High Flight

[KAV]

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.



John Gillespie Magee

[InfiniteStates]

(Steve Harris)

There goes the siren that warns of the air raid,
Then comes the sound of the guns sending flak.
Out for the scramble we've got to get airborne,
Got to get up for the coming attack.

Jump in the cockpit and start up the engines,
Remove all the wheelblocks there's no time to waste.
Gathering speed as we head down the runway,
Got to get airborne before it's too late.

Move in to fire at the mainstream of bombers,
Let off a sharp burst and then turn away.
Roll over, spin round to come in behind them,
Move to their blindsides and firing again.

Bandits at 8 O'clock move in behind us,
Ten ME-109's out of the sun.
Ascending and turning our spitfires to face them,
Heading straight for them I press down my guns.

Rolling, turning, diving,
Rolling, turning, diving, going in again.
Rolling, turning, diving, Rolling, turning, diving,
Run, live to fly, fly to live, do or die.
Won't you run, live to fly, fly to live, Aces high!!!

[KAV]

Nice one Infinistates.

High Flight gives me the chills.
Its written by John Gillespie Magee and his fate makes it even stronger:

...after graduating from #53 OTU, Magee was assigned to the newly formed No 412 (Fighter) Squadron, RCAF,[1] which was activated at RAF Digby, England, on 30 June 1941. The motto of this squadron was and is Promptus ad vindictam (Latin: "Swift to avenge"). Magee was qualified on and flew the Supermarine Spitfire.
Magee was killed at the age of 19, whilst flying Spitfire VZ-H, serial number AD-291. The aircraft was involved in a mid-air collision with an Airspeed Oxford trainer from RAF Cranwell, flown by Leading Aircraftman Ernest Aubrey. The two aircraft collided in cloud cover at about 400 feet AGL, at 11:30, over the village of Roxholm which lies between RAF Cranwell and RAF Digby, in Lincolnshire.[2] Magee was descending at the time. At the inquiry afterwards a farmer testified that he saw the Spitfire pilot struggling to push back the canopy.[2] The pilot stood up to jump from the plane but was too close to the ground for his parachute to open, and died on impact.[2][3] Magee is buried at Holy Cross, Scopwick Cemetery in Lincolnshire, England.[2][3] On his grave are inscribed the first and last lines from his poem High Flight:
"Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth -
Put out my hand and touched the Face of God."
Part of the official letter to his parents read: "Your son's funeral took place at Scopwick Cemetery, near Digby Aerodrome, at 2:30 P.M. on Saturday, 13 December 1941, the service being conducted by Flight Lieutenant S. K. Belton, the Canadian padre of this Station. He was accorded full Service Honours, the coffin being carried by pilots of his own Squadron."
His biography was written by Hermann Hagedorn in the 1942 book: 'Sunward I've Climbed, The Story of John Magee, Poet and Soldier, 1922–1941.'

[GabeFan]

"The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner"
Randall Jarrell (1945)

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

[FOZ_1983]

This memorial is at Skellingthorpe (RAF Bomber Command base) where my grandad flew lancs. Its by R W Gilbert and is in memory of all the men who flew out of skellingthorpe and never came home -

My brief sweet life is over
My eyes no longer see
No Christmas trees, No summer walks
No pretty girls for me
I've got the chop, I've had it
My nightly ops are done
Yet in another hundred years
I'll still be twenty one.

R W Gilbert

[Vulcan607]

Well, how do you do, Private William McBride,
Do you mind if I sit down here by your graveside?
And rest for awhile in the warm summer sun,
I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done.
And I see by your gravestone you were only 19
When you joined the glorious fallen in 1916,
Well, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?

Did they Beat the drum slowly, did the play the pipes lowly?
Did the rifles fir o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sound The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined?
And, though you died back in 1916,
To that loyal heart are you forever 19?
Or are you a stranger without even a name,
Forever enshrined behind some glass pane,
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?

The sun's shining down on these green fields of France;
The warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance.
The trenches have vanished long under the plow;
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard that's still No Man's Land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man.
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.

And I can't help but wonder, no Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you "The Cause?"
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.