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I was reading about John Gillespie Magee who wrote one of my favourite poems, High Flight. If you don't know it, look it up and read his story. He was a fighter pilot who wrote the most amazing poem about flying, but was killed in 1941 while flying his Spitifire, aged only 19. He is buried at Scopwick in Lincolnshire so I decided to go on a mission to visit him this afternoon.

The Falco was flowing and eagre (it always goes well in cool weather), and the whole round trip of about 170 miles was done in four hours. Brilliant and tinged with sadness at all the graves of fighter pilots - all of whom were just kids really. Put everything into perspective...

i did,nt know that, i might give that place a visit tomorrow, i've visited the war graves twice in normandy and it breaks your heart when you look at the ages of the boys. the youngest in the british cemartry is just 17.

Amazing to think he died at 19; I'm 43, feel quite youthful and have 3 young children. I do feel rather lucky. There's a good chance I'll reach 80 though, so I'm just over half way. Now what a thought! Really must try to keep pushing forward and make the best use of that time. Thanks for the thought FalcoJock.

Watched Dad's Army today and I was thinking just how normal the guys were who were sent up in the skies or out in boats or out across the lands to fight were.

Normal people doing extraordinary things with so little training.
It makes an NVQ seem so long an in depth. These guys were out of whatever civilian job or walk of life they were in, shoved quickly through training and then a bit of futher training specific to role, then out at the (very) sharp end.

Seeing that happen again of late on the ground in Afghan. See a bloke on the dole one month, he joins up, then 8 months later he can realistically be found kicking it with the bad boys in Sangin.

I guess thats the problem with being a small island nation.