By Joe Corrigan
General Sir Arthur Currie ended the First World War as the
Commander in Chief of the Canadian Corps. He was the first native born Canadian
to attain the rank of full General and is widely considered to be one of the
ablest commanders on the Western Front. Currie’s set piece operations and “bite
and hold” tactics turned the Canadian Corps into one of the Allies most
effective fighting units. Yet, for all his accomplishments, he was haunted
throughout the war by a huge skeleton in his closet.
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| General Sir Arthur Currie |
He was born Arthur William Curry in Napperton, Ontario, not
far from Strathroy, on December 5, 1875 to William Curry and Jane Patterson. He
briefly attended the University of Toronto before moving to Victoria, British
Columbia in 1894. Subsequent to arriving out west he took up teaching at public
schools in Sidney and Victoria. It was around this time that the socially
conscious young man changed his name to the more “anglicized” Currie (Currie’s
father had also changed his name to Curry from his father’s surname “Corrigan”). In May of 1897,
Currie joined the 5th Regiment Canadian Garrison Artillery (C.G.A.) as
a gunner. By the turn of the century he had risen to the rank of corporal and
was offered an officer’s commission, a step up in social status but also an
expensive proposition for one earning a teacher’s salary. Militia officers of
the day had to provide their own tailored uniforms and donate their pay to the
officers’ mess. To help maintain his newly acquired lifestyle, Currie left
teaching for the world of finance eventually becoming provincial manager for
the National Life Assurance Company. He was a dedicated and serious militia
officer and was promoted to captain in 1902 and then to major in 1906. Around
this time there was a land speculation boom in Victoria. Currie partnered with
another businessman and formed a company that invested heavily in real estate. He
continued to progress in his military career being promoted to Lieutenant
Colonel and given command of the 5th Regiment C.G.A. in September of
1909.
In 1913, while Currie was engaged in forming a new militia
regiment, one that would eventually become the Gordon Highlanders of Canada,
the real estate bubble burst. He was left holding worthless properties and
facing financial ruin as well as a possible dishonourable discharge from the
military. Showing a lack of sound judgement that would later be the hallmark of
his service on the western front, Currie diverted over $10,000 in government
funds that were intended to purchase uniforms for the regiment into his
personal accounts to cover his debts. He did this with the understanding that
the regiment’s honourary colonel would be underwriting the regiment’s expenses
to the tune of $35,000. Unfortunately for Currie, those promised funds never
materialized and his financial transgressions were left seriously exposed.
They say “it’s not what you know but who you know” that’s
the key to success and, in Arthur Currie’s case, that “who” was Garnet Hughes,
son of Canada’s Minister of Militia, Sir Sam Hughes and Currie’s third in
command with the “Gay Gordons”. Sir Sam gave plum commands to his friends and
Currie was offered command of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) 1st Division’s 2nd Brigade in the fall of 1914. Although Currie
initially considered turning down the appointment to concentrate on solving his
financial problems, the younger Hughes managed to convince him to change his
mind. It was thus, under a cloud of potential scandal, that Currie proceeded
overseas and experienced his baptism of fire with the rest of the 1st Division at the 2nd Battle of Ypres beginning on April 22nd,
1915.
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| 48th Highlanders |
As mentioned in a previous blog in this series, 2nd Ypres was the first major battle the Canadians were involved in and they suffered heavy
casualties. The aftermath of that battle was described in the Official
History of the Canadian army in the First World War as follows:
“When the Canadian Division came out of the trenches that April (25th)
day it had almost ceased to exist. Many battalions marched out at only
one-fifth or one-sixth of their original strength. One or two battalions could
barely muster 100 men. The Canadians had been victorious in death. They had
saved the day at one of the critical points of the war. And what makes that
achievement the more remarkable is the fact that, compared with the regular
troops of the European armies, they were, for the most part, untrained and
amateur soldiers.”
The Canadians were moved to rest billets until the middle of
May while reinforcements were brought up from England. Once the division had
been revived and reorganized, “the no longer naïve Canadian First
Contingent, exhausted, suffering from shell shock or the effects of gas
poisoning, marched south from Ypres to Festubert, in the Artois region of
France”. Ypres had been a defensive battle. At Festubert, Currie and
the Canadian troops were introduced to allied offensive tactics as they existed
in 1915. The British favoured a short lived “hurricane” bombardment followed by
an infantry assault with unlimited objectives. This strategy evolved due to the
fact that the British army was dealing with a severe shortage of cannon shells
at this point in the war. The French practice was to engage in slow and
deliberate artillery fire to prepare the way for an infantry attack. All too
often, allied attacks met with failure and resulted in heavy casualties.
Artillery barrages were largely ineffective in clearing the barbed wire
obstacles that held up the infantry advances. Once the shelling stopped, the
German troops had plenty of time to come out of their bunkers, set up their
machine guns and mow down the allied troops by the hundreds.
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| Festubert Landscape |
Arthur Currie’s 2nd Brigade and Brigadier Richard
Turner’s 3rd Brigade took part in the battle of Festubert along with
British and Indian troops. Turner’s Brigade’s target was a small orchard near
the town of Festubert while Currie’s troops were charged with taking a series
of trenches known only as “K5”. The Canadian assaults were hampered by a lack
of time to prepare, inaccurate maps, insufficient artillery support as well as
having to have the Ross rifle as their principle weapon. This rifle had
demonstrated its flaws in the furious fighting at 2nd Ypres. The
decision to equip the CEF with the Canadian built Ross rifle was made by Sir
Sam Hughes. The Ross was an excellent hunting rifle. My grandfather, Denis
Corrigan, a Belleville Ontario policeman during the war, won one in a
marksmanship competition (apparently early 20th century Canadian society
was more accepting of a Canadian of Irish decent as a policeman than they were
of one serving as a general). Unfortunately, in the heat of battle, the Ross
would overheat and jam leaving its owner without an effective firearm. Canadian
troops began picking up the superb Lee Enfield rifle from fallen British troops
at every opportunity. The Lee Enfield, in the hands of a trained soldier, could
fire as many as 15 rounds a minute. Early in the war, German troops
encountering a squad of British soldiers armed with the Lee Enfield found their
collective rate of fire almost equivalent to that of a machine gun.
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| Lee Enfield Rifle |
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| Ross Rifle |
When the fighting began, the Germans had the advantage of
terrain and firepower and could also observe the allied troops preparations.
The frontal assaults staged by the Canadians over several days met with only
small gains at the cost of close to 2,500 casualties. Our troops had been in
combat slightly more than a month and had already suffered 8,500 casualties.
This “war of attrition” and the lack of effective allied tactics had quite an
impact on Currie. As a career militia soldier who had risen through the ranks,
the fact that soldiers’ lives could be thrown away so recklessly was
unacceptable. No doubt his experiences in the battle of Festubert had a
profound effect on the tactics he developed and employed over the next three
years. The victory at Vimy Ridge in April of 1917 which saw the successful use
of the creeping barrage and counter battery artillery fire was no doubt the
result of the lessons General Sir Arthur Currie learned at Festubert in May of
1915.
Joe Corrigan has been Museum Manager at Lang Pioneer Village since February of 2003. He has been a lifelong student of history. His specific areas of interest are Canadian and world political, military and sports history with a particular focus on biographical works. Joe has been interpreting Sir John A. Macdonald at the Museum's Historic Dominion Day event since 2007.
