Arthur Currie

Who was Arthur Currie?

Sir Arthur William Currie GCMG, KCB, was a Canadian Knight and general during World War I. He had the unique distinction of starting his military career on the very bottom rung as a pre-war militia gunner before rising through the ranks to become the first Canadian commander of the four divisions of the unified Canadian Corps of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. He was the first Canadian to attain the rank of full general. Currie's success was based on his ability to rapidly adapt brigade tactics to the exigencies of trench warfare, using "set piece" operations and "bite-and-hold" tactics. He is generally considered to be among the most capable commanders of the Western Front, and one of the finest commanders in Canadian military history.

Currie was not afraid to voice his disagreement with orders or to suggest strategic changes to a plan of attack, something that his British Army superiors were unused to hearing from a former militia officer from the colonies. Often these disagreements were taken all the way up to BEF Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig. Haig sometimes agreed with Currie—allowing a strategic change to the attack on Hill 70 outside Lens, and approving Currie's audacious plan to cross the Canal du Nord—but he also insisted on the Passchendaele attack, to which Currie, who was sceptical that the strategic value justified the expected casualties, agreed with great reluctance. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George claimed to his biographer that had the war continued into 1919, he would have sought to replace Field Marshal Haig with Arthur Currie, with Australian general John Monash as Currie's chief of staff.