Major Kenneth J. Macksey, MC, the author of "First Clash" died recently. The following is from the times, I thought it might be of interest:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-45-1943548-45,00.html
The Times December 20, 2005
Kenneth Macksey
July 1, 1923 - November 30, 2005
Soldier and historian who wrote prolifically on armoured warfare and its associated personalities
KEN MACKSEY was a dynamo of intellectual energy with an enthusiasm that sparked a ready response in others, leading to uninhibited and profitable discussion. His reputation as a military historian was achieved through exhaustive research and rigorous analysis, yet his writing was as fresh and lucid as that of a novelist, taking the reader effortlessly into the minds of commanders and soldiers alike.
Had the Second World War not intervened, he might have adopted an academic career. As it was, after work in an aircraft factory and serving in the Home Guard until the age of 18, he enlisted in the Royal Armoured Corps in December 1941. Armoured warfare had already caught his imagination, the exploits of the German armoured formations in the 1940 Battle of France - that of Guderian's XIX Panzer Corps attack through the Ardennes in particular. (Thirty-five years later, his biography of Guderian presented an acute appreciation of that daring and innovative commander.) Macksey fought in the Normandy campaign of 1944 - winning the Military Cross - with 141 Regiment RAC equipped with flame-throwing "Crocodile" Churchill tanks, products of another of his armoured heroes, Major-General Sir Percy "Hobo" Hobart, who had relentlessly pressed the argument for introduction of armoured divisions into the British Army before the war and for specialist tanks during it. Macksey was to publish an acclaimed biography of "Hobo " under the title Armoured Crusader in 1967.
Wounded in Normandy, he recovered in time to participate in the first major British engagement on German soil at Geilenkirchen in November 1944. After that he was a liaison officer with the Polish Armoured Division fighting alongside the Canadians in clearing the north German coastline as far as Wilhelmshaven. The war over, he became a regular officer of the Royal Tank Regiment, serving with 7th RTR in India, and he later commanded a squadron of the 4th Regiment.
His short history of the Royal Tank Regiment, To the Green Fields, and his masterly biography of Hobart were published before he decided to leave the Army, aged 45, to devote himself full-time to writing. His Volume III of The Tanks appeared in 1979 to carry the history of the regiment forward from the Second World War to 1975, including its service in the Korean War and campaigns in the Middle and Far East.
Macksey published more than 50 books, many of them on the theme of armoured warfare or associated personalities. One notable exception, produced around the peak of his writing career, was a biography of Field Marshal Albert Kesselring - "Smiling Albert" to German soldiers on account of his flashing teeth and reputation for care for his men. Kesselring was a Luftwaffe General who had worked on the development of the German air force in the 1930s and, as commander of Luftflotte II, was part- architect of the invasion of the Netherlands and Belgium in May 1940. Macksey's study of Kesselring probes deeply into the circumstances and mind of the man. It seems not unlikely that Kesselring's difficult relationship with his wife Pauline and "intractable" mother-in-law became an unconscious aid in his dealings with Hitler. When a German aircraft came down in neutral Belgium with a passenger carrying the invasion plans, necessitating their revision, he found himself at odds with the Führer over certain key aspects. Adopting a technique he was to employ in the future, in particular when overall C-in-C of German-occupied regions on the Mediterranean, he forbore confrontation for a process of gradually chipping away at the "rough edges" of Hitler's strategy until he considered it had reached a manageable state.
Macksey's book First Clash, was the product of his own experience of a predominantly armoured forces land battle in Western Europe and his research into the armaments and battle techniques of the Soviet Army. Produced on behalf of the Canadian Department of National Defence in 1984, First Clash traces the course of a fictitious battle between a mechanised Canadian brigade and a Soviet tank division in the first three days of conflict before the West would be obliged to use nuclear weapons to impose stalemate. Intended as a training manual for Canadian troops without combat experience, its startling reality led to full-scale production in book form in 1985.
Kenneth John Macksey was born in Epsom and educated at Bethany School in Kent. In 1946 he married Joan Little, who survives him with a son and daughter.
Major Kenneth J. Macksey, MC, soldier and historian, was born on July 1, 1923. He died on November 30, 2005, aged 82.
