FOREWORD

by Donald Senese: Professor of Russian History at the University of Victoria

I was first made aware of this remarkable collection by Suzanne James - Dr. Baker’s daughter, who was attending my class in Soviet History at the University of Victoria and who had just begun transcribing her father’s wartime letters for publication. She showed me a letter which contained details of Lord Beaverbrook’s 1941 mission to Russia and his conversation with Joseph Stalin - details which were recounted to Jim by Lady Astor, and which shed light on the personality and policies of the Soviet dictator. I at once asked for permission to read the entire collection in the hope of uncovering a treasure trove of such "scholarly finds". What I found instead was the story of a young man’s coming of age in the crucible of war, a story set against a perceptive and beautifully written account of wartime Britain.

The letters - mostly written to Jim’s parents in White Rock, B.C., describe his military experience from his enlistment in the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry in September 1939 to the eve of his participation in the final bombing campaigns against Germany in 1944-45. The rigours of training in both Canada and England are described in detail as is the tedium of army life which he shared with tens of thousands of other Canadian volunteers who had come to England in 1940 to repel an expected German invasion and instead found themselves relegated to years of garrison duty before they could join in the European campaigns of 1943-45. It was this tedium as much as his longfelt ambition to fly that led Jim to transfer to the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1942 and to begin training again - this time as a pilot and navigator.

The most vivid images in these letters however, are not about training or military life, but about wartime England and its people. His descriptions of the Blitz - the German terror-bombing of British cities in 1940-41, form one of the best personal accounts of that terrible episode that I have ever read. They combine vivid eye-witness testimony of the destructive power of the German attack with moving tributes to the courage and spirit of those who suffered under it. The same sensitivity and descriptive power are evident in his descriptions of the numerous friends and acquaintances he met in England during the war, people ranging from ordinary citizens in whose homes he was billeted, to well-known figures in the literary, artistic, journalistic and political life of the country.

In one of his very first letters to his mother, Jim asked her to be sure to save all his letters. Other comments scattered through the correspondence make it clear that at the time, he was looking forward to a career in either writing or journalism: but this was not to be. He found his post-war calling in Medicine. However, no one reading these letters today can doubt that - had he chosen to carry through with his original intention, he would have been an outstanding writer.