Kitchener Moves South

To say that the Middle East had stabilized was almost stretching the truth to the point of absurdity. In December of 1899, Turkey was still fighting it’s own little civil war despite the fact that the Sultan had officially rested power from the progressive upstarts. The truth was that the Young Turk movement had not entirely gone away even if they were now greatly reduced in influence and effectiveness. The Sultan had other problems that made his internal revolutionaries seem pale in comparison. 

Turkish forces were now in a full fledged shooting war on the borders with the Russian Empire. They were now officially at war with Czar Nicholas even if the Turks and Russians had been sporadically shooting at each other when they were officially allies. The Armenians had not gone away either and were no longer content to be just the victims of Turkish purges. The Persians were now funneling weapons and munitions to them, much at the urging of France who was paying back the Ottoman empire for having switched sides. If that was not bad enough, the Turks were busy with an Arab revolt that was largely started by the British. Indeed, Abdul Hamid was getting grief from friend and foe alike and who was who, along with which crisis was the worst, depended on which day of the week it was.

Even so, despite the conflict in Turkey, Kitchener reported back to London that all was well on his front. The Suez Canal was safe from direct attack and that was all that mattered. Kitchener had been agitating Pall Mall for permission to take the war to other theaters. He proposed everything from an overland expedition to Algeria, to launching offensive amphibious operations against the Dardanelle straits. The latter would be an attempt to seize Istanbul and ensure that the Turks complied with the current truce.

None of Kitchener’s proposals were even seriously considered and, with good reason. They were all completely impractical and some, even counter productive. For the time it seemed as if the Salisbury Government was content to leave Kitchener in Egypt where he would stay out of trouble. It would be Cecil Rhodes who would eventually come to Kitchener's rescue. Rhodes braved a trip to England so that he could use his influence to directly appeal for more aid to be sent to Britain’s possessions in South Africa. Rhodes found a good deal of sympathy but, not much else because the simple truth was, Britain had little left to send.

It was Salisbury who ultimately decided to kill two annoying problems with one stone. In late November of 1899, Joseph Chamberlin had another meeting with Rhodes and promised him that military aid would be forth coming. At the same time, Kitchener was informed that he had permission to conduct offensive operations in the South African theater of war, under certain conditions, should the resources prove available. Of course, it is quite clear that no one in London thought these conditions could be met and, no extra resources, provisions, or manpower were given to Kitchener with his orders. Much like South Africa, he was left to fend for himself if he wanted to take on this military adventure.

The orders given to Kitchener were quite clear on some very specific points. The most important of which, was stated prominently in the first paragraph that, at no time, was this operation to endanger, or weaken, in any way, the defenses of Egypt or the Suez Canal. This alone should have prevented the operation since, it can be argued, that removing any troops from Egypt would violate this condition. The order was, in fact, little more than diplomatic double speak designed to placate an influential business man and shut up an annoying but popular General. Kitchener was not one to give up so easily though.

From his headquarters, situated on the Nile River island that was given to him by the Egyptian government, Kitchener sought to undertake this operation without violating his overly complicated and unrealistic orders. Kitchener realized something that seemed to be completely over looked in London. There were other military assets that, so far, had been left untapped. Britain had allies and they had resources in the eastern Mediterranean that had been largely ignored by the British Admiralty. Confederate and German ships were frowned upon and thought inferior by the Admirals in London, even after the battle of the Yellow Sea.

The land forces of Germany and the CSA were also not very highly thought of by the Generals in Pall Mall. While it is easy to find complimentary statements of men like Wolseley, who praised the Confederate military, the view of the British General Staff at Pall Mall was not entirely unrealistic. War was no longer theory and the Confederate Army had failed to take Washington. Also, Wheeler’s Richmond government was constantly bombarding London for more substantial help in dealing with what they constantly referred too as, “the Yankee menace.” 

Before the war, much had been feared of German militarism and the Kaiser’s army but, much of that was the natural inclination of humans to overstate the power of a potential enemy. Now that Germany was an ally, much of the fanfare was gone. While the German’s had stopped the French in Alsace-Lorraine, the fact was they were still fighting on their soil and not in France. The German’s had managed some gains on the Russian front but, much like the Confederacy, had failed to take their stated objectives. Put in this light it was understandable why the General Staff had their doubts as to the reliability of their allies.

Of course, the professional estimations of the British General Staff was nothing in comparison to their typically Victorian views. While no one would openly say as much, it was quite clear that the British decided that their allies were decidedly inferior for the simple reason that they were not British. This might go a long way towards explaining why these allies, who needed each other more than ever, had a hard time cooperating as extensively as was easily possible.

While it would be a stretch to say that Lord Kitchener did not agree with the average view of a Victorian adult male, for he certainly made no secret of his belief in the superiority of the English speaking world, he found himself in a situation where he needed his allies more than he disdained them. It was his military needs that drove his actions in November and early December of 1899. It was in the language of professional soldiers that he talked to his allies. Kitchener seemed to have little use for diplomats or even just being diplomatic but, the men he reached out too were professional warriors that were fighting a war and, in this, they all spoke the same language as Kitchener.

The first man that Kitchener reached out too was none other than Admiral Tirpitz. The Kriegsmarine had found itself sidelined and Tirpitz was more than a little upset by this. He had been in Egypt for several months, officially handing any number of affairs for Germany but, in reality, as his own journals bare out, he was aching to get out of Berlin and find something worth doing. Apparently Kitchener was more than aware of Tirpitz’s attitude and the German did not hesitate to join in on this little adventure that the British general proposed. Tirpitz did not have a great deal of assets to bring to the table but, he had some. A German cruiser from the pacific squadron was returning home after being damaged in a fight with US ships off the coast of Guam. It was currently docked in Alexandria awaiting to join a convoy to make the last leg of it’s journey.

Even more import, Tirpitz had under his authority a collection of German merchant vessels that had found themselves trapped in Egypt since the outset of hostilities. If Kitchener wanted to move troops to South Africa then he would need ships to do it and the Royal Navy assets in Egypt were not under his command. The Royal Navy also had no orders to assist him in his campaign and, quite to the contrary, had been quietly told not to do so. Tirpitz solved this problem and helped with one other. Tirpitz also had under his command, any number of German soldiers, sailors, and military advisors that were as stranded in Egypt by the war as was the merchant ships. Tirpitz set about organizing them into an Ad Hoc unit that could serve as an infantry force.

While this helped Kitchener it did not give him everything he needed. He was able to coax some troops out of the Egyptians who would have gladly helped even more if political realities had let them. Kitchener was also able to scrap together some British and colonial forces that, up till now, had been of little use for various reasons. One of these men, Winston Churchill, was like so many others in this category. When the war began in earnest he was recalled to his regiment but, he had no real way to get home. Churchill had been patiently waiting his turn at a seat on the next transport. The list of people in front of him was longer than he cared to admit.

There were also a scattering of Australians and New Zealanders. They had been deployed in small numbers, as advanced parties, in the early stages of the war. After the Battle of the Yellow Sea most of their parent units were never deployed when the threat to Hong Kong, Singapore, India and even their homelands became a possibility. These men found themselves as stranded as Churchill. Kitchener had a motley collection of troops from all over the empire including a company of Gurkha’s from India. They had only recently arrived and had yet to be attached to anyone. Since they were not officially on anyone’s roll call, Kitchener quickly snapped them up.

To round out his force and, to make the move even possible, Kitchener got his last bit of help from an unexpected source, the Confederate States Navy. The four cruisers (along with just under a dozen escorts and support ships) that made up the Confederate European Squadron had accomplished very little since the outset of hostilities. For all practical purposes, the Confederate Squadron had found itself to be little more than the reserve force for the Royal Navy. The British had folded them into their command structure but, mostly refused to use the Confederates for any active operations. 

The squadron commander, a professional naval officer of twenty years service, by the name of Commodore Thomas Mason Brumby, was a consummate professional and accepted his orders and positions. That was not to say that he liked it. While Brumby found himself temporarily under the authority of the Royal Navy, he still had a great deal more latitude, in his actions, than did a British officer in a similar position. When he joined the “Kitchener-Tirpitz Conspiracy” he simply notified the Confederate Legations in Cairo, who then notified the British Military Headquarters in Alexandria, that he was temporarily withdrawing his squadron as per the terms of the Anglo-Confederate agreements.

What this gave Kitchener was more than a squadron of cruisers. Brumby also brought several hundred troops to the table. He had the equivalent of three companies of Confederate States Marines with him and this was augmented by sailors from the cruiser, CSS Tampa Bay. The Tampa had been damaged a month prior in one of the only actions that the Confederate Squadron had engaged in. She was repairable but, would not be ready for Kitchener’s timetable so Brumby left her in the Alexandria docks, with a skeleton crew, and took most of the ship’s company with him.

This gave Lord Kitchener, what was quite possibly, the most bizarre looking force in Military History. He had Egyptian Lancers with bright red turbans and pants. Gurkha’s with their fancy looking knives and turbans. Aussie and Kiwi troops with their pinned up hats and sloppy olive drab uniforms. There were German infantry and marines with their pointed leather helmets, in their dark gray, and with officers sporting Iron Crosses and highly polished jackboots. The British regulars had a variety of uniforms all by themselves and, then, you had the Confederate forces that, as one observer put it, came in both flavors. The Confederate Marines and the officers were all white men but, the larger portion of the confederate force had darker skin than anyone else assigned to this force. They were all Confederate sailors, they were all black men, and some were even former slaves. When you consider how bizarre this all sounded, and must have looked, it is little wonder that the French intelligence missed this entirely. If any of their spies had reported on Kitchener’s scrap army, it is likely that their superiors would not even have believed them.