Flying High.

Spent the day at the 'Wings & Wheels' show at Dunsfold Park Aerodrome.

There were many tributes paid to Flt Lt Jon Egging, the Red Arrows pilot who sadly died when his plane came down during an air show last weekend, including this poem, which made me cry.


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 untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

by Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, Jnr
No 412 squadron, RCAF
Killed 11 December 1941