For the Glorious Few - High Flight by John Gillespe McGee
The closer we get to Remembrance Day, the more I reflect on the sacrifice made by so many people to guard our freedoms. The following is a glorious poem describing the exhilaration of flying. Unmentioned is the incredible danger these young pilots placed them in. Their bravery is summed up in Churchill's epigram following the Battle of Britain: "never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few" 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 wind-swept heights with easy grace. ...