Arthur Currie's Analysis

Arthur Currie was one of the greatest generals in Canada. He led Canada to win Vimy Ridge and he was known for his training, strategies and for telling his soldiers the goal of what they were doing. Arthur Currie trained his soldiers in variety of ways, which lead to his greatness. Currie was in fact devoted to his men. Determined to keep casualties low, he challenged impractical orders from the high command, ensured every attack was meticulously prepared by putting them through rigorous training (Unlikely General, 2001). Currie wrote an analysis of his strategies in battle, which became required study for members of the Canadian Corps. Currie emphasized controlling not only the enemy’s front trench, but also the enemy’s approaches to it from

The battle was deadly for thousands of French and British troops. Currie confirmed that his supply and ammunition lines were laid down before he entered the fight. His infantry was divided into exact units, each of which had a main objective. As a result, his battalion acquired the ridge, which was a key moment both in the war and in Canadian history, as other nations took notice of the contributions of Canadian troops to the Allied effort. For this, Currie was promoted to lieutenant-general in charge of the Canadian Corps. At forty-one, he was the youngest officer ever to grasp such a rank. The other Allied nations had already lost thousands of men in a sea of blood and mud at the Battle of Passchendaele. Currie was then called in to do what other Allied generals had not been able to, and although he objected and predicted that too many Canadian men would be lost in battle, he eventually agreed. He applied his usual strategies to the situation and once again relied on his engineers to build roads, drain ditches, and even build a railway, all while being fired upon by the Germans. His men attacked the Germans on

It involved artillery fire moving forward in stages just ahead of the advancing infantry. To work, the strategy required precise timing by both the heavy artillery and the infantry. Failure to do this would result in the artillery killing their own soldiers (Simkin, 2014). Arthur Currie taught his soldiers the creeping barrage and he made them practice the technique many times to perfect it so they could use it at Vimy Ridge. The creeping artillery barrage began to move steadily toward the Germans. Behind it advanced 20,000 soldiers of the first attacking wave of the four Canadian divisions, a score of battalions in line abreast, leading the assault in a driving north-west wind that swept the mangled countryside with sleet and snow. Guided by paint-marked stakes, the leading infantry companies crossed the devastation of No Man 's Land, picking their way through shell-holes and shattered trenches (Vimy Ridge, 2014). Within thirty minutes the Canadian 1st Division, under Arthur Currie, had succeeded in capturing German front line positions by using the creeping barrage in spite of a snowstorm (Duffy, 2009). Each soldier carried at least 32 kilograms of equipment, plus, a similar weight of the all-pervasive mud on uniform and equipment. This burden made climbing in and out of the numerous trenches and craters particularly difficult. Overcoming this resistance, three of the