John Gillespie Magee was born in Shanghai, China, to an American father and a British mother, who both worked as Anglican missionaries.

Whilst there he met his future wife, Faith Emmeline Backhouse, who came from Helmingham in Suffolk and was a member of the Church Missionary Society.

In 1931, he moved with his mother to England and spent the following four years at St Clare, a preparatory school for boys, in Walmer, in the county of Kent.

He was impressed by the school's Roll of Honour listing its pupils who had fallen in the First World War, which included the Edwardian poet Rupert Brooke (1887–1915), whose writing style Magee emulated.

The prize-winning poem by Magee centred upon the burial of Brooke's body at 11 o'clock at night in an olive grove on the Greek island of Skyros in April 1915.

One of these relatives was his uncle, Pittsburgh lawyer and Congressman James McDevitt Magee, who had served as a first lieutenant in the United States Army Air Service during the First World War.

His attitude toward the war gradually evolved from one approaching pacifism to a decision to become a pilot to help protect his friends in Britain.

Stabler recalled:[7] One afternoon, after lying on top of a tower [at the School] for a couple of hours in the sun, Magee turned to his companion and suddenly announced, “Well, I think I’ll join the R.A.F.” He once again stayed with his family in Martha's Vineyard in the summer of 1940, learning to drive and having a very active social life:[8] Mornings on the beach, surrounded by a bevy of girls .

When his father remonstrated with him once on turning night into day, John answered, "My generation does not expect to live long, and we want to enjoy ourselves while we may.

"After discussions with his parents, he decided to go to Canada to join the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), with the intention of learning to fly, and then being sent to Britain.

Shortly after his promotion to the rank of pilot officer, after having been awarded his wings, Magee was sent to the United Kingdom, where on arrival he was posted to No.

On 8 November 1941, he took part in a sortie to Occupied France escorting bombers attacking railway workshops at Lille.

In the course of the engagement Magee fired 160 rounds of .303 ammunition, but made no claim for the infliction of damage to the enemy on returning to base in England.

[16] On 11 December 1941, in his tenth week of active service, Magee was killed while flying Spitfire VZ-H (Serial No.

412 Squadron from RAF Wellingore (the airfield post-war has now reverted to agriculture) to practise air fighting tactics.

During the performance, Magee's aircraft was involved in a mid-air collision with an Airspeed Oxford trainer (Serial No.T1052) flying out of RAF Cranwell, piloted by 19-year-old Leading Aircraftman/Pilot Under-Training Ernest Aubrey Griffin.

At the inquiry afterwards a local farmer who witnessed the accident testified that he saw Magee after the collision struggling to push back the canopy of his Spitfire as it descended apparently out of control.

Part of the official letter to his parents read, "Your son's funeral took place at Scopwick Cemetery, near Digby Aerodrome, at 2.30 pm, on Saturday, 13 December 1941, the service being conducted by Flight Lieutenant S. K. Belton, the Canadian padre of this Station.

Magee's posthumous fame rests mainly on his sonnet High Flight, which he began writing on 18 August 1941 (a few months before his death) while stationed at No.

[23] Portions of the poem appear on many of the headstones in the Arlington National Cemetery, and it is inscribed in full on the back of the Space Shuttle Challenger Memorial.

It is the subject of a permanent display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, in Dayton, Ohio.

They that have climbed the white mists of the morning; They that have soared, before the world's awake, To herald up their foeman to them, scorning The thin dawn's rest their weary folk might take; Some that have left other mouths to tell the story Of high, blue battle, quite young limbs that bled, How they had thundered up the clouds to glory, Or fallen to an English field stained red.

Because my faltering feet would fail I find them Laughing beside me, steadying the hand That seeks their deadly courage – Yet behind them The cold light dies in that once brilliant Land .... Do these, who help the quickened pulse run slowly, Whose stern, remembered image cools the brow, Till the far dawn of Victory, know only Night's darkness, and Valhalla's silence now?