Canadian Virtual War Memorial

Military Service

Additional Information

Son of the Reverend John Gillespie Magee and Faith Backhouse Magee, of Washington, D.C., United States. John began his education at the American School, Nanking (1929-1931). In 1931, he moved with his mother to Britain where he continued his education first at St. Clare's near Walmer, Kent (1931-1935) and then at Rugby School (1935-1939) winning the Rugby School's poetry prize in 1938. In 1939 he moved to the USA to live with his aunt in Pittsburgh and attended Avon Old Farms School in Avon, Connecticut. He earned a scholarship to Yale University, where his father was then a chaplain, in July 1940 but did not enroll, choosing instead to enlist in the Royal Canadian Air Force in October of that year.

In October, 1940, at age 18, John Magee Jr. went to Canada and enrolled in the RCAF. After his flight training, he went back to England as a commissioned pilot officer. In the course of his training in the Spitfire aircraft, he was assigned to make a high altitude flight 'into the stratosphere'. On landing, he went to his quarters and there wrote his now famous sonnet on the back of a letter to his mother

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
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.

Commemorated on Page 37 of the Second World War Book of Remembrance. Request a copy of this page. Download high resolution copy of this page.