Vincent J. Curtis
8 Oct 2019
At Vimy, Currie’s lessons were first
applied, much to the surprise of the Germans.
As a result of the new technology of sound-ranging and with the aid of
aerial photography, the Canadian Corps located the main positions of the German
artillery. When the assault went in,
Canadian artillery suppressed, when it didn’t destroy, German defensive
fires. Canadian troops had been training
for months practicing the assault on ground behind the lines. Every man knew the job of every other
man. The task-organized platoons were
winning in detail against the usual German defensive measures. The 1st Canadian Division,
commanded by Currie and which had the farthest to go, reached its final
objective noon the next day. The 4th
Division conquered “The Pimple” on April 12th, closing the battle
for Vimy Ridge and providing the only flash of light for the Allies in the
spring of 1917. The Canadian amateurs
out-did the German, British and French regulars.
Byng was promoted to command the 3rd
British Army, and Currie was promoted to Lieutenant General and commander of
the Canadian Corps. Now we see on a
larger stage the tactical eye that Currie had developed.
Currie was ordered to take the town of Lens
by assault. Currie proposed he attack a
hill to the north of the town instead; it was less well defended and possession
of the hill would make the German possession of the town untenable. Thus the battle of Hill 70 was fought. Having taken the hill, Currie placed
artillery and heavy machine guns on it in a manner that interdicted the routes
of German counterattacks. Running the
kill zone cost the Germans heavily; Currie was left in possession of Hill 70,
and then of the town of Lens. The battle
cost the Germans 20,000 casualties and the Canadians 9,000.
In preparation for his attack on
Passchendaele, Currie ordered the construction of roads as well as a massing of
artillery and heavy machine guns. In his
mind’s eye he could see the battle unfold
Currie objected to Passchendaele, saying it would cost him 16,000 casualties,
and in the end it cost 15,500!
Currie demonstrated superior talent
throughout the Hundred Day campaign. At
Amiens, after making a head -fake north, the Corps moved rapidly south,
detrained, and quickly attacked without artillery preparation. The result was the “black day for the German
Army.” In September, 1918, the Corps
tore a 7,000 yard hole in the German line at Drocourt-Quèant, said to be the
“greatest single achievement by the British Expeditionary Force in the whole
war.” Currie then squeezed the Corps
through a 2,700 yard hole at Canal du Nord to break the Hindenburg Line,
confusing the Germans with a sequence of zig-zag attacks reminiscent of
maneuver warfare tactics.
After Valenciennes, pursuing to Mons,
Currie employed an embryonic form of blitzkrieg, mixing infantry and tanks
assaulting on the ground, supported by artillery and tactical air power. The capture of Mons culminated the campaign on
the day of the Armistice.
In early 1919, Currie was promoted to
General and appointed Inspector General of the Armed Forces. Deep cutbacks in military spending and the
bureaucratic deep state in the Ottawa establishment thwarted Currie’s plans to
reform the military, and he retired from the army in 1920 at the age of 44 with
23 years’ service.
Currie was not a man of military
science. He took his courses and was an enthusiastic
student. No doubt he liked the subject
matter. He had a mind’s eye for tactics,
and the coolness and courage to be able to use it. He had time and opportunities to develop his
war knowledge through experience - in this war on this front. Being only a high school graduate did not
hinder him, given his talent and the opportunity to gain experience. Though not personally inspiring and cool
towards his troops, he worked amiably and participatively with subordinates who
had themselves proven their worth.
Because Currie had time to gain experience,
he was able to develop his talent.
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Vincent J. Curtis
30 Dec 2019
Canada’s new Minister of Climate Change,
Jonathan Wilkinson, recently claimed that Canada was warming at twice the rate
as the rest of the world. His
predecessor, Catherine McKenna, said the same thing. They were conveying an opinion expressed in a
Ministerial document entitled, “Canada’s Changing Climate Report.”
There it is in Section 4.2, headed ‘Temperature:’
“It is virtually certain that Canada’s climate has warmed and that it will warm
further in the future. Both the observed
and projected increases in mean temperature in Canada are about twice the
corresponding increase in the global mean temperature regardless of emission
scenario.” It goes on, “It is likely
that half of the observed warming in Canada is due to the influence of human
activities.”
(Satellite measurements show no global
warming since 1998 – the “pause.”)
On that basis, Canadians are to be
guilt-tripped into accepting whatever climate change prescriptions the Trudeau
Liberals cook up.
Some people can be educated into
stupidity. Good evidence of this than
that no one has challenged the glaring flaws in the statements and in the
conclusion, that we have to take our medicine.
The obvious, yet unasked, questions about Canada’s
warming at twice the rate of the world mean are - why? How? Canada
shares its atmosphere with the rest of the world. There isn’t a twenty mile high wall around
Canada. There is no more carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere above Canada than anywhere else. If CO2 is the climate control knob the
climate alarmists say it is, then the cause of Canada’s warming at twice the
rate as world as a whole cannot be CO2.
Why does this other cause only operate in Canada?
It seems impossible that Canada’s projected
temperatures could long rise at twice the world rate. Wind blows Canadian air south across the
border, and winds carry American air north to Canada. Given wind patterns, how could a thermal
anomaly over Canada persist? And get
worse year after year?
Two other troubling statements are: ‘It is
virtually certain that…’ and ‘…regardless of emission scenario.’ If Canada is going to warm at twice the world’s
rate ‘regardless of emission scenario,’ then nothing Canada or the world does
concerning CO2 emission reduction is going to change the outcome. What, then, is the point of doing anything if
‘regardless of emission scenario’ Canada is screwed? And why two unrelated
causes act synchronously to produce double the world rate regardless of
emission scenario goes unexplained.
The remark, ‘It is virtually certain that…”
does not begin a scientific statement; it begins an opinion. Opinions have the property that they can be
right or wrong. Beginning an opinion
with the assertion, ‘it is virtually certain’ is intended to impart the
prejudice that the opinion is right.
Nevertheless, it’s guessing.
Then the report undermines its political
thrust, “It is likely that half the observed warming is due to the influence of
human activities.” Half? Only half?
Here again, guesses and opinion are offered in place of fact. If CO2 is the climate control knob, natural
variation accounts for the other half of the observed warming?
In fact, no research has been funded that
explores the question of the proportion of warming due to natural variation to
CO2 induced increase. Because it would
embarrass policy makers to admit that maybe other factors are at play in global
warming. We have nothing but blind
guesses.
That these statements from the Climate
Change Ministry go unchallenged in the media, in academia, and in political
circles is a condemnation of all three.
Progressivism loves the theme of evil western society, and students in
the soft disciplines like journalism and the “ studies” courses, beginning in
the 1970s, got indoctrinated in neo-Marxism all though school.. A whole generation doesn’t know any
better. Academia is bought – it needs
federal money to survive. And so we are
at the mercy of those who would destroy western economies, incrementally, for
the sake of the godless cause of “progress.”
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Vincent J. Curtis is a retired research
scientist and occasion free-lance writer.
Vincent J. Curtis
22 Dec 2019
The new Minister of Public Safety, Bill
Blair, thinks he can get Toronto’s criminal gunmen to give up their firearms
through an Order in Council. Blair will
announce soon an OIC that purports to ban guns.
A colour of law will be thrown over this Ministerial action by combining
it with a “buy-back” program. Depriving
law-abiding gun owners across Canada of their lawful property Blair thinks will
cause criminal gunmen in Toronto to give up their unlawful guns.
A decadent judiciary might let this
violation of rights pass without murmur.
Another occasion when an OIC purported to
ban privately owned arms was during the reign of King James II of England. James’s reign was short, lasting only from
1685 to 1688. James was a Catholic and a
Stuart. England was protestant and had
beheaded James’s father, Charles I, for political conduct characteristic of the
Stuarts.
James sought to impose what was known as
“popery” upon England, and the resistance to his measures caused James to
deprive his protestant subjects of the right to keep and bear arms. Ultimately, James fled England, and the
Glorious Revolution of 1688 brought William and Mary to the throne. William signed into law the Bill of Rights of
1689, which named and banned the worst excesses of James’s rule. Vindicating and asserting ancient rights and
liberties, the Bill included “that the subjects which are Protestant may have
arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law.”
The curious phrasing of the Second
Amendment to the United States Constitution (The Right of the People...shall not be infringed) led Supreme Court Justice Antonin
Scalia to research the origin of the Amendment. This research was published as
the majority opinion in the Heller case
of 2010. Scalia concluded that the right
to keep and bear arms pre-existed the Constitution, and was found already in
Common Law in America, inherited from England as a result of the Bill of Rights
of 1689.
Canada, like the United States, is an inheritor
of English Common Law, and, absent contrary scholarship, that right to keep and
bear arms according to law also exists in Canada. Scalia argued that the ‘according to law’
provision meant that the right is subject to regulation, but neither law nor regulation
can be used to extinguish that right.
King William III signed the Bill of Rights
without reluctance. He required no
loyalty tests of the nobility of England.
He was not afraid of an armed citizenry because he had no thought to
misrule his kingdom.
He also understood that the common law right to self-defence was meaningless if
a person were denied the means of
self-defence.
The issues of right raised by gun-control
were resolved in common law over three hundred and forty years ago. So long ago, in fact, that it required the
scholarship of the renowned Justice Scalia to rediscover them. How Canada’s judiciary reacts when these facts
are placed before it after the OIC is challenged in court will be an
interesting test of its intellectual decadence.
Blair’s predecessor as Minister of Public
Safety, Ralph Goodale, was defeated in the last election after serving twenty-six
years. He too threatened a gun
confiscation, and paid the price for it.
Apparently, Goodale’s political corpse taught Trudeau nothing.
The Firearms Act of 1995 was passed in
response to the murders at École
Polytechnique. The law created a new
regime of prohibiting, restricting, licensing, and registering that did nothing
except expose the ignorance of guns of the law-makers. The Act was supposed to be the last word on
gun control, and therefore registration of firearms by private citizens would
never be used for a general confiscation.
That would be a betrayal of the trust required to begin the registry.
We’ll soon see how trustworthy the Trudeau
Liberals are. Is the Trudeau government fearful
of an armed citizenry? Does it keep old
promises? Does Trudeau believe in a real
right of self-defence against criminals and tyranny? Is Trudeau a James II or a William III?
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Vincent J. Curtis is a retired research
scientist and an occasional free-lance writer.
Vincent J. Curtis
18 Dec 2019
Cutting
through the sunny nonsense, you reach the conclusion that Canadians were sold a
bill of goods in the 2015 election.
In 2015,
Justin (Sunny Ways) Trudeau promised three straight years of $10 billion
deficits followed by a return to balance in FY 2019. The purpose of the
deficits was to stimulate the economy. Well, the facts are in, and none
of those promises were kept.
The
deficits were all far in excess of $10 billion. This year’s, promised to
be zero but the year began with the deficit $14 billion, increased to 19 billion, and has in fact exploded to nearly
$27 billion – in an allegedly growing economy. Which brings us to the
second point of deception, the lack of growth.
After
peaking briefly in the summer of 2017 at an annualized rate of over three
percent, the actual rates of GDP growth has ranged near two percent, or
slightly below. Canada experienced negative GDP growth in October. These rates are no better than what they were under
Stephen Harper, who was fastidious about keeping the budget in balance.
So the theory of trading deficits for growth proved to be arrant nonsense, as
should have been obvious from the source the promise was coming from.
The
Liberals have lost control of spending, and now offer the chestnut of keeping
debt to GDP ratio constant. Nonsense. They are weakening Canada's financial position in return for nothing. Trust-fund babies like Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau himself, aren’t
trusted to handle their own money, and shouldn’t be trusted to handle Canada's.
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Vincent J. Curtis
8 Oct 2019
The question I hope to answer over the next
several columns is why Arthur Currie was a better general than Guy
Simonds. From his experience in the Boer
War, Sam Hughes believed that the Canadian amateur was a better soldier in
fighting war than the British professional.
Hughes’ evidence was the manifest success of the Boer commandos in
holding off the British for so long and worsting them in many encounters. Is the superiority of Currie over Simonds an
example of the superiority in war of the amateur over the British trained
professional, or, in the Canadian context, of the militia officer over the
Regular, as Hughes believed?
The explanation of why Currie was superior
can be found under the headings of training, experience, talent, personality,
and instrument. By instrument I mean
that the Canadian Corps of 1917-18 was a superior fighting instrument to the 2nd
Canadian Corps of June – August 1944. As
will be shown later, this too has to do with experience.
The philosopher Aristotle said that science
was knowledge of the general, while experience was knowledge of the
particular. Hence, it was possible for
the man of pure experience to hit upon the correct solution to a problem faster
than the man of pure science because the man of experience may have seen a similar
problem solved before. With this
stipulated, let us now examine the knowledge and experience of Arthur Currie.
Currie was born in 1875, and received a
high school education. He found
employment as a teacher in Victoria, B.C., later he became an insurance
salesman and then a land speculator. At
the age of 21, he joined the 5th (B.C.) Field Artillery Regiment in 1897 as a
gunner. He was commissioned in 1900 and
progressed rapidly through the ranks. He
came to command his regiment in 1909.
Currie was an enthusiastic student, said to take every course
available. Being artillery, the tactical
courses would have been about the brigade and divisional battles and the
artillery fire planning for each.
A friend and subordinate of Currie’s was
Garnet Hughes, son of Victoria M.P. Sam Hughes, who was Minister of Militia and
Defense from 1911 to 1916. When war
broke out in August, 1914, Hughes appointed Currie GOC 2nd Brigade,
1st Canadian Division in September, 1914. In October, from Valcartier, Currie took his
Brigade to Britain.
The 1st Canadian Division was in
the line in April, 1915, at Ypres, when the Germans launched their very first
gas attack. Poisonous chlorine caused the French colonial troops to break for
the rear, leaving the flank of the Canadian position hanging. Currie demonstrated coolness, bravery, and a
real tactical instinct when he led his brigade to counterattack into the flank
of the advancing Germans. He persuaded a
couple of British brigades to help out and together the German breakthrough was
stanched. As a result of his actions,
Currie was promoted to Major General and the command of 1st Canadian
Division.
Between April 1915 and April 1917, the
Currie method of meticulous preparation and artillery support was demonstrated
at Mont Sorrel in June, 1916. The Corps only
participated in the Battle of the Somme near the end. By 1917, the Canadian Corps was commanded by
Julian Byng, who tasked Currie with studying the battles of the Somme and
Verdun and to make recommendations.
Currie questioned both senior and junior French officers and compared
the impressions of the senior officers with the experiences of the junior.
Currie found that French success resulted
from careful staff work, thorough artillery preparation and support, surprise,
and a high state of training among the assault troops. The Canadian platoon was reorganized into
task groupings to better deal with common tactical problems: the machine gun
nest, clearing a section of trench, and beating off German counterattacks. Over the course of two years, Currie came to
master the set-piece battle and accepted the strategy of bite and hold.
At Vimy, the fruits of the study became
manifest.
-30-
Next month: Currie as Corps Commander
Vincent J. Curtis
12 Nov 2019
Given the
moral cowardice that prevails in much of media (see Northwest University), it is not surprising that Don
Cherry would get fired for having said something that riled up a twitter
mob. It doesn’t matter that what Cherry said was sensible and patriotic.
Cherry hit
upon a painful contradiction in the view that progressives have on immigrants
and immigration. We hope that immigrants come to Canada with the aim of
becoming Canadian and integrating into Canadian society. But if no one
tells them what is expected of them, how are they going to integrate?
What could be more Canadian than honoring our war dead by wearing a poppy on
Remembrance Day?
The
progressive twitter mob were outraged that anyone should place expectations
upon immigrants. Progressives hold that immigrant cultures are superior
to Canadian culture, that immigrants are doing us the favour by coming here,
and that we ought to learn from immigrants. Progressives can’t admit that
there must be something about existing Canadian culture that makes Canada so
appealing that immigrants leave the home of their birth to take their chances
here.
If the plan
is to have immigrants replace us in future, then shouldn’t we make sure that
they will carry on Canadian culture and traditions? If the plan is to
have immigrants substitute and replace Canadian culture, then it is patriotic
to oppose immigration.
Cherry hit
painfully on this contradiction, and so the progressive mob howled in pain and
outrage.
-30-
Vincent J. Curtis
5 Aug 2019
The Normandy campaign concluded at the end
of August, 1944, after the Germans were almost entirely cleared from France and
the 1st Canadian Army was advancing into Belgium. Many “lessons learned” have been written about
the campaign, but what can be said about it from the perspective of 75 years
on?
In a “what-if” scenarios, let’s ask, “what
if the Canadian Army had been equipped with the Mk I Centurion tank?” This thought experiment isn’t all that
far-fetched, as the Centurion was fielded in May, 1945. It was on the design boards in early 1943. What would have happened if the Canadian Army
had been equipped with Centurions and its 20 pdr gun, in Normandy?
It is likely that the 2nd Canadian
Corps would have torn through the German army like a chainsaw through
softwood. One of the main reasons the
Germans were able to hold their own for so long in Normandy was their
superiority in tanks, in particular the Panther and the Tiger. These tanks could, and usually did, defeat
large numbers of Shermans from long range.
The 75 mm gun on the Sherman couldn’t penetrate the frontal armour of a
Tiger even from point-blank range, while the long-barreled German 75 mm and 88
mm guns could brew up a Sherman from over a mile away.
Canadian armour was getting beaten in
detail by these superior German weapons - in those little battles that occur
within the larger one. The Canadians did
not have quickly to hand the means of defeating Panthers and Tigers. What was in their hands was the British 17
pdr gun, which could defeat Panthers and Tigers from long range. The 6 pdr anti-tank gun with which infantry
battalions were equipped was useless except for close range side-shots. The PIAT anti-tank projector had an effective
warhead – if you could crawl within a hundred yards of the target and hit the
thing.
The only tank that could tackle a Tiger or
a Panther was a Sherman Firefly, a Sherman which mounted that 17 pdr gun.
Tac Air, in the shape of formations of
Typhoons, were effective against Tigers and Panthers, but the ground troops
were not equipped with ground to air radio sets, making close cooperation impossible.
The Canadians in Normandy were losing four
and five Shermans for every Panther and Triger killed. If that ratio were dead even, or two to one
in our favor, the Germans could not have held up theCanadian advance for
nearly as long as they did.
What lesson can be drawn from this ‘what-if’
scenario? The immediate lesson is that
Canadian combat troops have to have in their hands the best, most modern
equipment to deal with the enemy. Not
just the best that we can think of, but equal if not better than what the enemy
has. Everybody knew about Tigers since
March, 1943. So, why weren’t our
generals and our engineers trying to figure out ways of dealing with these new battlefield
tactical problems?
Was Clarence Decatur Howe working day and
night? No. Did engineer MacNaughton look
at the bazooka and see a 106 mm recoilless rifle? No. Was Crerar hounding Howe for a new weapon? No. Why
weren’t Crerar and Simonds developing TTPs (tactics, techniques, procedures)
for ground troops to defeat these menaces?
Being generals, they ought to know something about ground combat. They ought to know before their battalion
commanders the tactical problems their platoons are going to face.
As recently as 2006, it was seriously
proposed by our generals that we didn’t need tanks anymore and that the new
doctrine of ‘maneuver warfare’ would overcome any tactical problem. No replacement for the Leopard I’s were in
prospect during the Chretien years, and rather than embarrass the government,
our generals put out the superior doctrine story – even though Genforce employed
tanks and maneuver warfare doctrine already!
The need to put into Canadian hands
equipment that is not just the best, but better than what the enemy has is one
lesson from the Normandy campaign. There
are others. like TTPs
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