MEMORIAL DAY

[Bob Womack]

I have a book about current flying WWII aircraft that has an essay on the U.K. during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. There's a memorable quote about one of the larger fighter training centers, RAF Hawarden, where my uncle trained. The quote is simply, "Life was cheap at Hawarden and many trainees died."

One of my uncle's contemporaries was John Gillespie Magee, Jr. who wrote the sonnet, High Flight in 1941, after high altitude training on the Spitfire with 53 OTU at RAF llandow, in Wales:

"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, 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."

Magee was posted to No. 412 Squadron led by "Cowboy" Blatchford. He died in an operational accident in Lincolnshire on 11 December 1941, only ten weeks into service.




Bob