In 1892, when Garnet was 12, his father was elected to the House of Commons; by 1911, Sam Hughes had risen to the post of Minister of Militia in the government of Sir Robert Borden.

[3] With the outbreak of war in 1914, Hughes's father offered to make Currie the commanding officer of the 2nd Brigade in the 1st Division of the Canadian Expeditionary Force.

Only five days later, on Hughes' 35th birthday, the Germans used poison gas for the first time on the Western Front, sending clouds of chlorine wafting over the Allied trenches.

In the chaos that followed, both Turner and Hughes panicked and sent erroneous messages back to divisional headquarters that their line had been broken and was in full retreat, when in fact the 3rd Brigade had not even been attacked yet.

The lack of reconnaissance proved to be deadly; in breaking through a fence while still several hundred metres from their objective, the Canadians were detected, and enfilading machine gun fire caused 75 percent casualties before the soldiers reached the Wood and drove the Germans out.

With no reinforcements being sent forward, the Canadians could not hold their position and the survivors were forced to retreat the next day in the face of determined German counterattacks.

Hughes was promoted to the temporary rank of brigadier general in November 1915 and succeeded Malcolm Mercer as commander of the 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade.

With the resignation from the Canadian cabinet of his father and champion, Hughes was assigned to an obscure, non-combatant administrative post in command of the defences of London,[3] then in 1917, was appointed as Managing Director of the British Cellulose and Chemical Manufacturing Co in England,[9] a position he held until 1920.