Currie takes command of the Canadian Corps

On 9 June 1917 General Arthur Currie officially took command of the Canadian Corps. That day his promotion to lieutenant-general took effect, and the previous corps commander, the Briton Julian Byng, moved to command the British Third Army. Byng had commanded the Canadians since May 1916 and had prepared them for the capture of Vimy Ridge. Currie was the first Canadian to lead the whole corps. The British chronology of the war gives 19 June as the date of his appointment, but according to the Canadian official history he had been in command of the corps since 9 June.

Change of command

At the beginning of June General Edmund Allenby, commander of the Third Army at Arras, was appointed to command the British forces in Egypt, and Byng was to take over his army. On the afternoon of 6 June Currie, commander of the 1st Canadian Division, was summoned to corps headquarters and ordered to take command. That same day the commander-in-chief, Douglas Haig, informed the War Office that Currie was taking over the Canadian Corps. His 1st Division was taken over by General Archibald Macdonell.

Haig, however, had not consulted the Canadians. In London the Canadian Minister of Overseas Military Forces, Sir George Perley, was indignant. On 9 June itself, when he learned unofficially of the vacancy, he cabled Prime Minister Robert Borden that he would insist on the appointment of a Canadian. There were two candidates: Currie and General Richard Turner, who commanded the Canadian forces in Britain and had already in 1916 reserved his right to be considered for command of the corps. Perley advised giving the corps to Currie, leaving Turner in his post in England and promoting both, so that Turner would not lose seniority.

The matter was settled over the following days. Borden, busy with the conscription bill, which he introduced in parliament on 11 June, replied on 13 June that Perley should decide himself, guided by the advice of the command. By 15 June Perley was reporting that the British would recommend Currie and that he had reached “a very pleasant understanding” with Currie and Turner. Both generals were promoted with effect from 9 June. Borden used the appointment in the conscription dispute: he asked Currie, in replying to congratulations, to stress that the corps needed reinforcements. Currie declared that it was an “urgent necessity” to provide at once from Canada enough officers and men to keep the corps at full strength.

Who Currie was

Currie was born on 5 December 1875 on a farm in Ontario, near Strathroy. He was not a professional soldier. In British Columbia he was a schoolteacher, and later, in Victoria, an insurance agent and real estate broker. In 1897 he joined the militia as a private gunner and rose through all its ranks to the command of a regiment. In 1914 he was given the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Canadian Division, which he commanded at the Second Battle of Ypres, and in September 1915 the whole 1st Division. At Vimy his division attacked on the right wing of the corps. On 4 June 1917, in the King’s Birthday Honours, Currie was made a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George, which entitled him to the style “Sir”.

The new commander also had an embarrassing secret. Before the war he had run into debt through land speculation, and in 1914 he used more than 10,000 dollars he had received from the government for uniforms for his militia regiment to pay it off. The Canadian historians Robert Craig Brown and Desmond Morton described how, just as he was taking over the corps, word reached him that the government in Ottawa knew about the matter. To prevent a scandal, Currie soon repaid the debt with money borrowed from two subordinate generals.

Significance

The Canadian Corps, made up of four divisions, had until then been commanded by British generals: from September 1915 by Edwin Alderson and from May 1916 by Byng. The corps staff was still largely British, but from then on Currie upheld the principle that the Canadian divisions should fight together under his command. As early as July he was given his first independent task: the attack at Lens, which in August led to the Battle of Hill 70.