An Announcement

~ Adam Purcell

“My ultimate aim with this research is to write a significant piece of work – a book – to tell the story of the crew of B for Baker.”

So starts a post on this blog that was written in March 2012.

That’s now more than thirteen years ago.

After I wrote that post, I spent a few years thinking about the idea of writing a book, then a bit of time thinking about actually writing it, and then maybe two more years organising and manipulating sources into something that I thought I might be able to turn into a coherent story. And finally, in July 2017, I started actually writing.

I wrote several thousand words, and then I pretty quickly realised I wasn’t getting anywhere useful, so I re-started my draft. And then I re-started it again, and again, so that the current file is version 5.

Ha, ‘current’. My laptop tells me the last time I opened my draft, before tonight, was on 6 June 2022.

I’ve not been able to prioritise this project enough to do something about it for more than three years. Heck, I’ve barely even posted on this blog.

Life has intervened, and other priorities have come up (not least of which, my partner and I are expecting a baby in a few weeks). I’m simply unable to make the time needed to finish a draft, edit it, and do all the other work that’s needed to get a book printed and promoted.

So, I’ve made a difficult but necessary decision. It’s time to stop kidding myself: the book about B for Baker that I was planning and working on is no longer going to happen, and I have accepted the need to abandon the project in its originally imagined form.

All is, however, not yet lost. I do still have that draft: all 56,000 words of it. And some of it, even if I do say so myself, is pretty good, actually. It seems a shame to just chuck that out without giving anyone else the chance to read it, without sharing the story of B for Baker, and what it was like for her crew, with a wider audience.

Like, say, the audience who reads this blog…

So though a book in the traditional sense is not going to happen, I’ve decided to share the guts of the story with you, right here. Over the next little while, I will turn each chapter of my draft into a series of posts, and then publish them one at a time. There will be no set posting schedule: you’ll get them as they come. The important thing is that the story will be out there, and seven more members of Bomber Command won’t be forgotten.

Because that, at the end of the day, is what I’ve been trying to achieve the whole time.

Let’s see how it goes!

An Evolving Table of Contents:
  • Chapter One: Beginnings
  • Chapter Two: Learning to Fly

(c) 2025 Adam Purcell