Britain
Lord Kitchener
1850–1916 Secretary of State for War, 1914–1916
Born in County Kerry in 1850, Herbert Kitchener was commissioned in the Royal Engineers in 1871 and made his career in Egypt and the Sudan. His victory at Omdurman in 1898 made him Baron Kitchener of Khartoum. He ended the Second Boer War as commander-in-chief, ran the army in India from 1902 and became a field marshal in 1909. Recalled to London on 3 August 1914, he became Secretary of State for War. One of the few to foresee a war of at least three years, he raised the volunteer New Armies. Blamed for the shell shortage of spring 1915, he lost control of munitions to a new ministry. He died on 5 June 1916 when HMS Hampshire struck a mine off the Orkney Islands, bound for Russia.