In 1941, following his training, Royal Canadian Air Force Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee Jr was posted to RAF Digby to No. 412 Fighter Squadron, to fly a Supermarine Spitfires.
On September 3, 1941, Magee took a new-model Spitfire for a high altitude test flight and whilst flying at 30,000 feet, he felt inspired to write this now-famous poem;
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 wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark nor ever 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.”
A few months after he wrote the poem, and three days after the U.S. entered the war, Magee was killed when his Spitfire collided mid-air with another aircraft over Lincolnshire, England.
RAF Digby was incidentally my last unit prior to my leaving the Army and I can remember on more than many occasions reading that poem as I waited in Station Headquarters foyer, as it is rightly displayed along with a history of the author.
