POEM: Jerry Bator of Bradford sent us a poem, moved by the rescue of two downed pilots.

“This is a story of another fighter pilot in a different war. On his return to base from a mission, he penned this poem in the cockpit. His name was John Gillespie Magee Jr. The title is ‘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 the long, delirious, burning blue

I’ve topped the windswept 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.”

The poem was contained in a letter to his parents on Sept. 3, 1941. It is in the Library of Congress.

Magee was a World War II Anglo-American Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot and war poet. He was killed in an accidental mid-air collision over England in 1941, three months after he mailed the poem to his parents.

As his missionary father was originally from a wealthy Pittsburgh family, Magee’s poem was first published in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. It widely distributed when Magee became one of the first post-Pearl Harbor American casualties of the war on Dec. 11, 1941.

He had joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in October 1940, and received flight training in Ottawa. He was awarded his wings in June of 1941.