Do not despair For Johnny-head-in-air; He sleeps as sound As Johnny underground. Fetch out no shroud For Johnny-in-the-cloud; And keep your tears For him in after years. Better by far For Johnny-the-bright-star, To keep your head, And see his children fed.
In 1940, during World War II, John Pudney was commissioned into the Royal Air Force as an intelligence officer and as a member of the Air Ministry's Creative Writers Unit.
It was while he was serving as squadron intelligence officer at St Eval in Cornwall that he wrote one of the best-known poems of the war.[1] For Johnny evoked popular fellow-feeling in the London of 1941. Written during an air raid, it was published first in the News Chronicle, and featured significantly in the film The Way to the Stars: