Arthur Currie

Military officer

• Born: December 5, 1875
• Birthplace: Strathroy, Ontario
• Died: November 30, 1933
• Place of death: Montreal, Quebec

Contribution: Arthur Currie was a lieutenant-general in the Canadian army, best known for his successful battles during World War I. He began his military career as a militia gunner and rose to become the first full general in the Canadian military.

Early Life and Education

Arthur William Currie was born in Strathroy, Ontario, on December 5, 1875, the youngest of seven children born to William and Jane Currie. His parents were prosperous farmers, and Currie attended the local rural school. As a boy, he liked playing with toy soldiers, recreating famous battles of the past. He was also part of the cadet corps in high school.

Currie enrolled at Strathroy District Collegiate Institute, but he quit after an argument with a teacher. He eventually graduated from a local teacher’s college. In 1894, like many young men of his time, he headed west to Victoria, British Columbia, where he taught at a boys’ school for several years. In 1901, he married Lucy Sophia Musters and they eventually had two children. Before long, Currie was working as an insurance sales representative and a real estate broker.

The Start of a Military Career

In 1897, Currie joined the 5th Regiment, Canadian Garrison Artillery. He moved up through the ranks and became lieutenant-colonel of the regiment by 1909. In 1913, he was charged with developing an infantry unit, the 50th Regiment (Gordon Highlanders of Canada), which he commanded. At the start of World War I in 1914, Currie was chosen to command the 2nd Infantry Brigade. By February of 1915, he and his men were fighting in France.

In the face of German poison gas attacks, Currie and his brigade held their line against the advancing German troops. As a result, he was promoted to major-general and commander of the 1st Canadian Division. He was also given the first order of knighthood, the Companionship of the Bath, a great honor bestowed to soldiers demonstrating the highest caliber of service. Additionally, the French government made him a commander of the Legion of Honor.

At the battles of Festubert and Givenchy in 1915, Currie led the 2nd Brigade. He then became commander-in-chief of the Canadian Corps. Shortly after this, King George V of England made him a Knight-Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George.

Battle Strategies

Currie continued to lead his men through several bloody engagements on the Somme. He later wrote an analysis of his strategies in battle, which became required study for members of the Canadian Corps. Currie emphasized controlling not only the enemy’s front trench, but also the enemy’s approaches to it from all sides, as well as enemy supply lines. He also noted that troops must engage in irregular actions so the enemy would be unable to predict their movements. He stressed the importance of engineers in war, the critical use of maps and intelligence, and the use of natural landscape features rather than trench lines to determine the goals of an attack. He further explained that an officer should not order his troops to battle unless they had a reasonable expectation of success.

Currie applied these tactics to his next battle, the 1917 Battle of Vimy Ridge, for which he devised complex and detailed preparations. The battle was deadly for thousands of French and British troops. Currie ensured that his supply and ammunition lines were laid down before he entered the fray. His infantry was divided into specific units, each of which had a targeted objective. As a result, his battalion took the ridge, a decisive moment both in the war and in Canadian history, as other nations took notice of the contributions of Canadian troops to the Allied effort. For this, Currie was promoted to lieutenant-general in charge of the Canadian Corps. At forty-one, he was the youngest officer ever to reach such a rank.

The other Allied nations had already lost thousands of men in a sea of blood and mud at the Battle of Passchendaele. Currie was then called in to do what other Allied generals had not been able to, and although he objected and predicted that too many Canadian men would be lost in battle, he eventually agreed after being pressured. He applied his usual strategies to the situation and once again relied on his engineers to build roads, drain ditches, and even build a railway, all while being fired upon by the Germans. His men attacked the Germans on October 26 and won control of the ridge by November 10. Over 15,000 Canadian soldiers were killed or wounded during the campaign.

In the last hundred days of the war, Currie’s men fought with Australian troops against the Germans, constantly pushing the Germans back and allowing them no time to recover.

After the War

After the war, rather than being hailed as a war hero by his fellow Canadians, the public charged that Currie had unnecessarily wasted Canadian lives. On the military side, however, he was appointed inspector-general, the highest post in the Canadian military at that time. In 1920, he became principal and vice chancellor of McGill University, even though he had not completed his college education. He served in this position until his death in 1933.

Currie died on November 30, 1933, and was buried in Montreal. Two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand Canadians attended Currie’s funeral. It was the first time that a national hero’s funeral was broadcast nationwide..

Bibliography

Cook, Tim. The Madman and the Butcher: The Sensational Wars of Sam Hughes and General Arthur Currie. Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2011. Print.

Currie, Arthur. The Selected Papers of Sir Arthur Currie: Diaries, Letters, and Report to the Ministry, 1917–1933. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2008. Print.

Dancocks, D. G. Legacy of Valour: The Canadians at Passchendaele. Edmonton: Hurtig, 1986. Print.

Delaney, Douglas E. “Balancing Acts: The Canadian Army Experience as a Junior Alliance Partner, 1899–1953.” Coalition Warfare: An Anthology of Scholarly Presentations at the Conference on Coalition Warfare. Ed. Niels Bo Poulsen, et al. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2013. 70–95. Print.

The General Sir Arthur Currie Memorial Project. Currie Project, n.d. Web. 23 Aug. 2013.

“General Sir Arthur Currie.” Strathroy Rockets. GOJHL Strathroy Rockets, 14 Mar. 2013. Web. 23 Aug. 2013.

Greenfield, Nathan. “Burdens of Command.” Canadian Geographic 126.6 (2006): 98. Print.

Hart, Peter. The Great War: A Combat History of the First World War. New York: Oxford UP, 2013. Print.