June 5, 1916: The Death of Lord Kitchener

June 5, 1916: Lord Kitchener is killed in action in World War I. It can't be called an assassination, since the enemy didn't know he was aboard the ship in question. But he was dead just the same, and he thus became Great Britain's leading martyr of the war.

Horatio Herbert Kitchener -- he usually used his middle name -- was born on June 24, 1850 in Ballylongford, County Kerry, Ireland, then part of the United Kingdom. But, ethnically, he was wholly English. His father was then stationed in Ballylongford with the British Army, and both of his parents were from Suffolk, in East Anglia, England. He had a brother, Walter, who rose to the rank of Lieutenant General, served as Governor of Bermuda, and was knighted.

He graduated from the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, was commissioned into the Royal Engineers, and served in France, Cyprus, Egypt, the Sudan, and what was then called the British Mandate of Palestine. By 1892, his heroism, his linguistic expertise, and, of course, his connections had led him to be promoted to the rank of Brigadier General.

In 1898, his victory at the Battle of Omdurman sewed up victory, and control of the Sudan, for Britain in the Mahdist War, helping to avenge the death of General Charles Gordon in the Battle of Khartoum in 1885. Kitchener had become an imperial hero, and was named Baron Kitchener of Khartoum. He served as Chief of Staff during the Second Boer War, as Commander-in-Chief of the Army in India, and as Consul-General in Egypt.

When World War I began in 1914, he was promoted to Field Marshal, and named Secretary of State for War, and created Earl Kitchener, of Khartoum and of Broome in the County of Kent. That was where he had his permanent residence, at a house named Broome Park in Canterbury, Kent, in the South-East of England.

He had become the most popular British soldier since the Duke of Wellington, nearly a century earlier. This helped in leading recruiting, as his nationally-recognized image was used on a poster that was much-copied, including in America, for the Uncle Sam "I WANT YOU for U.S. Army" poster that debuted upon America's entry into the war in 1917.

On June 5, 1916, Kitchener was making his way to Russia on the armored cruiser HMS Hampshire, to attend negotiations with Czar Nicholas II. In bad weather, the ship struck a mine laid by the German submarine U-75, a mile and a half west of Orkney, Scotland, and sank. Kitchener was among 737 men who died, and was the highest-ranking British officer to die in action in the entire war. He was just short of 66 years old.

The news of Kitchener's death was received with shock all over the British Empire. A man in Yorkshire committed suicide at the news. General Douglas Haig, commander on the Western Front, asked his staff, "How shall we get on without him?" King George V ordered all officers to wear black armbands for a week.

In his memory, the Canadian city of Berlin, Ontario, so named for a large number of German immigrants living there, was renamed Kitchener. It is 40 miles northwest of Hamilton, and 67 miles southwest of Toronto.

His older brother, Colonel Henry Kitchener, inherited his title, as the 2nd Earl of Kitchener. His son Henry having predeceased him, that Henry's son named Henry became the 3rd Earl. Upon his death in 2011, the title became extinct.

In the 2021 film The King's Man, set during World War I and its leadup, and part of the Kingsman media franchise, Kitchener's death is shown to be an assassination, by the conspiracy benefiting from keeping the war going by playing both sides off against each other.

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June 5, 1916 was a Monday. These baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees beat the Chicago White Sox, 3-2 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. The Yankees, far from the "Murderers' Row" that they would become in the 1920s, knocked White Sox starter Joe Benz out of the box in the 1st inning, on an RBI single by Wally Pipp and a 2-RBI single by Roger Peckinpaugh, but were shut down thereafter. Nick Cullop went the distance for the win. Shoeless Joe Jackson went 2-for-4, and Eddie Collins went 1-for-4.

* The New York Giants lost to the Cincinnati Reds, 3-2 at the Polo Grounds. Fred Toney went 10 innings for the Reds, and was driven in with the winning run with a single by the infamous Hal Chase in the top of the 10th.

* The Brooklyn Robins, as the Dodgers were known during the managing of Wilbert Robinson from 1914 to 1931, beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 3-2 at Ebbets Field. They did this in spite of Zack Wheat, the best player in franchise history to that point, going 0-for-4; while Honus Wagner, still the best player in the Pirate franchise's history, defied his 42 years and went 3-for-5 with an RBI.

* The Chicago Cubs beat the Boston Braves, 1-0 at Braves Field in Boston. Gene Packard pitched a 5-hit shutout.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 6-5 at Baker Bowl in Philadelphia. Rogers Hornsby, in his 1st full season, and playing 3rd base instead of his usual 2nd, hit a home run for the Cardinals. But the Phillies won it in the bottom of the 11th inning, with Bert Niehoff doubling home Dave Bancroft.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Cleveland Indians, 5-0 at League Park in Cleveland. Just before the season, superstar center field Tris Speaker and Red Sox management had fallen out with each other, and Speaker was traded to the Indians for 2 players and a lot of cash. This didn't hurt the Red Sox at first, though: They went on to win the World Series in 1916 and 1918. But Speaker would lead them, as player and as manager, to the World Series in 1920, and nearly win Pennants again in 1923 and 1926. In this game, he went 0-for-4. Babe Ruth pitched a 6-hit shutout, and went 2-for-3 with a walk and an RBI.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Washington Senators, 3-2 at Navin Field (later Briggs Stadium and Tiger Stadium) in Detroit. Harry Coveleski, brother of Hall-of-Fame pitcher Stan and a good pitcher in his own right, outpitched the legendary Walter Johnson. Ty Cobb went 2-for-4.

* And a Midwest rainstorm that postponed games on a Philadelphia Athletics roadtrip for the 1st of 5 straight days, first in St. Louis and then in Chicago, prevented the A's from playing the St. Louis Browns. This game was made up at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis on July 26. The Browns won, 5-0. Carl Weilman allowed 10 hits, but kept the shutout. Hank Sevareid went 3-for-4 with 4 RBIs.

January 26, 1885: The Battle of Khartoum & the Death of Charles Gordon

January 26, 1885: The Battle of Khartoum is fought. It becomes one of the great "last stands" in military history, and a rare example of a man becoming a legend in defeat.

Charles George Gordon was born on January 28, 1833, in Woolwich, then in Kent, now a part of South-East London. He saw action in the Crimean War of the 1850s, as an officer in the British Army. However, he made his military reputation in China, where he was placed in command of the "Ever Victorious Army," a force of Chinese soldiers led by European officers, which was instrumental in putting down the Taiping Rebellion in 1864, regularly defeating much larger forces. For these accomplishments, he was given the nickname "Chinese Gordon," and honors from both his own country's government and China's.

With British government approval, he entered the service of Isma'il Pasha, the Khedive of Egypt, in 1873, and later became the Governor-General of the Sudan, then a British colony, where he did much to suppress revolts and the local slave trade. He then resigned and returned to Europe in 1880.

Gordon's abrupt mood swings and contradictory advice confirmed the Cabinet's view of him as mercurial and unstable. Even an observer as sympathetic as Winston Churchill wrote about Gordon: "Mercury uncontrolled by the force of gravity was not on several occasions more unstable than Charles Gordon. His moods were capricious and uncertain, his passions violent, his impulses sudden and inconsistent. The mortal enemy of the morning had become a trusted ally by night."

Gordon never married, and historians agree on the reason, if not on the cause. He was a "married to his work" type, putting his life into his service, and thus repressing his urges and converting them into patriotism and a religious fervor. It's also been suggested that he had Asperger's syndrome, which made him uncomfortable when talking to women. It has also been theorized -- mostly in books published well after he died -- that he was gay, and thus, with his strong religious beliefs, he had to repress himself so much that martyrdom eventually became a wish.

A serious revolt, the Mahdist War, broke out in the Sudan, led by Muhammad Ahmad bin Abdullah bin Fahal, a Muslim religious leader who claimed to be the Mahdi: A prominent figure who is believed to appear at the End of Time, to rid the world of evil and injustice. He is said to be a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, who will appear shortly before the Prophet ʿĪsā (the Muslim name for Jesus, who is honored in Islam, as is his mother, Mary), and will lead the Muslims to rule the entire world. That's the mythology, anyway. Muhammad Ahmad played on this to gain many followers.

In early 1884, Gordon was sent to the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, with instructions to secure the evacuation of loyal soldiers and civilians and to depart with them. In defiance of those instructions, after evacuating about 2,500 civilians, he retained a smaller group of soldiers and non-military men.

In the months before the fall of Khartoum, Gordon and the Mahdi corresponded. Gordon offered him the Sultanate of Kordofan. The Mahdi requested Gordon to convert to Islam and join him, which Gordon declined.

Besieged by the Mahdi's forces, Gordon organized a citywide defense that lasted for almost a year (the Siege of Khartoum beginning on March 13, 1884), and gained him the admiration of the British public, but not of the government, led by Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, who had wished him not to become entrenched there. Only when public pressure to act had become irresistible did the government, with reluctance, send a relief force.

Timing is everything: It arrived 2 days after the city had fallen and Gordon had been killed. The Mahdi had given strict orders not to kill Gordon, but they disobeyed.

His death, at the age of 51, was romanticized in General Gordon's Last Stand, a popular painting produced in 1893 by George William Joy. It showed Gordon wearing his ceremonial gold-braided blue uniform of the Governor-General together, with the Pasha's red fez, and that he went out unarmed, except with his rattan cane, to be cut down by the Mahdi's followers, the Ansar. This account was very popular with the British press, as it contained much Christian imagery with Gordon as a Christlike figure dying passively for the sins of all humanity.

In the hours following Gordon's death, an estimated 10,000 civilians and members of the garrison were killed in Khartoum. The massacre was finally halted by orders of the Mahdi. Many of Gordon's papers were saved and collected by his two sisters, Helen Clark Gordon, who married Gordon's medical colleague in China, Dr. Moffit; and Mary Augusta, and possibly his niece Augusta, who married Gerald Henry Blunt.

Gordon achieved the martyrdom he had been seeking at Khartoum, as the British press portrayed him as a saintly Christian hero and martyr who had died nobly resisting the Islamic onslaught of the Mahdi. As late as 1901, on the anniversary of Gordon's death, The Times (of London) wrote in a leader (an editorial) that Gordon was "that solitary figure holding aloft the flag of England in the face of the dark hordes of Islam." (And you thought the American media was loaded following 9/11. The Battle of Khartoum was more than 3 "9/11s.") For the psyche of Victorian England, used to feeling higher than America ever has, this was Pearl Harbor, the JFK assassination, and 9/11 all wrapped up into one.

The failure to rescue Gordon's force in Sudan was a major blow to Prime Minister Gladstone's popularity. Queen Victoria sent him a telegram of rebuke, which found its way into the press. Critics said Gladstone had neglected military affairs, and had not acted promptly enough to save the besieged Gordon. Critics called him "Judas," and inverted his acronym, "G.O.M." (for "Grand Old Man"), to "M.O.G." (for "Murderer of Gordon"). Stones were thrown at the Prime Minister's official residence at 10 Downing Street in London.

In a sermon, the Bishop of Chichester stated: "Nations who envied our greatness rejoiced now at our weakness and our inability to protect our trusted servant. Scorn and reproach were cast upon us, and would we plead that it was undeserved? No; the conscience of the nation felt that a strain rested upon it."

Evelyn Baring, the 1st Earl of Cromer, and then the Consul-General of Egypt, was among the British officials who had deeply disliked Gordon. Nevertheless, he immediately recognized the symbolism of his death: Because of the "national hysteria" caused by it, saying anything critical about him at present would be equal to questioning Christianity.

Gladstone bowed to reality and resigned on June 9, 1885. The Conservative Party's Leader, Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, formed the new government. Despite the popular demand to "avenge Gordon," Lord Salisbury did nothing of the sort. The Sudan was judged to be not worth the huge financial costs it would have taken to conquer it, the same conclusion that the Liberals had reached. The Conservatives lost an election later in the year, and Salisbury ended up resigning on January 28, 1886. Gladstone was back in, but his government split over the Irish Home Rule question, and Salisbury was back 6 months later.

The Mahdi established his Islamic state, which restored slavery and imposed a very harsh rule that, according to one estimate, caused the deaths of 8 million people. But Muhammad Ahmad was not there to preside over most of it. Nature had done what the combined might of the British Empire at its peak could not: "The Mahdi" died on June 21, from typhus, at 41. In 1898, General Herbert Kitchener led Britain to victory in the Battle of Omdurman, ending the Mahdist State, and, in the minds of many "avenging Gordon."

Sudan achieved independence in 1956, and has been ruled by dictatorships for most of its history, including an Islamic one of which Muhammad Ahmad would surely have approved.

Charlton Heston played Gordon in the 1966 film Khartoum. The very English Laurence Olivier played a whitewashed version of Muhammad Ahmad, perhaps a final revenge.

With the passage of time, and his no longer being considered an untouchable figure, there came to be a joke about Gordon. Every day, a man would walk his son to school, passing a statue of Gordon on horseback. The first time, the father told the son Gordon's story. Passing the statue every day, the son would occasionally ask the father to again tell him the story of Gordon's heroism.

One day, during their walk, the son said, "Father, I have a question about Gordon. Who is that silly man riding him?"

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January 26, 1885 was a Monday. Baseball and football were out of season. Hockey was not yet organized. And basketball had not yet been invented. So there were no scores on this historic day.