Captain (retired) Al Seward’s version of High Flight

“On January 4, 2018 Al Seward, RCAF, Retired Flight Lieutenant (Captain) slipped the surly bonds of earth. Al Seward had danced the skies on laughter and silver wings. Sunward he had climbed in his T-33 jet and then dove, joining the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things in an airplane that he had never dreamed of as a boy.

“Flight Lieutenant Seward wheeled and soared and swung his silver T-33 Jet Trainer, high in the sunlit silence – hovering there over Gimli, Manitoba.

“He chased the shouting wind along and over the North Atlantic in his heavily armed amphibian Canso protecting wartime convoys. He flung his huge Sunderland flying boat PP155 through footless halls of air over the mountains of Malaya and down onto the Gulf of Thailand chasing Japanese Navy patrol boats. “And Al Seward flew up, up the long, delicious, burning blue and topped the wind-swept heights of the Coast Range of British Columbia with easy grace and then over the fjords of Norway fighting forest fires in his Canso Water Bomber.

“He flew where never a lark or even an eagle flew. Al, with silent lifting mind knowing flying airplanes was his destiny – preferring to fly than trod, he soared through the untrespassed sanctity of space and put out his hand and touched the face of God.” The poem High Flight was written in 1941 by Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, Jr. age 19, a Spitfire pilot with 421 Falcon Squadron, RCAF. P/O Magee Jr. was killed in December 1941 when his Spitfire was in a mid-air collision over England. 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