Arthur Currie

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Arthur Currie (1917)

Sir Arthur William Currie GCMG , KCB (born December 5, 1875 in Napperton , Ontario , † November 30, 1933 in Montreal ) was a Canadian officer, most recently a general . He was the first Canadian to achieve this rank. Currie is best known as the Commanding General of the Canadian Corps in the First World War .

Life

Currie was born one of seven children to a wealthy farmer of Irish descent and a mother of Scottish descent. He trained at the Strathroy District Collegiate Institute and briefly attended the University of Toronto before moving to British Columbia in 1894 to teach. In May 1897, he joined the 5th Regiment, Canadian Garrison Artillery , as a gunner . Since his meager salary was insufficient to earn an officer's license, he went into the insurance business and became a manager of the National Life Assurance Company, later a real estate agent. In 1909, as a lieutenant colonel in the militia, he became the commander of his regiment. Despite financial difficulties as a result of a speculative bubble, Currie completed the Militia Staff Course in the 1910s and set up a new infantry regiment of the militia (50th Regiment Gordon Highlanders of Canada) .

At the beginning of World War I, Currie was selected by Secretary of Defense Sam Hughes to lead the Canadian Expeditionary Force's 2nd Infantry Brigade . His unit was shipped overseas in September 1914 and was at the front in France in the spring of 1915. Here she took part in the Second Battle of Flanders . Currie was named major general and commander of the 1st division when the Canadian Corps was formed in September 1915 for his outstanding achievements . This was used after longer periods of trench warfare in the later phases of the Battle of the Somme .

In April 1917, as part of the Canadian Corps under Julian Byng , Currie's division played a major role in storming the Heights of Vimy as part of the Battle of Arras . When Byng was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the British 3rd Army in June , Currie took over the leadership of the Canadian Corps from him with the temporary rank of Lieutenant General . His first independent operation in this position was the "Battle of Hill 70" in the Lens area in August 1917. In autumn 1917, his corps was deployed in the last phase of the Third Battle of Flanders in the attack on the strategically insignificant village of Passchendaele .

In these battles the Canadian Corps had acquired the reputation of a "shock corps" of the British Army and was therefore also used in this role in the Battle of Amiens in August 1918 after the end of the German offensives in 1918 . Once again, Currie's methodical planning paid off. During the following hundred-day offensive, the corps broke through the German Wotan employment between Drocourt and Quéant at the beginning of September , overcame the Canal du Nord at the end of the month , took part in the liberation of Cambrai and Valenciennes and, shortly before the armistice, liberated the Belgian Mons .

Statue Curries at the Valiants Memorial in Ottawa

Upon his return to Canada, Currie was promoted to General and Inspector General of the Canadian Armed Forces as the first Canadian officer. He received numerous British awards and those of the allied states. From 1920 until his death he was Principal and Vice Chancellor of McGill University and received honorary doctorates from various Canadian and American universities.

In 1928, Currie filed a lawsuit against the Port Hope newspaper Evening Guide for defamation. The newspaper had published an article about the alleged futility of the 1918 attack on Mons and Currie's role in it. Currie had been subjected to similar attacks shortly after the war by Sam Hughes, whose son Garnet Hughes had allegedly been reset by Currie during the war, in the Canadian Parliament. Hughes was protected by his parliamentary immunity . Currie won the lawsuit but received minimal compensation.

Arthur Currie had been a member of the Federation of Freemasons ( Vancouver and Quadra Lodge No. 2 District ) since 1898 , and in 1904 he was elected to the office of lodge master .

Currie died in 1933 at the age of only 57 and was buried in the Mont-Royal Cemetery.

Fonts

  • Mark Osborne Humphries (Ed.): The Selected Papers of Sir Arthur Currie: Diaries, Letters, and Report to the Ministry, 1917-1933. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008, ISBN 0-9783441-2-X .

literature

  • Daniel G. Dancocks: Sir Arthur Currie: A Biography. Methuen Publications, 1985, ISBN 0-458-99560-6 .
  • AMJ Hyatt: General Sir Arthur Currie: A Military Biography. (= Canadian War Museum historical publication No. 22 ), University of Toronto Press, 1987, ISBN 0-8020-2603-6 .

Web links

Commons : Arthur Currie  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Arthur Currie (1875-1933) on the pages of McGill University.
  2. ↑ See Robert J. Sharpe: The Last Day, the Last Hour: The Currie Libel Trial. University of Toronto Press, 2009, ISBN 0-8020-9619-0 .
  3. ↑ Arthur Currie Freemason on the Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon website , accessed May 25, 2014.
personal data
SURNAME Currie, Arthur
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Currie, Arthur William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian general
DATE OF BIRTH December 5, 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH Napperton , Ontario
DATE OF DEATH November 30, 1933
Place of death Montreal