I never thought of stardom – I just wanted to do my bit
Dame Vera Lynn writes of ‘just doing my bit’ in the war with affection in a new book. She shares memories with David Wigg
Dame Vera Lynn could be forgiven for forgetting the odd wartime memory – she turned 100 earlier this year, after all. But the Forces’ Sweetheart regales me with tales of entertaining troops on the front lines in Burma as if they might have taken place earlier this week; the camp at which 6,000 servicemen sat under the sweltering sun, singing the chorus of We’ll Meet Again back to her, or throwing a cold bowl of water over her head in absence of a shower.
“It was very emotional,” she says of her time “singing to the boys… They loved that song because it was full of hope that they’d return home and see their family and loved ones again.”
Indeed Dame Vera, as she became following the 1975 Birthday Honours list, became a symbol of the nation’s keep calm and carry on spirit during the Second World War, travelling from south-east Asia to Egypt and India to entertain soldiers when not doing so via her radio programme, Sincerely Yours. The Sunday night BBC show, first broadcast in November 1941, became a moraleboosting link between servicemen and their families – even Churchill used to tune in to hear her read out messages to the troops overseas from their loved ones, and sing songs on request.
Hearing that the troops were being starved of entertainment is what drove the then 27-year-old to volunteer – a period she speaks of with great fondness in her new book, Keep Smiling Through. Did she ever imagine the impact she would have from being the first artist to make such a trip? “Well no. I never tended to think about things like that,” she says. “You just sort of go and do the job and hoped the boys enjoyed it. They were all so very young.” For Dame Vera, who spent three months travelling thousands of miles – mostly in bumpy vans – with her piano and pianist, Len, the dangers of visiting war-ravaged countries mattered little: “I just wanted to do my bit.”
That’s not to say that she didn’t have her fair share of nerve-racking moments, like visiting the Forgotten 14th Army in Burma, then a British colony, who would “come out of the jungle and sit on the grass and listen, and then get up and go back with their Tommy guns over their shoulders”, or waking up one morning to find “four captured Japanese soldiers leaning against my basha – the little grass hut I slept in. They were just sitting there on the floor with their legs stretched straight out, and I passed so close I had to step over their legs.” The reality of roughing it in war zones was stark: apart from the injuries they may have received fighting, many of the soldiers were suffering from illnesses like malaria, dysentery and typhus. Everything, including food and water, was dropped in by the RAF and the prospects of make-up or nice clothes were, for the most part, an impossibility. “I had never been so hot in my life. I took one pretty pink dress with me, like I did when I did performances at home. But after one performance, it got absolutely soaking [with perspiration] and the boys started laughing.
“Anyway,” she adds with a smile, “I was never the glamorous type like Betty Grable of that day. And the soldiers always treated me with the greatest respect – I think I reminded them of their sisters, their sweethearts, the wives they’d left behind and what they were fighting for.”
She opted for the simplicity of a slick of lipstick and a khaki uniform instead. “I think people looked at me as one of them – an ordinary girl from an ordinary family with a voice they could recognise.
“I really don’t know what the reason is,” she says modestly of her place in the nation’s heart, musing that it is “perhaps because I never left England and went to America – I think the public sort of appreciated that. I visited and I did some shows over there, but I never had any ambitions to settle over there. I could never have left England.”
Public adoration remains fervent, with Dame Vera’s home in the historical village of Ditchling, East Sussex, sprinkled with fluffy toys sent in by fans. (Even my cab driver en route from the station tells me that “she is our treasure”).
Over the years, she has amassed hundreds of letters and photographs from troops and their families; her daughter Virginia, with whom she now lives, helped select some for inclusion in Keep Smiling Through. “The problem was, what to leave out, not what to put in. We had so many,” she explains over a slice of lemon drizzle cake.
Her vast array of fans include monarchs, too: a favourite with the late Queen Mother, she was invited to Windsor Castle to sing at Princess Elizabeth’s 16th birthday. “I sang my hit Yours – the Princess’s favourite song then – as well as Happy Birthday. I’m sure she’ll never have forgotten it.” There is also a message from the now-queen on her mantelpiece, congratulating her on reaching centenarian status. Other well-known admirers included Field Marshal Montgomery, whose appreciation of her work was such that he gave her a diamond brooch in the form of a figure eight, representing the Eighth Army, when she gave an El-alamein reunion concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 1948. “I’ve got a lovely photograph of us laughing our heads off,” she says. “The press said, ‘What on earth were you talking about? We’ve never seen him laugh before!’ He was known to be pretty serious.”
But that is the effect Dame Vera has had – and continues to have – on so many. Among the birthday cards are framed gold and silver discs marking her enormous record sales – this year, she became the UK’S bestselling female artist following the release of Vera Lynn 100, which sold over 100,000 copies, and the
‘I think I reminded them of their sisters, sweethearts, wives they’d left behind’
birthday celebrations have not stopped, with a tribute show at the London Palladium and a BBC Two documentary earlier this year.
It was her mother Annie, a dressmaker, who encouraged young Vera to sing: aged just seven, she was singing in the working men’s clubs in London’s East End, near her home in East Ham. “I could make enough money at the weekends singing and it sometimes ended up with me earning more money than my father [Bert, a plumber] did.”
She made her first record at the age of 18 in 1936 and later went on to be managed by her husband Harry Lewis, a saxophonist in the RAF dance orchestra the Squadronnaires, until his death from a stroke in 1999.
In spite of her musical life, Dame Vera has never had a singing lesson. Not that it matters, of course. “I’ve been blessed to be able to sing and perform,” she says as she gives me a warm hug goodbye. “I tried to use it to the best of my ability to help whatever cause I might be involved with.” As the troops, and the nation, can attest, she most certainly has.