In Short:
Herbert Horatio Kitchener (1850–1916) was best known for his famous recruitment posters bearing his heavily moustachioed face and pointing hand over the legend, "Your country needs you". Commissioned in the Royal Engineers, in 1886 Kitchener was appointed governor of the British Red Sea territories and subsequently became commander-in-chief of the Egyptian army in 1892. In 1898 he crushed the separatist Sudanese forces of al-Mahdi in the Battle of Omdurman and then occupied the nearby city of Khartoum, where his victory saw him ennobled in 1898.

In 1900 he became commander in chief of the Boer War, where he fought the guerrillas by burning farms and herding women and children into disease-ridden concentration camps. These ruthless measures helped weaken resistance and bring British victory.

On returning to England in 1902 he was created Viscount Kitchener and was appointed commander in chief in India. In September 1911 he became the proconsul of Egypt, ruling there and in the Sudan until August 1914. When the First World War broke out, Kitchener accepted an appointment to the cabinet as Secretary of State for War.  His cabinet associates did not share the public's worship of Kitchener and gradually relieved him of his responsibilities for industrial mobilisation and then strategy. He was killed in 1916 when HMS Hampshire was sunk by a German mine while taking him to Russia.

Biography:
Kitchener, Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl, British field marshal and statesman. Trained at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich (1868–70), he had a brief period of service in the French army before being commissioned (1871) in the Royal Engineers. After duty in Palestine and Cyprus, he was attached (1883) to the Egyptian army, then being reorganized by the British. He took part (1884–85) in the unsuccessful attempt to relieve Charles George Gordon at Khartoum. He was then (1886–88) governor-general of Eastern Sudan and helped (1889) turn back the last Mahdist invasion of Egypt. In 1892 he was made commander in chief of the Egyptian army and in 1896 began the invasion of Sudan, having prepared the way by a reorganization of the army and the construction of a railway along the Nile. A series of victories culminated (1898) in the battle of Omdurman and the reoccupation of Khartoum. He forestalled a French attempt to claim part of Sudan (see Fashoda Incident) in the same year and was made governor of Sudan.

In 1899, Kitchener was appointed chief of staff to Lord Roberts in the Anglo-Boer War. He reorganized transport, led an unsuccessful attack on Paardeberg, and suppressed a Boer revolt near Prieska. When Roberts returned to England late in 1900, believing the Boer resistance crushed, Kitchener was left to face continued guerrilla warfare. By a slow extension of fortified blockhouses, the incarceration of civilians in concentration camps, and the systematic destruction of farm lands and livestock, Kitchener finally secured a peace treaty with the Boers (1902).

He was created viscount and sent to India as commander in chief of British forces there. He redistributed the troops and gained greater administrative control of the army in the face of serious opposition from the viceroy Lord Curzon. He left India in 1909, was made field marshal, and served (1911–14) as consul general in Egypt. He was made an earl in 1914.

At the outbreak of World War I, Kitchener was recalled to England as Secretary of State for War.  However, his relations with the cabinet were strained. In 1915 when he was attacked by the newspapers of Lord Northcliffe for the shortage of shells, responsibility for munitions was taken away from him, and later in the same year he was stripped of control over strategy. He offered to resign, but his colleagues feared the effect on the British public, which still idolized him. In 1916, Kitchener embarked on a mission to Russia to encourage that flagging ally to continued resistance. His ship, the H.M.S. Hampshire, hit a German mine and sank off the Orkney Islands, and he was drowned.

Not a Sad Moment