Antigon Mars was born on September 5, 1919, on a ship sailing across the Atlantic Ocean when his mother was traveling from France to the United States. He and his siblings grew up in Watertown, Minnesota. Mars enlisted in the Aviation Cadet Program in 1942, and was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant and awarded his Navigator Wings in 1943. Lt Mars deployed to England with the 707th Bomb Squadron of the 446th Bomb Group in November 1943, where he served as a B-24 Liberator Navigator until his aircraft was shot down and he was killed in action over Hanover, Germany, on March 8, 1944. He was originally buried with his crew in Europe, and the group remains were reinterred at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in Lemay, Missouri, on April 10, 1950.

High Flight

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 windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.