High Flight: The Life and Poetry of Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee

By Roger Cole

When Second World War Spitfire pilot John Gillespie Magee penned his poem 'High Flight', little did he know that his words would inspire legions of aspiring aviators who had a similar wish to fly their 'eager craft through footless halls of air'.

Founded on years of detailed research, Roger Cole's book High Flight tells John Magee's extraordinary story, describing hitherto-unknown details of his short life, and providing insight into the inspiration for the poems that have found a unique place in history.

Born of an English mother and American father in Nanking in China, Magee grew up and was educated in different parts of the world, proving to be a highly accomplished student. Through his experiences, he developed principles that made him determined to defend the rights of those he loved and respected. Exhilarated by flight and finding unique language in poetry, John was able to use words to express the emotions and sentiments of all who fly in a manner that is acknowledged and applauded throughout the world. The outbreak of war in Europe violated his beliefs, and, determined to fight for freedom, John left America and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, qualifying as a pilot and traveling to England to fight Nazism.

Tragically, John would lose his life, aged 19 years, in an accident, so never know how his words would serve posterity. Roger Cole's High Flight traces the path of John Magee's achievement, revealing an incredible story of human endeavor, vision, determination and self-sacrifice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fighting High Publishing
• Release date: Jan 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9780993415241

Book preview

High Flight

High Flight

The Life and Poetry of Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee

Roger Cole

Published in 2013 by Fighting High Ltd

www.fightinghigh.com

Copyright © Fighting High Ltd, 2013

Copyright text © Roger Cole, 2013

The rights of Roger Cole to be identified as the

author of this book are asserted in accordance with the

Copyright, Patents and Designs Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted

in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior

written permission of the copyright owner.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data.

A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN – 13: 978-0957116368

ePUB ISBN – 13: 978-0993415241

Mobi ISBN – 13: 978-0993415241

Front cover design by Michael Lindley.

Contents

Foreword

Preface, Acknowledgements and Note on the Text

1. The Fertile Fields of Lincolnshire

2. Faith Backhouse

3. Education: St Clare and Rugby Schools

4. Crossing the Atlantic to America

5. Learning to Fly

6. Leaving Home

7. Elinor and Rugby

8. Wellingore: Administrative HQ

9. Leave with Elinor

10. Close to the Edge

11. Royal Visit

12. December Dawns

13. Week Commencing 7 December 1941

14. Disaster in the Air

15. Preparation for the Funeral

16. Funeral

17. Back at The Grange

18. Hugh and Elinor at Rugby

19. Wellingore, the Woodshed (1990)

20. Cape Canaveral

Poems published by John Magee in 1939

Other Poems, Published and Previously Unpublished

Bibliography

Unpublished Sources

Notes

Foreword

by The Reverend Canon F. Hugh Magee

Roger Cole has kindly asked me to contribute a foreword to his biography of my late brother, John Gillespie Magee Jnr. As John’s only surviving brother, I am glad to do so.

It is some years since a new biography of John has appeared, and Roger Cole’s extensively researched memoir is a welcome addition to the corpus. There is much new material here, and it is particularly gratifying to have such a detailed narrative of John’s career as a pilot, much of it related in his own words. It is also inspiring to have this detailed account of the friendships that John formed, both at Rugby School and during his final days as an accomplished pilot officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force.

I am struck as well by the fact that Roger has begun his work with a fitting tribute to Leading Aircraftman Ernest Aubrey Griffin, who died with John in their mid-air collision over Lincolnshire in 1941. I recall visiting Ernest Griffin’s parents in Oxford with my mother after the war. As one might expect, the news of John’s death was a real shock to all of us who knew him. But I think it is fair to say that its impact on his immediate family was greatly eased by the fact that our parents simply did not accept death as anything more than a moment of transition. In breaking the news to me my mother simply explained that my brother John had ‘gone to be with our heavenly Father’. Having been brought up in a genuinely Christian family, I did not find this difficult to accept, though I of course knew that, along with my brothers, I would miss John terribly.

As a kind of footnote to the drama of that moment, my mother, who was a deeply spiritual person, liked to recall an experience she had shortly after receiving the news. It so happened that she needed to leave the house soon after to do an errand in the neighbourhood of Washington DC, where we were living at the time. She said later that she was totally convinced that John was with her as she went on her way. From her account, John communicated with her directly, telling her that all was well.

Well, I myself cannot claim to have had such a supernatural experience of John’s presence after his death. In fact, I was only 8 when he died in 1941, and my memories of him are therefore not extensive. But, few as they are, those memories remain fresh in my mind.

Two of them particularly stand out, not least because it has not been difficult for me to associate these recollections with emotions John expressed in the poem for which he is best known, ‘High Flight’.

The first had to do with John’s willingness to connive with me in a little practical joke. As described by Roger Cole in his memoir, John, during what was to be his final leave prior to embarkation to Britain in 1941, enjoyed driving the family for outings into the countryside around Washington in the enormous Packard convertible he had bought second-hand the previous summer.

One of these outings found us heading towards a swimming pool made available to us for the occasion by the day camp in Maryland that I attended after school in those days. Having been to this secluded spot a number of times, I was aware of the fact that there were some dips in the road that led to it. So I knew that, if one was travelling at a decent speed, those sitting in the back seat of a car were likely to get unexpectedly tossed into the air (this was before the advent of seat belts), an effect obviously heightened if the car happened to be a convertible! Shortly before we arrived at this stretch of road, I insisted that we stop and that the family be rearranged in such a way as to provide the maximum airborne surprise to the maximum number of family members. John was immediately up for this joke and obligingly drove along the relevant stretch of road at maximum speed, so humouring his youngest brother and, no doubt, his own daredevil spirit!

The other episode that stands out in my mind is something I will never forget. The Packard referred to above was preceded by a more modest Ford (I remember it from its rumble seat!). At the time (the summer of 1940), and as Roger relates, the family had taken a holiday home in the town of Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts. Mail had to be picked up every day from the main post office, and, since our house was located on the outskirts, one of John’s daily tasks, as the only member of the family with a driver’s licence, was to retrieve the mail. On one such occasion John took me along. It was a precious time alone with him. On the way home, while driving along a coastal highway by the harbour (the road is still there), John suddenly pressed the accelerator to the floor so as to push the engine to its limit – he ‘gunned it’, in other words. He then proceeded to shout at the top of his lungs! It was a thrilling, exhilarating moment for both of us.

These two episodes, especially the latter one, have always seemed to me to reflect something of that spirit of exultation that one finds expressed in two lines of ‘High Flight’:

I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air. . .

Be that as it may, my memories of John, though precious few, remain with me, and I feel close to him to this day.

Happily, I likewise feel a sense of that same closeness to John through what Roger Cole has now written about him some seventy years later, and I am grateful to Roger for having made the effort.

Preface

I moved to live in the village of Wellingore in Lincolnshire in 1971. I knew little of its past history, but gradually over the years different aspects of its near and distant past became known to me through my own researches and the memories of other residents. Some had family connections in the immediate locality going back several generations and I was fascinated to be able to piece together details of the past from photographs, maps, letters, drawings and personal recollections. This then led me to explore the papers related to the village held in the Lincolnshire Archive and Lincoln Cathedral Library.

In 1970 the most imposing building in the village was Wellingore Hall, standing adjacent to the church. When I enquired about its dilapidated condition, it was explained that it had never recovered from the use it had been put to during the Second World War.

The Hall and its grounds had served as a Mess for hundreds of men and women who serviced and flew from Wellingore airfield and the many others located nearby.

It also gradually became apparent from visitors who came to the village that many of them had travelled from as far away as America and Canada to find where lost loved ones had spent the last months of their lives. From their questions, many of which could not be answered, I determined to try to piece together this almost forgotten history of the village during the years of the Second World War.

Certain names, some famous and known to me, recurred in the answers to my questions, and then one day I was confronted by a Canadian visitor who asked me to show him where the famous author of the poem ‘High Flight’ had been billeted. I had no idea whom he was referring to and so decided to find out who this poet was and how and when he had come to live in the village. Once I had begun to shape my researches, answers and explanations came from many sources. Some provided conflicting evidence, while others, often in casual comments, offered amazing insights into the military occupation of those undocumented years.

In the middle of my research I became friends with David and Caroline Chrisp, who lived in a house near the church called The Grange. Adjacent to Wellingore Hall, it too had been used as an Officers’ Mess during the war and still carried the scars of burnt-out cigarette stubs on its wooden floors. David and Caroline then introduced me to Ivan Henson from Gloucestershire, who had visited them on several occasions in his quest to find out about John Magee. He, like me, shared a fascination about the life and poetry of John Magee.

Our meeting came at an opportune moment when I was searching for the details to substantiate my explorations and he was looking for someone to help him to construct the chronology for his researches in order to write a book. Unfortunately Ivan died before the task was completed. But, with the gift to me of his research papers by his brother Tony, I moved one step closer to achieving our shared ambition to publish an account of the life and achievements of this brilliant young man. The book describes a man who through his unique use of language expressed the thoughts and ideals of all who share a fascination with flight. Thanks then to Ivan. I am sure he would be proud of this story.

My research for this book became a total preoccupation. At first it seemed that everything I wished to know and the documents I wanted to read were thousands of miles away in America, Canada or even China. Even the documents in England were difficult to locate. So, as with all research, one small piece of evidence led to another, and I gradually found that some of the people whom I wanted to meet and talk to from the past were in fact alive and only too willing to tell their story. On the one hand, a nurse who had looked after John for only a few days in a military hospital in Wales in 1939. On the other hand, Elinor, who sustained the longest, closest and most important friendship of his life.

It was Elinor who provided the idea of the way this book might be written. As we sat in front of the fire in her little hillside cottage in Wales, she simply said, ‘I can hear his words now as if he were with us, you should write about him like he is with us now ...you should let his words and mine and anyone else you can meet who loved him like we all did, tell the story for you.’ So that is how the years of meetings with the people who informed my researches have come together in this text. It is not my intention to give the impression that I was present when these intimate and important incidents in his life occurred. Rather it is to give the reader a unique insight into the experiences and conversations, beliefs, loves and despairs, that shaped this incredible young poet and pilot.

I have simply selected cameos from the hundreds of stories about John that have been shared with me by people from all over the world. I have chosen to select and represent them in a particular order, and only time and space have determined how many have found their place in this final selection.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Hugh Magee, John’s brother. He was christened Frederick Hugh, but all his family know him today as Hugh. He has been very generous to me, and I have shared the development of this book with him by reading aloud parts of different chapters during their preparation. His support has provided me with an enabling strength of purpose. The endorsement of his Foreword gives the book a sense of completeness.

I am also indebted to my brother-in-law Malcolm Rowson for his patience and perseverance with me as I struggled to manage the complex technologies of the computer age. He provided not only technical support but a professional evaluation of the writing, and accompanied me on some of the more unusual interviews and excursions that informed the text.

I hope that the aspects of John’s life that inspired me to bring these chapters together will provide others with an insight into the values, purposes and beliefs of this exceptional young man.

We do not need to surmise as to what John might have achieved but celebrate and be thankful for what he did! Thank you to all of you, both those living now and others sadly deceased, for helping me to create this unique record of the life and work of John Magee.

(Publisher’s note: We would like to express our appreciation to Linda Granfield for her assistance with the picture section captions.)

Note on the Text

The Reverend John Gillespie Magee was born in 1884 in America and served as a missionary in Nanking, China, for twenty-eight years. Here he met Faith Backhouse, who was also a missionary, and they married and had four children. Their firstborn, a son, was christened John Gillespie Magee, and usually Jnr is added to his title in order to differentiate him from his father.

Whenever there is any risk of ambiguity in this book, the father will be referred to as Reverend John.

Chapter 1

The Fertile Fields of Lincolnshire

It is said by wistful men who work the flat and fertile fields of Lincolnshire that the snowflakes that hurtle horizontally across the ploughed winter furrows began their storm-swept and relentless journey on the Russian steppes.

The seemingly flat and low land of Lincolnshire forms part of the easterly seaboard of the island of England but provides no shelter from the easterly winds and thrashing sea along its coastline. Over centuries its landmass has even been extended in parts by the deposits of its lashing tides and the vagaries of swirling sand storms. In summer other winds prevail from the south-west, but further inland, where they whip up the fertile loam in blinding swirls that terminate their abrasive journey stacked up beneath the hedges that divide