The sudden death of Lord Kitchener on 5th June 1916, caused as great an international stir at that time, as the sudden deaths of President Kennedy and Princess Diana would in later years, and just as everyone remembers where they were when the news was announced of their deaths, so it was with Kitchener’s demise.
At the outset of World War I, Horatio Herbert Kitchener was recalled home from Cairo, Egypt to become Minister of War. Being widely regarded as a hero of the British Empire, winner of battles in the Sudan, India and the Boer war, children would chant in the street, “Come home Kitchener of Khartoum,” and he was said to be more popular than the king himself.
Kitchener was on board the armoured cruiser, HMS Hampshire which incidentally was carrying gold meant for the use of ‘White’ Russians to resist Rothschild’s planned communist uprising. But after encountering a severe storm, the Hampshire’s escort ships were ordered by the Admiralty to return home, leaving the beleaguered ship to find its way through a minefield alone, on its journey to the port of Archangel, in Russia.
The Admiralty was certainly aware that there was a minefield in this location because, the Laurel Crown had been sunk there three days earlier by mines laid on the 29th May by U-Boat U-75. This fact was confirmed by intercepted wireless traffic.
It was ascertained from witness statements, that the Hampshire with 655 men on board hit one mine, but inexplicably ‘several more explosions’ then sank the ship. The lifeboats were said to have been ‘un-launch-able’ and apparently, instructions were given to the British home guard to shoot the twelve people who somehow survived and who made it ashore. The War Office later claimed that it was believed that the ship was German and wanted no prisoners. A likely story indeed. Surely prisoners would have had valuable information to impart to their captors?
So, was this a case of incompetence on a colossal scale or indeed something more sinister and if so, what could have been the reason for the cover-up?
Lord Kitchener was a cult figure, an icon of his time and in spite of his allegedly being a great student and exponent of battle strategy, he had recently refused the recommendations of his front-line advisors to deploy high explosive shells and instead ordered the use of shrapnel shells, which in the close-quarter ‘intimacy’ of the trenches, killed as many of his own men as the enemy.
He had also advocated ‘bully-boy’ press-gang tactics, ensuring that a ‘blind-eye’ was turned to boys as young as 14 being recruited to the army whilst the legal age to fight in France was 19. He also instigated and widely encouraged the practice of women issuing ‘white feathers’ of cowardice to young lads, not much more than children outside schools and who had not yet joined the armed forces voluntarily. The War Office, under Kitchener’s command also shot young soldiers, some as young as 16, for cowardice whilst knowing fully that they were under-age. Although no accurate government figures are available for child soldiers, the Red Cross and other organisations stated that approximately 80,000 battle casualties were minors.
Kitchener was actually a predatory homosexual, whose appetite for these boys was unquenchable and cruel in the extreme and at the time there were many stories abounding of his ‘exploits,’ similar in nature to those now circulating regarding the paedophile priests of the Catholic Church of today.
It is also maybe a significant fact that Winston Churchill despised both Kitchener – and especially his popularity.
Many years later, a senior intelligence officer, confided on his death-bed to the well-known researcher and ‘truth-seeker,’ Anthony Thomas Trevor-Stokes (T Stokes) :
“Myself and my C.O. went on board the Hampshire, I was told to keep watch outside while he went into Kitchener’s cabin, I put my ear to the door, and heard the C.O. say, ‘I am going to leave you my pistol with one bullet, I will wait outside and you will do the honourable thing.’ We heard a shot, the C.O. went in and retrieved the pistol, and we hurriedly left the ship”
He also claimed that the sinking of the Hampshire with the loss of 643 men was a British cover-up operation, as Kitchener had been directly approached by the Germans seeking peace discussions and his commitment to the war was wavering, whilst of course the establishment and their bankster backers and puppet-masters were still desperate for its continuance.
Indeed, in support of these seemingly ‘outrageous’ claims, recent dives to the shipwreck have proved that it is possible that the ‘several explosions’ were inside and not outside the ship, as the ripped metalwork protrudes outwards not inwards.
As always though, we will probably never know the absolute truth of the matter.