In the wake of Remembrance Day, I've been thinking about Canada's military greats.
Make a mental list of all the stereotypical attributes of an Edwardian war hero.
You're thinking of an officer with a strong jaw, broad shoulders, gimlet eyes.
Now think of the exact opposite. We're thinking of a man who is basically pear shaped: running to fat, a couple of chins, the sad eyes of a spaniel.
Put him into a military uniform that fits him about as comfortably as a suit of steel wool.
You are now picturing Sir Arthur Currie: social climber, embezzler, failed real estate promoter and probably Canada's greatest general.
He was born Arthur Curry in Ontario in 1875. He changed his name to the posher Currie and moved west to teach school in B.C. in the 1890s.
Around the same time, he joined the local militia.
Don't get the idea that this was a crack military unit. These were men for whom serving was as much about networking and social status as it was about defense. It was like Rotary or the chamber of commerce, but with guns.
Currie worked his way up and was offered a commission. This meant paying for your own tailored uniforms, so a teacher's salary wouldn't cut it. He got into insurance, and later real estate.
Boy, was that a bad idea. In 1913, the Victoria real estate market, so glittering and golden, melted into a pile of worthless dross.
Currie was facing bankruptcy. But wait! He was now a commanding colonel of a militia regiment!
He could borrow some cash from the uniform fund to cover his personal debts, then repay it when a private donor topped up the regiment's budget!
Except the donor never came through. War saved him.
Off he went to Europe in 1914 as a brigadier-general. There, he commanded raw, untested Canadians as they faced poison gas, machine guns, constant shelling, and stupidity.
The typical doctrine of the time was simple: charge the guns!
Currie, as an outsider, did not understand or appreciate the wisdom of this tactic. He thought that perhaps some of the soldiers sent out of the trenches ought to, perhaps, survive the experience.
Currie never developed a single innovative tactic. But he learned from everyone who did.
He put all those good ideas together, he prepared and planned like a madman. He had started as an enlisted man. In his forces the enlisted men would know what the hell they were supposed to be doing, not just the officers.
You could kill every rank from major down to sergeant, and the corporals would know enough to find their objectives.
He also had no lack of personal courage, staying on to deliver commands during Ypres while his HQ was gassed and burned.
Currie hated wasting lives. He tried to refuse to attack at Passchendaele, but was overruled. He won, where others lost. He was promoted, he took on larger responsibilities.
He was instrumental at Vimy Ridge. He commanded the Canadian Corps in the last 100 days of the war, punching through the Germans again and again.
Somewhere in there, his wealthy officer friends quietly paid off those inconvenient "debts."
He would spend much of the last half of his life, to his great distress, defending himself against accusations that he had wasted lives on the battlefields of France.
In one of his last public appearances, he was in tears as he read a letter from the father of the last Canadian killed in the war.
He was the unlikeliest, and possibly greatest, general of the Great War.
Matthew Claxton writes for the Langley Advance.
Visit his blog, Evolving Langley, at http: //tiny.cc/ A0D3W.
