I never realised that HMS HAMPSHIRE with Lord Kitchener on board had sunk (5 June 1916) within a week of the Battle of Jutland (31 May 1916). He was no relation of mine and I’ve never heard that his loss caused any distress in the family, unlike the German shell which hit HMS Princess Royal at Jutland, badly wounding my uncle Jack who was six weeks shy of his 17th birthday, and who, when photographed on Christmas Day 1917, showed no trace of a whisker, unlike the “iconic” Field Martial, of whom Margot Asquith had remarked that if he wasn’t a great soldier he was certainly a great poster.
I’m indebted to Ronan McGreevy of THE IRISH TIMES (An Irishman’s Diary May 31) for pointing out the almost coincidental dates of the battle and the loss to the British Empire
of Lord Kitchener. So keenly did some people in Ontario take the loss of the Field Marshal, that they changed the name of their town from “Berlin” to “Listowel”, his Kerry birthplace.
Kitchener had no love for Ireland nor rapport with her Nationalist people, although born in Listowel. According to David Lloyd George – “Nationalist ladies, fired with enthusiasm for the new Irish division, for Mr Redmond and for the cause for which they were devoting themselves,embroidered a silken flag with the Irish harp emlazoned on it. At the same moment the patriotic ladies of Ulster were embroidering the Red Hand of Ulster on the flag which they designed to present to a division which was being raised in Ulster. In due course the the two flags were presented to to the respective divisions. One was taken and the other was left. When Lord Kitchener heard of the green flag and the Irish harp he ordered that it be taken away…….Ireland was deeply hurt……..”
Kitchener was a brute who massacred badly armed Sudanese with artillery and Maxim Guns, essentially VIckers Machine-guns, weapons used later in both World Wars and in Korea, and by the RUC in Belfast in 1969. Like the Field-Marshal Roberts (whose father was born in Waterford) Kitchener later played a brutal role in South Africa, where thousands of women and and children perished in their concentration camps,but in 1916 Kitchener was supposed to be saving Europe from militarism.
Lloyd George in credited the 1916 Insurgents with saving his own life, for Asquith had detailed him to think up a scheme for Ireland (in order to counter opinion
in America critical of Britain’s Irish policy and so lure the US into the war, though he didn’t say so). Otherwise he’d have been with Kitchener on HMS Hampshire on the way
to Russia, and would have shared the Field Marshal’s watery grave. But the Devil still had work for Lloyd George to do and he survived for nearly thirty more years.
For some it was a case of Your Country Does Not Need You.
Francis Sheehy Skeffington was used as a hostage by the British army, before being shot with three others in 1916 on the orders of an officer named Bowen-Colthurst.
The murders would have been the subject of a cover up had it not been for the actions of Major Francis Fletcher-Vane, who had been ordered to bury the bodies. Vane took steps to expose the injustice. He reported the matter to the Prime Minister and Kitchener. Vane was discharged from the army for his efforts. Bowen-Colthurst pleaded insanity at a court martial and was sent to Broadmoor for a ‘cure.’
A fascinating piece Donal.These are the kind of lost details that always get my attention .I hadn’t rememembered that the RUC had used Maxim(Vickers) machine guns in Belast in 1969. They were one lethal tool by all intents…a corn -cutter of a beast by all accounts.Apparently it was known as “the weapon most associated with the British imperial conquest” , having been invented by Sir Maxim in 1883.It could fire 600 rounds per minute so you can imagine the kind if indiscriminate chaos a thing like that might cause in a closed urban setting.Merely having one of those beasts in your armoury was enough without even resorting to its use.It was used in Africa by the british and elsewhere.