HISTORIKU

I Ser BADEN ROBERT BADEN-POWELL

near Mount Kenya. His gravestone bears a circle with a dot in the center, which is the trail sign for "Going Home", or "I have gone home". When his wife Olave died, her ashes were sent to Kenya and interred beside her husband. Kenya has declared B.-P.'s grave a national monument.

The Baden-Powells had three children — one son and two daughters (who gained the courtesy titles of Honourable in 1929; the son later succeeding his father in 1941):

Military career

In 1876, Baden-Powell joined the 13th Hussars in India. In 1895, he held special service in Africa and returned to India in 1897 to command the 5th Dragoon Guards.

Baden-Powell enhanced and honed his Scouting skills amidst the Zulu tribesmen in the early 1880s in the Natal province of South Africa, where his regiment had been posted, and where he was mentioned in dispatches. During one of his dispatches, he came across a large string of wooden beads, worn by the Zulu king Dinizulu, which was later incorporated into the Wood Badge training program he started after he founded the Scouting movement. His skills impressed his superiors and he was soon transferred to the British secret service.

Baden-Powell was subsequently posted for three years as intelligence officer for the Mediterranean based in Malta. He frequently traveled disguised as a butterfly collector, incorporating plans of military installations into his drawings of butterfly wings. He then led a successful campaign in Ashanti, Africa, and at the age of 40 was promoted to lead the 5th Dragoon Guards in 1897.

A few years later he wrote a small manual, entitled "Aids to Scouting", a summary of lectures he had given on the subject of military scouting, to help train recruits. Using this and other methods he was able to train them to think independently, use their initiative, and survive in the wilderness.

He returned to South Africa prior to the Second Boer War and was engaged in a number of actions against the Zulus. By this time, he had been promoted as the youngest colonel in the British army. He was responsible for the organization of a force of frontiersmen to assist the regular army. Whilst arranging this, he was trapped in the Siege of Mafeking, and surrounded by a Boer army of in excess of 8,000 men. Although wholly outnumbered, the garrison withstood the siege for 217 days. Much of this is attributable to some of the cunning military deceptions instituted at Baden-Powell's behest as commander of the garrison. Fake minefields were planted and his soldiers were ordered to simulate avoiding non-existent barbed wire while moving between trenches. Baden-Powell did most of the reconnaissance work himself.

During the siege, a cadet corps (consisting of white boys below fighting age) was used to stand guard, carry messages, assist in hospitals and so on, freeing up the men for military service. Although Baden-Powell did not form this cadet corps himself, and there is no evidence that he took much notice of them during the Siege, he was sufficiently impressed with both their courage and the equanimity with which they performed their tasks to use them later as an object lesson in the first chapter of Scouting for boys.The siege was lifted in the Relief of Mafeking on May 16, 1900. Promoted to Major-General, Baden-Powell became a national hero. After organizing the South African Constabulary (police), he returned to England to take up a post as Inspector General of Cavalry in 1903