General Sir Arthur William Currie, GCMG, KCB (5 December 1875 – 30 November 1933) was a senior officer of the Canadian Army who fought during World War I.

Currie began his military career in 1897 as a part-time soldier in the Canadian militia while making his living as a teacher and later as an insurance salesman and real estate speculator.

[3] Currie was educated in local common schools and at the Strathroy District Collegiate Institute, where he proved to be a good student especially interested in literature.

He had plans to pursue a professional career in law or medicine; however, the death of his father when Arthur was fifteen made this impossible due to his limited financial means.

[3] Currie instead pursued teacher training, but he was unable to secure a job and returned to high school to complete an honours certificate in order to gain university entrance.

[3] In May 1894, mere months before his final exams, Currie quarrelled with one of his teachers, and subsequently left high school to seek his fortune in British Columbia,[3] hoping to take advantage of the financial boom resulting from the construction of the transcontinental railway.

[10] He attended every available course offered by the British Army Contingent at Work Point Barracks in Esquimalt, often ordered military text books from London and was found on the shooting range every Saturday.

He also served two years as president of the Young Men's Liberal Association of Victoria, and several times was suggested as a candidate for the provincial legislature.

[7] In August, Currie's five-year term as commander of the 5th Regiment came to a close and he faced a forced retirement from the Canadian Militia at the age of 38.

Following the Canadian federal election of 1911, Minister of Militia and Defence Sam Hughes had ordered a rapid expansion of the national force.

[15] Currie initially turned down the idea, likely recognizing that the cost of the new Highland uniforms and mess bills would only add to his financial problems.

[17] Currie attended the Militia Staff Course conducted by Major Louis Lipsett, future commander of the 3rd Canadian Division, and qualified in March 1914.

When the 50th Regiment's acting commanding officer, Major Cecil Roberts, wrote to him inquiring as to the status of the uniform grant, Currie ignored the correspondence and sailed overseas with his brigade in October 1914.

[25] In the chaos that followed, Currie proved his worth as a leader by assessing the situation, and coolly issuing commands from his brigade headquarters even as it was gassed and then destroyed by fire.

Although the Canadians did not take part in the infamous Anglo-French offensive on the Somme on 1 July 1916, they did eventually move into the line in the fall to aid the slow crawl forward.

Currie proved himself to be the master of the set-piece assault, designed to take limited objectives and then hold on in the face of inevitable German counterattacks.

[35] Currie summarized the primary factors behind successful French offensive operations as: careful staff work, thorough artillery preparation and support, the element of surprise, and a high state of training in the infantry units detailed for the assault.

[37] To permit the troops time to consolidate the third line, the advance halted and the barrage remained stationary for ninety minutes while machine guns were brought forward.

[44] After examining the area, Currie instead proposed to take the high ground outside the city, marked on allied maps as Hill 70,[45] hold the feature in the expectation of a German counterattack, and inflict casualties by preparing a zone of concentrated artillery and machine gun fire.

[48] Rather than one mass assault, Currie designed a series of well-prepared, sharp attacks that allowed the Corps to take an objective and then hold it against the inevitable German counterattacks.

By 30 October, the Canadians, aided by two British divisions, gained the outskirts of the village in a driving rainstorm, and then held on for five days against intense shelling and counter-attacks, often standing waist deep in mud as they fought.

[52] On 21 March 1918 the Germans launched a major Spring Offensive hoping to force an armistice on their terms, but by the summer their forward momentum had been contained and the Allies prepared to counterattack.

[54][failed verification] Historian Denis Winter called the seizure of the Drocourt–Quéant line by the Canadian Corps the "greatest single achievement" of the British Expeditionary Force during the entire war, and praised Currie for his ability to bring an "unprecedented" concentration of artillery and machine gun fire together with flexible infantry sections that were adjusted for the situation.

Currie took three weeks to prepare perhaps his most audacious plan: he suggested the entire corps cross the drier section of the canal on a front of only 2,700 yards (2,500 m).

A front-page editorial published on 13 June 1927 by the Hughes-friendly Port Hope Evening Guide argued that Currie was either negligent or deliberate in wasting the lives of soldiers under his command in taking Mons on the final day of the war.

[76] At the end of the trial, the jury returned a verdict after four hours, finding the newspaper guilty of libel but awarding Currie only $500 ($8,600 today) in damages, plus costs.

[83] Those attending the funeral included Lord Bessborough, at the time the Governor General of Canada, important Canadian politicians, foreign diplomats and representatives of McGill University.

Lucy was left in some financial difficulty following her husband's death when McGill decided it could not afford to continue paying her a portion of his salary.

[100] Robert A. Heinlein, in his science fiction novel Starship Troopers, named one of the basic training facilities "Camp Arthur Currie".

"[103] Currie's leadership of the Canadian Corps was described in an article in Maclean's: "No flashing genius, but a capable administrator, cool headed and even tempered and sound of judgment.