BBC News – ‘End of an era’: Last surviving Battle of Britain pilot dies

2 comments

1. I care more about these sorts of passing’s than for all the celebrity deaths that clog up the news. Here is someone who’s put their life on the line, in a moment in our history where things were at their most dire, and for that I have a massive respect.

2. 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.

   – John Gillespie Magee Jr.

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