If looks could kill: Arthur Currie, Pete Hegseth and the meaning of military toughness

An item from the Legion Magazine.

General Arthur Currie decorates a Canadian officer with the Distinguished Service Order in September 1917. [DND/LAC/3362394]

If looks could kill: Arthur Currie, Pete Hegseth and the meaning of military toughness

STORY BY RICHARD FOOT

General Arthur Currie was no matinee idol. Portly and jowly, he had neither the face nor the form of the dashing, broad-shouldered Hollywood stereotype.

None of that mattered, of course. Currie’s physical appearance had no bearing whatsoever on his success in leading the Canadian Corps—four divisions of hardened shock troops, 100,000 strong—during the final years of the First World War.

That success, under Currie, included the Corps’ string of 1918 victories in the celebrated Hundred Days battles at Amiens, Arras and Mons.

“The Canadian general, who stood almost 6 feet 3 inches tall and bulged in his uniform at over 250 pounds, had an agile mind and was continually studying the challenges of trench warfare,” historian Tim Cook wrote. “He gathered together an effective staff and encouraged learning from victories and failures in battle.”

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Give Them Shit

Sergeant Clarence Kenneth Crockett leads a section of The Calgary Highlanders across Belgium’s Albert Canal in a small but critical moment of the Scheldt Campaign

A diver holds the ensign of the Royal Canadian Navy by the wreck of HMCS Canada during a 2025 expedition. [Courtesy Joseph Frey]

Author Karen Farrington on Allied PoWs escaping through Italy in WW II

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

Ernest Hemingway had a hand in leading scuba diver Joseph Frey to the wreck of HMCS Canada—though the famed novelist could hardly have known it.

In 1928, the American author sought sanctuary in the Florida Keys, likely unaware that just two years earlier—on July 2, 1926—a former flagship of the Royal Canadian Navy had sunk off the coast.

Nor was Frey, a self-described “Hemingway aficionado,” privy to such facts when he followed in the footsteps of his literary hero decades later—at least not at first.

“I always went down to Hemingway Home in Key West for a tour,” explained the military veteran of 21 years, “and one time, I noticed that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—NOAA—had an office in Key Largo.”