill closeted themselves away to discuss the assembly of as damning a case against K of K as possible. They were about to receive a rude shock, which is not without its blackly comic elements. Hamilton continues his account:

“Winston and I were alone downstairs when suddenly we heard someone in the street crying out Kitchener’s name. We jumped up and Winston threw the window open. As he did so an apparition passed beneath us. I can use no other word to describe the strange looks of this newsvendor of wild and uncouth aspect. He had his bundle of newspapers under his arm and as we opened the window was crying out, ‘Kitchener drowned! No survivors!’ ”

The looks which Hamilton and Churchill must have exchanged in that open window on the Cromwell Road, with the newspaper seller of ‘wild aspect’ loudly declaiming in the street below that the target whom they had just been plotting against had escaped into eternity, must surely create a tableau which only Laurel and Hardy could have done justice to. In modern parlance they were jaw-droppingly gobsmacked, however much Hamilton dressed it up with an historical allusion:

“A changed world that cry meant to both of us. We looked at one another with a wild surmise like Cortes at the Pacific from the heights of Darien. I felt dreadful. Had I put the idea of going to Russia into his head? There had been some question of my being sent to give the Czar his Field Marshal’s baton as I had got on like a house on fire both with him and the Grand Duke Nicholas at pre-war manoeuvres. This had been confided by me to K and he was very imitative. Fitz gone too – it was awful.”

Characteristically, even in the midst of expressing sorrow at the demise of K of K and his ADC ‘Fitz’ (Lt. Col Oswald Fitzgerald), Hamilton still manages to insinuate that K’s mission to Russia was a hijacking of one of his own ideas. And any genuine feelings of sorrow either of them had over K’s loss did not long survive Hamilton and Churchill pulling their heads back in from the window:

“When we came into the dining-room, Winston signed to every-one to be seated and then, before taking his own seat very solemnly quoted: ‘Fortunate was he in the moment of his death!’ I felt stunned and very sad. A great character marred by a mass of foibles and tricks. The fact that he should have vanished at the very moment Winston and I were making out an unanswerable case against him was one of those coups with which his career was crowded – he was not going to answer! It was a nightmare lunch – no small talk – Winston said K might yet turn up but I told the company that he always had a horror of cold water, and that the shock of the icy sea would at once extinguish his life.”

Hamilton’s self-centred conceit and his belief in his own infallibility is perhaps most tellingly revealed by the fact that it is he himself who reveals the ill-timed plotting between himself and Churchill to stick it to K of K, seemingly unaware of the poor light it shows him in.

Interestingly, Hamilton’s wife’s diary for 6th June 1916 reveals a much more genuine sorrow over K of K’s death, as well as a hint of distaste at the thought of the dinner at 1 Hyde Park Gardens the night before, with Churchill describing how they would bring K down at the very moment that their intended victim was meeting his maker. She also expresses doubt as to just how far K was the author of her husband’s downfall at Gallipoli:

“Lord Kitchener is dead – drowned – while we were dining last night, and Winston busily engaged talking of his imminent downfall, he must have been then in his death agony, or already dead....I could not help admiring his [K’s] silence and dignity in never attempting to answer the criticisms and insults being launched at his head on every side now. I also, for the first time, wondered if he could not help himself in regard to Ian – that his hands were and had been politically tied....” [6th June 1916]

What can we conclude? K of K can surely be censured over aspects of the land campaign at Gallipoli – chiefly for having supported such a ludicrous diversion from the Western Front in the first place, and then for not recommending an evacuation sooner than he did. But for the project’s chief patron and its commander on the ground to seek to absolve themselves of any responsibility by placing the entire blame for its inevitable failure at K’s door is equally surely unsustainable, and reveals Hamilton and Churchill in a poor light of moral bankruptcy.

The photograph below shows Churchill's home from June 1915 to late 1916 at 41 Cromwell Road - opposite the Natural History Museum - as it appears today. The property has been converted since, and what is now a window between two columns on the far right behind the tree was the front door in Churchill's time. The window with the arch above it on the first floor is that of the drawing room from which Churchill and Hamilton's stunned faces appeared on 6th June 1916 in response to hearing the newspaper vendor's cries in the street announcing K of K's death.

[David B]

Thanks for the full story about K. Have read lots of books about his exploits in Sudan and SA and found the subject fascinating. Wouldn't want to take a step backward near those cliffs though,

must be all of 3-400 feet high.

Cheers David

[Nigel Marshall]

Yes, my thanks too. It seems the goings on in London were much murkier than the waters the Hampshire went down in..

Fascinating post.

cheers,

Nigel

[salesie]

Kitchener was a man of some foresight, and not lacking in a fair amount geo-political nous. But I'm not so sure that painting a picture of him as some kind of wholly honourable and infallible military man who was the intended prey of a predatory, out-of-office, politician allied with a failed general is a fair representation.

It seems to me that no military man of the time was truly apolitical - the Curragh "mutiny" just prior to the opening of hostilities in 1914 is ample testament to that. Did anyone achieving high military rank do so because they were political naivetes; being able to swim and survive in the murky waters of the British political scene of the time was perhaps more of a qualification for promotion than being wholly proficient in the art of war was? And Kitchener, at the time of his death, held cabinet rank as Secretary of State for war; a political post not a military one - an appointment which in itself was probably a major political mistake; it gave a military man greater political power than is perhaps healthy for a democracy, a move not conducive, in my opinion, to having clear enough chains of command between the civil authorities and their military subordinates (a move more akin to the German system than ours).

The Gallipoli campaign, an undoubted disaster both militarily and politically, saw Churchill removed from the Admiralty and given a much less significant role which inevitably led, not long afterwards, to his resignation from ministerial office. This de-motion of Churchill, in my opinion, was more about Conservative anger and lust for revenge at Churchill's defection to the Liberal Party several years earlier than it ever was about his championing of the failed Gallipoli campaign. Churchill's "head" was a major demand of the Conservatives before they'd enter into coalition government with the Liberals.

And, let's be frank, the political crisis of 1915 which led to coalition government was not just about the Gallipoli campaign per se. True, the campaign in Gallipoli was in stalemate as a result of poor planning, poor leadership, and being under-resourced, but hasn't many a similar argument been put forward about the Western Front at the time, and didn't it take a little overt political manoeuvring by Sir John French to highlight the dire shortage of war materials for the BEF? Of course, the dire shortages in the BEF would make Gallipoli appear even more reckless. But, are we to believe that Kitchener, a senior member of the cabinet and, as such, not without some responsibility for the failure at Gallipoli, had nothing at all to do with the negotiations for coalition? Are we to believe that Kitchener, as Secretary of State for war, was an innocent party in the failures not just in Gallipoli but in the West as well - as Secretary of State for war was it not his ultimate responsibility to ensure that all theatres of war had adequate resources on land?

Why did Sir John French have to speak out publicly before the authorities at home realised that they were in a total-war, and that the wholesale re-organisation of the industrial home-front, along with the mobilisation of the Empire's full resources, was needed in order to win it? Why wasn't Kitchener arguing this case in cabinet - or if he was, and being ignored, why didn't he "go public" in order to focus minds; surely his public persona was so high that such a move would only have enhanced it?

1915 was a watershed for WW1, in that it was the year in which the political masters in Britain finally woke up to the realities of total-war and started to put into effect the steps needed to actually win it. But prior to Sir John French speaking out it seems to me that there was a collective political guilt for failure, and that collective guilt must include Kitchener – who in my opinion, if not for Conservative desire for revenge against Churchill and the highly successful propaganda campaign making Kitchener the public face of the war effort, would have been, as Secretary of State for war, deemed just as culpable as Churchill for the political and military failures coming to a head in 1915.

Perhaps we shouldn't be painting a picture of a poor, hapless political naivete who was the target of dark political machinations even as he drowned. But asking ourselves, how on earth did he manage to keep his job as Secretary of State for war given the immense political and military failures of the first year of war - perhaps he wasn't such a political innocent after all? And, perhaps more importantly, what was actually in those papers that Churchill managed to gather together?

Cheers-salesie.

PS. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to pour scorn on Kitchener's good name, in many ways he was a great man - but I think a little adjustment to a wider context is needed.

[RaySearching]

Here is the Family Memorial stone of one of the crew

Joseph Dowson a stoker, Who was also Drowned along with Kitchener when the Hampshire sunk

">

and a transcription of the memorial inscription

IN LOVING MEMORY OF

WILLIAM

BELOVED HUSBAND OF

ISABELL DOWSON

OF MIDDLESBROUGH

WHO DIED OCTOBER 31ST 1899

AGED 42 YEARS

ALSO JAMES SON OF THE ABOVE

WHO DIED APRIL 12th 1881

AGED 7 MONTHS

ALSO EDIT DAUGHTER OF THE ABOVE

WHO DIED SEPT 28TH 1886

AGED 16 MONTHS

PEACE PERFECT PEACE

ALSO SARAH JANE

BELOVED DAUGHTER OF THE ABOVE

WHO DIED MAY 29th 1900

AGED 23 YEARS

ALSO ISABEL

BELOVED WIFE OF THE ABOVE

WHO DIED JAN 9TH 1920

AGED 63 YEARS

ALSO STOKER JOSEPH DOWSON SON OF THE ABOVE

WHO DROWNED AT SEA WITH THE

HMS HAMPSHIRE

JUNE 5TH 1916 AGED 21 YEARS

( Memorial stone can be found in North Ormesby Cemetery Middlesbrough )

Kind Regards Ray

[simonharley]

Regarding the photograph of Kitchener aboard "Iron Duke", the officer with K. is Captain (later Admiral Sir) Frederic C. Dreyer. He was a close friend of Jellicoe, and later a literary executor, and a cropped version of the image appears in his memoirs.

As to it being the last photograph, in John Winton's biography of Jellicoe, a photo captioned "Jellicoe saying farewell to to Kitchener on board "Iron Duke", 5 June, 1916." is reproduced. All the officers present are wearing raincoats, and the decks again look very wet.

Simon

[James A Pratt III]

In looking through a bio of K of K some years ago. It speculated if he had lived it is possible he would have had Haig call off the battle of the Somme at an earlier date and might have saved the british army more than a few casualties. I also think if he had been around post WW I the middle East would have been a different place. he was fleunt in arabic and had a great deal of experience in the area.

[Robert Dunlop]

... might have saved the british army more than a few casualties.

Only at the time. The nature of modern warfare between determined enemies is that the overall number of casualties must reach a certain level before one or other side calls it quits. Stopping the British offensive on the Somme earlier would also have meant fewer German casualties. At some time in the future, the British would have had to attack again or the Germans would have attacked. Either way, the 'saved' casualties would have been lost at a later time.

Robert