Brother’s WWII Poem

I was very touched to read Sister Rita Angerman’s Dec. 26 letter about my brother John’s poem, “High Flight.” I would like to share a special memory of mine about the poem. I had followed John to Avon Old Farms School in Connecticut. In my senior year the school was taken over by the Army for blind war veterans, so I could not graduate. Even though I was underage, I wanted to do my part and serve in the war, as John had. As the minister of St. John’s Church in Washington, my father had many high-level contacts. He called up an admiral in the U.S. Maritime Service, which was the uniformed training service for the Combat Merchant Marine and the admiral told him, “Send him down. He is in.” After completing my training in Sheepshead Bay, N.Y., I served aboard hazardous-duty oil tankers in both Atlantic and Pacific convoys.

I always had to stand tall and be a man, particularly when we were called to battle stations, because as a 16-year-old I was the youngest boy on the ship crews. My facade failed when the war ended, when we were in Okinawa, happy to be alive. When we were not on duty, the entire crew was on the fantail of the ship listening to the news on a loudspeaker, which I had helped to put up. While I was standing there I heard Orson Welles in his command performance to the troops say, “I now want to recite for you what I believe to be the finest poem to have come out of this war, ‘High Flight,’ by Pilot Officer John Magee.” When I heard my own brother’s words, I was struck speechless and was crying my head off. All the old salts were looking at me wondering what was the matter with Magee, but I just could not talk.

CHRISTOPHER MAGEE SR.

Los Angeles