Tag Archives: Kitchener Wants You

Kitchener would still not be amused

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When the British Army unveiled its new recruiting campaign to flesh out the flagging ranks of non-Gurka units (whose own recruits have grueling doko run to weed out the masses applying for the annual intake), I, like many, scoffed. I mean, what’s not to joke about right?

Well, it turns out that the Snow Flake push has paid dividends. Reports contend that applications for the Army are at a five-year high and the ad campaign led to a 78% rise in website visits.

And with that, the latest ad for the Forces, which still goes tech/platform heavy and stirs the blood.

In much the same vein of making the military somewhat more appealing to the current generation, the U.S. Army National Guard has ditched their traditional Minute Man logo:

For a more “Big Army” branding that is less threatening to schools which have a zero tolerance policy towards gun imagery.

Thus:


Plus, studies showed that few kids knew what the Minute Man was…sigh.

This is sad because the familiar National Guard Seal and Emblem, of course, has long featured a likeness of the famous Concord Minute Man statue in Concord, Massachusetts. The statue, first unveiled in 1875 by sculptor Daniel Chester French, symbolizes the local militia that stood to in an effort to halt the British Army’s 1775 seizure of arms and powder that sparked the Revolutionary War. The man, a farmer rather than a soldier, is holding a flintlock in his right hand while his left hand is still resting on a plow.

The National Guard further holds that its history predates the country, stemming from the Massachusetts Bay Colonial Militia which was founded in 1636.

The First Muster By Don Troiani National Guard traces the traditional foundation to the East Regiment in Salem, the regiment formed as part of three organized by the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636-37

The First Muster By Don Troiani traces the traditional foundation to the East Regiment in Salem, the regiment formed as part of three organized by the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636.

Kitchener surely would eat his hat

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Either the British Army likes a challenge, or they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel for recruits in this day and age of social media warriors and selfie-lovers. The new recruiting campaign to bring the Army to its authorized strength (to include women in the infantry) and keep it there is reaching out for a modern generation.

Thus:

In a twist, this fine lad, Scots Guardsman Stephen McWhirter, says his image was used by the Army in the campaign without his knowledge and it has put him right off and he intends to leave the service. So, the campaign has so far had the opposite effect.

The Defence Select Committee was told in October that it had 77,000 fully trained troops compared with a target of 82,500, which doesn’t sound like a huge shortfall, but when you consider that the British Army is facing deployments all over the world and is at its smallest size since 1793 when it had contracted to just 40,000 in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War (its lowest 19th Century mark was 90,000 in 1838, two decades after Napoleon had been sent to St. Helena).

Of course, the posters are a riff on British Field Marshal Lord Kitchener’s “Wants You” posters first fielded in 1914 to help recast the battered (and all-volunteer) British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front after the original regulars, The Old Contemptibles, had been bled white at the Marne and Ypres.

“Britons: Lord Kitchener Wants You. Join Your Country’s Army! God save the King.”

Notably, the new posters do not include the finger-pointing. Probably too aggressive.

Kitchener was not available for comment.

Meanwhile, on 28 Dec 2018, Army Capt. Louis Rudd, 49, became the first Briton to cross Antarctica solo, unsupported and unassisted.

“Using all the training and experience gathered from his 33-year military career, Lou hauled 165kg of kit and food supplies for 1500km across the driest, coldest and most inhospitable continent on the planet. Originally anticipated to take up to 75 days, to achieve this feat in 56 is extraordinary,” noted the Army.

Rudd, not on a recruiting poster

Update: The Parachute Regiment, who has their own program for direct recruitment, posted the below this afternoon with an appeal to don the “cherry berry.”

Pokey finger and all…