Well Ross, it's at least partly because of the kind of mythologizing that's going on relative to 'story' of the great 'Canadian' victory and "war-changing" battle of Vimy Ridge.
The washer is stuck on spin cycle and the 6 Canadians who lost their lives in Afghanistan are today largely forgotten.
Just plain nuts. Someone ought to do a little research into the situation at the end of the war when General Currie's orders may well have created the situation whereby the last soldier to be killed on the western front was a Canadian. If I'm not mistaken Currie was later involved in a court case about the circumstances surrounding the hours before the 11th hour of the 11th month of the 11th day.
Don't hear much about that, or the fact that Currie himself had left quite a scandal behind in Victoria over some trust funds used for inappropriate purposes and not repaid.
"I think its great" said Pvt. Lowbrow Tirebiter "Ever since we've been given the chance to come over here and kill people or die trying, morale among jingoistic, wear-red-on-Fridays moron has skyrocketed"
I don't think the soldier quoted is representative of the majority of Canadian soldiers. Most of the grunts in Afghanistan are probably glad to see the armor being sent as it may make their job a little easier and a little safer, but I suspect most of them aren't as tickled with the notion of having to go into combat as this Pvt. Gung Ho.
They've trained for it, just as cops train to use deadly force, but as with cops, I suspect most of them are not exactly itching to go out and shoot people. Aside from a few cement headed pschyos, most of the soldiers I've met are not bloodthirsty morons.
G,
The rotund Arthur Currie may have been one of the unlikeliest-looking but he was also one of Canada's best generals who, yes, had a spot of bother in his private life before he went overseas.
I always liked Bernard Montgomery's WWII summation of the Canadian army: "Magnificent soldiers, terrible generals." But Currie in WWI wasn't terrible by any stretch.
It would've been easy to screw up that complex plan for the battle of Vimy Ridge but he didn't. Him, with a background in real estate! What's more, he had the wit to let a brilliant young officer named Andrew McNaughton (later chairman of Canada's National Research Council, co-inventor of radar) do the gun-laying calculations for their "creeping barrage" -- the deadly shield -- which alone permitted the soldiers to step out into the open and walk uphill toward the enemy. It could've been a whole lot different. McNaughton became a general, often called the Father of the Canadian Army. I happen to know this because of the Dieppe Raid which, imo, broke his spirit. I admire him for that, much as I admire General Dallaire for his actions in Rwanda.
But I can't remember a Currie incident before 11/11/11 ... what was that about?
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Mary,
There was a lot of criticism, much of it from a certain former minister of war and promoter of the Ross rifle (Sam Hughes - now he was an idiot) and his son (Garnett I think his name was), among others, about what happened during the last 24 hours before the Armistice. The accusation was that while all the other armies pushing the Germans back toward their own homeland had eased up on the accelerator to avoid having any more soldiers killed at the last minute in a cause that was already a fait accompli, Currie was still pushing even harder toward Mons.
The accusation was that he wanted it to be the Canadian Corps that was still in full court press at the moment the final whistle blew. And, in fact, it was a Canadian who was the last soldier on the Western front to die that morning, Pte George Price.
Eventually there was a libel trial over an editorial published in the Port Hope Evening Guide in June of 1927 and Currie won...a money award of $500.
That's the bare bones of the story. No question the feats of arms by the Canadian Corps in the last 100 days of the war were something of which every Canadian had a right, then and now, to be proud. About Vimy - especially given what happened through the summer and fall at Passchendaele (16,000 Canadian dead) - I'm not so sure.
I think it just happened to be the event that subsequent writers and propagandists fixed upon as the leitmotif of 'Canadian' feats of arms and esprit de corps. I think they'd have been much better to concentrate on the last 100 days. I think Currie was a bit of a hero but I’d have been a lot happier if he (and Borden) had put their foot down about the Canadians’ role at Passchendaele and kept us out of that charnel house (even though it was eventually chalked up as a Canuck victory), and, I think there were Canadian solders shot for malingering by the British Command all through the war – even the Australians had enough sense to put a stop to that.
Good point(s), G. Now I remember. I was thinking you meant another incident like the money-matter which, if I remember THIS correctly, Currie put right when it was brought to his attention.
I liked it that when Currie got home, he risked everything to sue that newspaper for libel, eh?
I think they fixed upon the Vimy Ridge story because of its firstness: first time all 4 Cdn Divisions fought together; first time they had their own Cdn commander; first time for the "creeping barrage" which I think was McNaughton's invention. Whatever else its significance, Canada alone among the Commonwealth nations joined the big guys in signing the Armistice documents.
In these troubled times in our new millenium, you have to wonder what those old soldiers would be thinking of high-ranking official treachery which passes for leadership these days. Like TILMA, for example. Or the N.A.U. Wouldn't they see these as acts of unbelievable treachery?
But then there was Dieppe (1942) where Canadians were flung into an absolutely impossible raid, for what? For display ... a live demonstration for the antsy U.S. general named Eisenhower who was sent to Churchill and Mountbatten to push for an immediate invasion of Europe. Churchill knew it couldn't be done but the U.S. wouldn't listen; and so, the bloodier the Dieppe Raid, the more convincing Churchill's argument. In fact, it was 2 more years before the Allied invasion of Europe ... and after Dieppe, Eisenhower and the U.S. stopped arguing the timing, and massive preparations were made.
So Churchill/Mountbatten's plan worked. But this was imo a betrayal of Canada of a high order at a terrible cost (960 Canadians killed, in one morning). This is really what is meant when the mantra is repeated that "Dieppe saved lives when Europe was invaded." Only if you're a born butcher. But you can argue whether survival demanded that sacrifice, at that time.
But (still thinking of the foot-soldiers, slogging through the mud) even this ghastly business at Dieppe seems to be of a higher, cleaner order above the alleged image of a Minister of the Crown and the C.E.O.of a foreign corporation comfortably discussing how best to betray an unsuspecting Canadian population for the benefit of ... the foreign corporation.
I like what Peter Mansbridge or was it Jack Granatstein said at Vimy this morning: that Canada is the only country in the world that has never fought an aggressive war against another country but has fought to aid its friends. And that the Vimy memorial is about mourning the loss and the cost of doing that.
The human costs attached to Vimy, to Dieppe, to TILMA, and for some reason, a cascading litany of SPPs and NAFTAs and betrayals and suffering and new kinds of surreptitious, economic warfare. Ya hardly know where to begin the mourning.
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I think Currie's problems with his trust accounts got put right by some friends from the legal community in Vancouver if memory serves.
He always reminds me of Ulysses S Grant.
A wonderful general but a klutz at business and pretty much everything else. I think continuing the drive into Mons on the morning of November the 11th was pretty dumb, whoever was responsible.
I also read somewhere that Currie was being considered as a replacement for Haig if the war had continued into 1919. Did you run across that in your reading ever?
If I remember correctly he was rewarded by being appointed Principle of McGill University and died soon after, quite young in fact.
rev--
Of course you are right.
But what is most disturbing is that these are the quotes, and this is angle, that the NatPost has chosen to push.
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GW and Mary--
Thanks for both the enlightened discussion and the history lesson.
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BC Mary & G West -
The U.S. military has long had a name for the stay-at-home leaders: REMFs.
Rear
Eschelon
Mother
...I'm sure you can fill in the rest!
Gaz -
I like that the tanks are keeping them safer, but that's about it. If ol' PM Plastic Man would stop blowing Bubble Boy down south and remember what we actually WANT our military to be doing, that would be nice, too: but big, manly Bush makes him so weak in the knees that a blow job's a natural result.
Side note: apparently, the APV that my cousin was blown out the top of in Afghanistan is on display at the museum in Ottawa now! Weird feeling, that.
Thursday: There were no "stay-at-home-leaders" in our discussion. Who did you mean?
G. I think you're correct about Arthur Currie being considered as a replacement for General Haig. But I couldn't remember how Currie spent his post-war years so dropped in at Wikipedia. They had lots to say, first about why Currie pushed on during that 100 days (it was Haig who ordered the attack):
... Currie and the Canadian Corps were successful again at Passchendaele (the Third Battle of Ypres) in November, but at the cost of 16,000 men. Currie had accurately predicted these high casualty figures when British General Douglas Haig ordered the troops to attack.
At the Battle of the Canal du Nord in September of 1918, Currie flatly refused to carry out Haig's orders to attack across a canal and into a fortified German trench. With the support of General Byng, Currie had bridges quickly assembled, and crossed the canal at night, surprising the Germans with an attack in the morning. This proved the effectiveness of Canadian engineers. Currie believed in the specialization of troops and formally organised battalions of combat engineers to move with the troops.
As the war neared its end, the Canadian Corps pressed on towards Germany, strengthening their reputation as one of the most feared and respected military formations of the war during Canada's Hundred Days, which included the Battle of Amiens from August 8–August 11, 1918. George Lawrence Price, the last Canadian to die and likely the third last allied soldier to die in the First World War was under Currie's command at Mons, and was killed by German sniper fire at 10:58am just before the 11:00am Armistice on November 11, 1918.
Currie was respected by his men as an extremely capable general, who closely followed the progress of battles onsite, and who would not waste their lives needlessly. Currie later faced intense criticism for wasting lives in the last days of the war because he had had forehand knowledge of the planned Armistice. This contradiction can be explained by the fact the Currie did not support the Armistice agreement. He believed that unless the Allied forces pushed onward and completely destroyed the German army then they would have to come back and fight again in 25 years.
Currie also refused to allow his former friend Garnet Hughes to serve under him, because of what Currie perceived to be incompetence he had witnessed when they fought together at Ypres in 1915. This also did not endear him to Garnet's father, who constantly lobbied for his son's promotion and leveled personal attacks against Currie.
Before the Battle of Vimy Ridge, Currie was almost court-martialed for misappropriating $10,000 from a regiment in which he served to pay off a personal debt. However Prime Minister Sir Robert Laird Borden did not wish to disgrace a war hero who had done so much for his country and let the matter drop.
In 1927 the Port Hope Evening Guide newspaper reported that Sam
Sorry ... the ending got chopped. Try again:
In 1927 the Port Hope Evening Guide newspaper reported that Sam Hughes had amazingly accused Currie of being just as much of a "butcher" as General Haig. Currie successfully sued the newspaper for libel in 1928, during a trial held in Cobourg, Ontario.
General Currie died soon after the 15th anniversary of the Armistice, on November 30, 1933. He is interred in the Mount Royal Cemetery in Montreal, Quebec. Canadian historians including Pierre Berton and J.L. Granatstein have frequently described Currie as Canada's greatest military commander.
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There's the script for a decent movie, don't you think?
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Absolutely (and/or a pretty darned fine comment thread)
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