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Ballantine's Illustrated History of World War II / the Violent Century: Battle #26
Vimy Ridge: 1914-18
The western front during the Great War.
160 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1972
13 people want to read
About the author
Kenneth John Macksey
55 books16 followersBritish author and historian who specialized in military history and military biography, particularly of the Second World War. Macksey was commissioned in the Royal Armoured Corps and served during the Second World War (earning the Military Cross under the command of Percy Hobart). Macksey later wrote the (authoritative) biography of Hobart.Macksey gained a permanent commission in 1946, was transferred to the Royal Tank Regiment in 1947, reached the rank of major in 1957 and retired from the Army in 1968.
Amongst many other books, Macksey wrote two volumes of alternate history, one, entitled Invasion, dealt with a successful invasion of England by Germany in 1940 and the other describing a NATO–Warsaw Pact clash in the late 1980s. The latter book was done under contract to the Canadian Forces and focuses on the Canadian role in such a conflict. He was an editor and contributor to Greenhill's Alternate Decisions series since 1995.
In Macksey's Guderian – Panzer General, he refuted the view of historian Sir Basil Liddell-Hart regarding Hart's influence on the development of German Tank Theory in the years leading up to 1939.
Amongst many other books, Macksey wrote two volumes of alternate history, one, entitled Invasion, dealt with a successful invasion of England by Germany in 1940 and the other describing a NATO–Warsaw Pact clash in the late 1980s. The latter book was done under contract to the Canadian Forces and focuses on the Canadian role in such a conflict. He was an editor and contributor to Greenhill's Alternate Decisions series since 1995.
In Macksey's Guderian – Panzer General, he refuted the view of historian Sir Basil Liddell-Hart regarding Hart's influence on the development of German Tank Theory in the years leading up to 1939.
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March 27, 2023
A solid but not particularly distinguished contribution to this series of monographs about "the Violent Century". The title is intriguing, and also a prefiguring of the book's oddities: the main story is of course the storming of the titular ridge by the Canadian Corps in 1917, Canada's towering military achievement and a strong pillar in its argument for independence from Britain. But I suspect there wasn't enough source material at the time of writing (1972) to make a full book, so the author tacks on the rest of the British Arras Offensive of 1917, a bit about the 1915 French Artois Offensive, a bit about the wider Nivelle Offensive of 1917 of which Arras was a part, and a bit about the German 1918 offensives. The connecting thread to all this is his contention that Vimy Ridge was a "proving ground" for offensive techniques which became important later in the war.
This confusion doesn't make for a very satisfying or readable book. Though it is good to see the terrible Artois Offensive even mentioned in a book aimed at an English-speaking audience, the few column inches assigned smack of tokenism. In contrast, there is more detail about the (British) remainder of the Arras Offensive than there is about the Vimy Ridge attack. And the central contention about the importance of the ridge in teaching the Allied armies how to win battles (the opening chapter is called "The Proving Ground") is entirely unsupported by evidence. The author occasionally makes mention of his bold claim but never even expands on it, much less provides any historical argument.
As ever in this series, the book is lavishly illustrated and has a profusion of maps, often neglected but vital to the understanding of military history. Unfortunately the maps in this volume are not of the best - many of them on too small a scale whilst even the more informative large-scale ones omit important features named in the text.
And Kenneth Macksey's writing style is somewhat recherche, especially by the standards of military history where the prose is usually stodgy and unimaginative. Subordinate clauses go missing in action, their sentences ending jarringly at a full stop instead. A few unusual choices of word also cause the reader to do a double-take:
".......the failure of the British artillery to destroy so many guns or to prevent reliefs of units in the line attributing (??) powerfully to this feeling.";
".......instead of rolling ahead into disengaged (??) territory";
".......a surprise concentration of unregistered gunfire fell on an unexpectant (??) enemy".
There are plenty more of these, quite a feat in a book of only 159 pages (inclusive of maps and pictures). I usually blame rushed editing for these howlers, but some of the more purple prose passages, which read like they were lifted from a Gothic novel, must surely have come from the author himself. This one was particularly memorable:
"In the sticky slough a foot placed carelessly on some yielding hummock might at any moment reveal nauseating corruption - putrefaction distilled such as shattered men's senses." Wow.
A pity, because where he does stick to the history, and troubles himself to provide historical arguments, he can be lucid and pithy. This sentence summing up Field-Marshal Haig's approach to strategy was worth the price of admission on its own:
"On many previous occasions Haig had deluded himself into thinking the enemy was on his last legs: now he just happened to be right." More like that, Mr Macksey, less of the distilled putrefaction.
This confusion doesn't make for a very satisfying or readable book. Though it is good to see the terrible Artois Offensive even mentioned in a book aimed at an English-speaking audience, the few column inches assigned smack of tokenism. In contrast, there is more detail about the (British) remainder of the Arras Offensive than there is about the Vimy Ridge attack. And the central contention about the importance of the ridge in teaching the Allied armies how to win battles (the opening chapter is called "The Proving Ground") is entirely unsupported by evidence. The author occasionally makes mention of his bold claim but never even expands on it, much less provides any historical argument.
As ever in this series, the book is lavishly illustrated and has a profusion of maps, often neglected but vital to the understanding of military history. Unfortunately the maps in this volume are not of the best - many of them on too small a scale whilst even the more informative large-scale ones omit important features named in the text.
And Kenneth Macksey's writing style is somewhat recherche, especially by the standards of military history where the prose is usually stodgy and unimaginative. Subordinate clauses go missing in action, their sentences ending jarringly at a full stop instead. A few unusual choices of word also cause the reader to do a double-take:
".......the failure of the British artillery to destroy so many guns or to prevent reliefs of units in the line attributing (??) powerfully to this feeling.";
".......instead of rolling ahead into disengaged (??) territory";
".......a surprise concentration of unregistered gunfire fell on an unexpectant (??) enemy".
There are plenty more of these, quite a feat in a book of only 159 pages (inclusive of maps and pictures). I usually blame rushed editing for these howlers, but some of the more purple prose passages, which read like they were lifted from a Gothic novel, must surely have come from the author himself. This one was particularly memorable:
"In the sticky slough a foot placed carelessly on some yielding hummock might at any moment reveal nauseating corruption - putrefaction distilled such as shattered men's senses." Wow.
A pity, because where he does stick to the history, and troubles himself to provide historical arguments, he can be lucid and pithy. This sentence summing up Field-Marshal Haig's approach to strategy was worth the price of admission on its own:
"On many previous occasions Haig had deluded himself into thinking the enemy was on his last legs: now he just happened to be right." More like that, Mr Macksey, less of the distilled putrefaction.
Displaying 1 of 1 review