Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 99/397

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Front, as part of the Canadian Corps, helping it to establish close and stable working relationships with other Canadian formations and facilitating the dissemination of battlefield lessons. In contrast, as Jackson observes, the 62nd Division served in seven corps and was transferred between corps a dozen times. An important by-product of these differences was that by the Hundred Days the Canadian divisions tended to be used in the big set-piece operations, such as Amiens and the Canal du Nord, while the 62nd was regarded more as a ‘utility’ formation to be employed in a variety of actions, generally with rather less time for planning and preparation and the circulation of orders. Nevertheless, to his credit, Jackson convincingly contends that—despite inevitable variations in command styles, organisation, roles and unit strengths—by 1918 both of his case-study divisions had ‘integrated fully into the British system’. Thanks to a largely common training regime, and to the sharing of regularly revised doctrine and tactics through the post-Somme SS series of pamphlets and manuals, the similarities between British and Dominion divisions came to outweigh the differences. As a result both the 4th Canadian and 62nd Divisions had become experienced, battle-hardened formations capable of achieving the tasks assigned to them by August 1918. In addition to detailed analyses of the battles in which the two divisions participated, Jackson provides interesting insights into the command relationships within both formations, particularly between the GOC 4th Canadian Division, David Watson; his British GSO1, Edmund ‘Tiny’ Ironside (a future CIGS); and his principal brigade commanders, Ross Hayter, Victor Odlum and J. H. MacBrien. The long-serving commander of the 62nd Division, Walter Braithwaite, emerges from this study with an enhanced reputation, but Jackson is slightly less sure-footed in dealing with some of the latter’s senior subordinates. J. L. G. Burnett (186th Brigade) and A. J. Reddie (187th Brigade), for example, remain somewhat shadowy figures. Jackson strongly asserts that, in the big set- piece assaults of the Hundred Days, Arthur Currie, the commander of the Canadian Corps, was inclined to micro-manage the operations of the 4th and other Canadian divisions. However, one feels that Jackson underestimates the extent to which command in most British divisions devolved downwards in the semi-open warfare of the Hundred Days, when the higher tempo of operations and frequently-changing tactical challenges often rendered it necessary for division and brigade commanders—the ‘men on the spot’—to make key decisions without reference to corps or Army headquarters. Minor criticisms aside, Jackson’s fine and well-researched book, which forms part of the excellent Studies in Canadian Military History series published by the University of British Columbia in association with the Canadian War Museum, makes a significant contribution to the historiography of the British and Dominion forces on the Western Front. This reviewer’s chief concern is that the high price of the volume may militate against it reaching the wide readership, which its quality unquestionably merits. P ETER S IMKINS University of Wolverhampton