[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

5th June 1916




H.M.S. "Hampshire" mined off Scottish coast: Lord Kitchener and his staff drowned.

Of course nothing ever is as it seems :https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Joubert_Duquesne

Duquesne posed as the Russian Duke Boris Zakrevsky and joined Lord Kitchener on the HMS Hampshire in Scotland. Once on board, Duquesne signaled the German submarine that sank the cruiser, thus killing Lord Kitchener. Duquesne made his own escape using a life raft before the ship was torpedoed and he was rescued by the submarine. Duquesne was awarded the Iron Cross for this act, and he appears in several pictures in German uniform wearing an Iron Cross in addition to other medals. Captain Louis Botha, son of the former Prime Minister of South Africa General Louis Botha, further writes that "Duquesne was a great friend of the Botha family" and that Duquesne "rose from the status of a Private in the German Army to the rank of Colonel, and received the Iron Cross during the great war." The authenticity of several of these claims has been challenged by modern biographers, and the German records that would confirm or deny at least parts of these accounts are now missing and presumed destroyed during the war.

His chief opponent in the Boer War had no doubts about him. During World War I, Burnham was living in California and was active in counterespionage for Britain. Much of it involved a famous Boer spy, Captain Fritz Joubert Duquesne, who became a German spy in both World Wars and claimed to have killed Field Marshal Kitchener while en route to meet with the Russians. During the Second Boer War, Burnham and Duquesne were each under orders to assassinate the other, but it was not until 1910 that the two men first met while both were in Washington, D.C., separately lobbying Congress to pass a bill in favor of the importation of African game animals into the United States.

He was one of the craftiest men I ever met. He had something of a genius of the Apache for avoiding a combat except in his own terms; yet he would be the last man I should choose to meet in a dark room for a finish fight armed only with knives. Next to Theron I believe Duquesne the greatest scout the Boers produced. Frederick Russell Burnham British Chief of Scouts

<and a Minnesota boy to boot!https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Russell_Burnham

To my friendly enemy, Major Frederick Russell Burnham, the greatest scout of the world, whose eyes were that of an Empire. I once craved the honour of killing him, but failing that, I extend my heartiest admiration. Fritz Joubert Duquesne