Bill Hillman's Monthly Military Tribute
AS YOU WERE . . .
WAR YEARS ECLECTICA
2016.09 Edition
JOIN OUR FACEBOOK GROUP HERE
Click for larger images
www.image11photography.com/CanadianForcesCanadian War Museum
Have you ever heard of the poem “High Flight? (see below for the text)
On this day in 1941, Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee Jr. started the poem that has become both an aviator's anthem and a frequent epitaph used by fliers, astronauts and Presidents alike.
Magee was inspired to write “High Flight” while on a high altitude (30,000 feet) test flight in a new Spitfire Mk V.
A charcoal sketch for a posthumous portrait of John Gillespie Magee Jr. by artist Jere R. Wickwire was donated to the Canadian War Museum in 2012 by the family.
Magee was killed in December, 1941, when his Spitfire collided with another plane over England. He was 19 years old. The portrait was completed in 1943 and hung in the Magee family home in Washington D.C.
High Flight
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air,Up, up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark, or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
– Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.Sketch of John Magee Jr by Jere Wickwire
CWM 20120002-001
