Caen: Anvil of Victory

by Alexander McKee
Caen: Anvil of Victory by Alexander McKee is an account of the British and Canadian efforts in Normandy after the D-Day landings.  McKee's focus is primarily on the tactical ground combat.  The text, interwoven with snippets of personal recollections from participants, provides a worm's-eye view of battle.  The personal interviews are both pointed and poingnant, and provide an interesting perspective as well as keeping the narative sober.  McKee's book definately demonstrates that war is not a glorious excursion or a game, but rather it is a hellacious ordeal that many will not survive.  The descriptions of combat are vivid and gripping, and the book is a fast-paced read.

McKee uncovers a great number of frustrations of low-level command, organization, tactics, and weaponry in the British and Canadian armies.  Armored units are frequently squandered, either caught flat-footed and destroyed piecemeal (such as at Villiers-Bocage) or thrown forward as battering rams without proper infantry support or accurate intelligence about enemy dispositions (as in the GOODWOOD operation).  Coordination between arms (infantry, armor, artillery, air) was almost non-existent.  McKee's book demonstrates what all of these problems mean to the comparative few at the sharp end of the spear: confusion, contradictory orders, missed opportunities, and death.

However, McKee's book also demonstrates that what the British and Canadians could not accomplish with finesse, skill, and maneuver, they could accomplish with grim determination.  This is perhaps the most important contribution of the book: the reader gains an appreciation for the individual soldier steadfastly doing his job, despite the problems and failings of his leaders, his doctrine, his training, and his weaponry compared to the German army.

Had McKee stuck to this, his book would be excellent.  Unfortunately, he frequently strays into discussions of operations, planning, and command.  This is problematic for two reasons.  First, these discussions are out of the scope of the book, which is a history of the small-unit, tactical, efforts of the British and Canadians in Normandy.  McKee has no business, at least in this book, offering assessments of Monty's or Bradley's operational plans, except to provide some context for the tactial battles.  Second, it is clear that he is out of his league on these issues, and furthermore is only divining intent, expectations, and demands. There is little or no research behind McKee's assessments of operational planning, and there is no documentation to back up statements he makes.  Thus he falls prey to the many myths of the Normandy campaign that were quickly growing at the time of the book's original publication.  This causes McKee to short-shrift the Americans (they're blundering fools), fudge some timelines (the Americans are "stuck" for longer than they actually were, accoring to McKee), and heap credit on Montgomery for victotry in Normandy (when in truth the victory was the result of abandoning Monty's original plan).  Further, McKee tirelessly tells the reader that the only intent of the British forces in Normandy was to simply hold German divisions in place.

None of these assertions have withstood more recent historical analysis. I undertand the date of the book means he did not have access to that scholarship; my objection is that McKee did none of his own. He falls prey to nationalistic bragging, which is lazy and self-assuring, rather than using a more objective analytical point of view, which is more difficult and perhaps humbling. 

Had McKee stayed away from discussions of operational planning and command decisions, the book would be a tight, compelling history.  Read this book for the combat descriptions and personal tales, but don't believe a word of McKee's discussions on command, planning, and operations.

Email me with comments at mlicari@cfu.net

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