Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener, (; 24 June 1850 – 5 June 1916), was a 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 establishment of concentration 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 Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, becoming a
British home army in the First World War failed attempt in 1910 to create a reserve for the Territorial Force. It was little more than a register of former regular or auxiliary personnel who would be prepared to volunteer should their services be needed. It had no clearly defined role. By 1914, some 200,000 men had registered, though 70 per cent would not or, due to their age, could not perform an active role in home defence. On the outbreak of war, several thousand of the younger reservists enlisted into regular or territorial units on their own initiative. It took three weeks for the government to decide how