Lost history – Lord Kitchener’s Starling

In 1901, Lord Kitchener was struggling to establish military supremacy over his Boer opponents in South Africa. The unprecedented measures taken by both sides would alter the laws of war forever. However, while the seeds of future wars were being sown, Kitchener was less concerned with the calamitous destiny his callous policies were driving the world toward, than with the recapture of his missing pet, a starling to whom he showed unparalleled affection.

Kitchener’s legacy is still promoted by the famous First World War poster of him pointing towards the viewer with the emphatic caption; “Your country needs you” embossed below. Born in Ireland, Horatio Herbert Kitchener lost his beloved mother aged fourteen. Prior to his twenty-first birthday, he followed his father’s footsteps and pursued a career in the army. Gaining a commission in the Royal Engineers in 1871, he spent four years surveying the Holy Lands before reaching the rank of captain and being despatched to Egypt.

Unrest in the neighbouring Sudan gave young officers like Kitchener the chance to distinguish themselves. His ability to draw a disciplined and detailed plan and to see it efficiently enacted on the battlefield earned him many celebrated victories. By the time he was sent to South Africa to assist Lord Roberts in clearing up the mess left behind by lesser British commanders, Kitchener was a byword for British victory abroad. Tall and imposing, sporting a handlebar moustache, his blue-porcelain eyes pierced the souls of nervous interlocutors. His father had been a cruel parent and his abusive treatment seems to have stunted his son’s ability to empathise. Indeed, that cold indifference to suffering was to tarnish his otherwise heroic esteem and had lethal consequences for the people of South Africa during the Second Boer War.

The Second Boer War shattered preconceptions of military strategy. A nation of farmers, no bigger than the population of Brighton, using the ample resources of their territories, were able to kit their combatants out with Krupp steel guns and other up-to-date pieces of menacing artillery. An engagement that was supposed to be over by Christmas raged on for almost three years, claiming the lives of approximately 200,000 soldiers and civilians. The avoidance of pitched battles by the Boers and their reliance on their relatives for supplies broadened the unfortunate theatre of operations to encompass women, children and the elderly.

Unable to meet their foe in the field, Roberts and Kitchener decided to cut all sources of aid for the cunning Boer commandos. Their army uprooted thousands of Boer families, reducing their farms to smoking cinders before herding the displaced into hurriedly erected concentration camps. Roberts made the initial order to build and fill the concentration camps, but after his departure, Kitchener’s insouciance to the human suffering experienced in these poorly planned and administered settlements rightly harmed the Empire’s reputation. Four or five mothers were crammed into inhospitable tents with ten or more children. In the summer, these tents would insulate the oppressive heat of the African sun; and in the winter, those thin canvasses did little to protect their malnourished and diseased occupants from the freezing winds that howl across the veldt. Over twenty-five thousand Boer women and children died. The black population endured even harsher tribulations. Though both sides publicly declared “this is a white man’s war” and officially opposed the arming of blacks, each relented and made use of the manpower available. They fought valiantly for both sides, but by the end of the war the blacks were left divided and betrayed by Boers and Brits alike.

When Roberts left, Kitchener became Command-in-Chief. While he monitored the intense situation of guerrilla warfare, concentration camps, railway sabotages and outbreaks of typhoid his much-needed attention was suddenly taken up by a starling. A member of his staff found the bird trapped and cheeping up a chimney in British Headquarters, Pretoria. The ruthless commander became fascinated and fixated. He had it caged and kept in his office where he fed it bits of worms. When considering a major course of action or responding to a crisis, he would turn his back to his subordinates and seemingly converse with his feathery friend. The mollycoddling of this random and delicate creature disgusted his officers and led some to speculate as to the state of their CO’s mental health. Kitchener said that the worst day of the campaign was when the starling escaped. He was so dumbfounded and distraught by its absence that he ordered all staff officers to stop what they were doing and to conduct a concerted search for his lost chum. “I have grown darned fond of it,” he said, as if his fondness would explain his peculiar behaviour. The bird was found soon after and Kitchener, unlike the country he effectively ran, was at peace.

There is something endearing about a person who cherishes the company of animals, but too often, a butcher of men becomes a best friend to beasts. Prince Rupert of the Rhine frequently rode to battle cradling his pampered poodle, Boye. The acrimonious and crazed Caligula saved his limited compassion for the horse, Incitatus, whom he honoured with a hieratic status. And Adolf Hitler’s love of animals still seems so incongruous in conjunction with his heinous crimes against humanity. Maybe whatever makes a person apathetic enough to murder their own species also allows them to adore baser creatures excessively. Kitchener’s pococurantism for human life looked at alongside his love for a little songbird certainly limns a strange and unsettling portrait of an acclaimed soldier. His hardness may have beat the Boers, but it also blackened the name of the British Empire forever. Only one bird knew him in a better light.