Currie's Canadian Corps

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• published: 12 Nov 2009
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Sir Arthur William Currie GCMG, KCB (12/05/1875-11/30/1933), was a Canadian 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. Under his leadership, the Canadian Corps evolved from a single division of untested volunteer colonials into four divisions of battle-hardened and effective shock troops that spearheaded the final series of battles that ended the war. From their baptism of fire and gas during the Second Battle of Ypres until the end of the war, units under Currie never failed to take their assigned objectives, and often did so with startling rapidity and fewer than expected casualties. 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 Sir Douglas Haig. Haig sometimes sided 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, on occasion, overruled Currie, such as when Currie objected to the strategic value and expected casualties of the attack at Passchendaele. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George revealed to his biographer that had the war continued into 1919, he would have replaced General Douglas Haig with Arthur Currie, with Australian general John Monash as Currie's chief of staff. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Currie