[Newsbot]

Title: Hamilton pilot who died in CF-18 crash served as an escort for Santa Claus and was set to be married | National Post
Category: Military
Posted By: shockedcanadian
Date: 2016-11-29 11:21:31
Canadian

[shockedcanadian]

Only the good die young.

RIP

[BartSimpson]

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/highflig.htm

High Flight

By John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

(A sonnet written by John Gillespie Magee, an American pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force in the Second World War. He came to Britain, flew in a Spitfire squadron, and was killed at the age of nineteen on 11 December 1941 during a training flight from the airfield near Scopwick.)

"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.
Hovering 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."

RIP Captain Thomas McQueen

[Robair]

!
I've read the poem (I'm a pilot myself) but never looked into the story of the author.

Thanks for posting Bart!