Famous WWII singer Vera Lynn dies at age 103

Vera Lynn, who sang the songs that touched the hearts and lifted the spirits of Britons from the bombblitzed streets of London and Coventry to the sands of North Africa and the jungles of Burma during World War II, died Thursday at her home in Sussex, England. She was 103.

Her death was confirmed by her representative, Andrew Gordon.

In those wartime years, Lynn became known as the “Forces’ Sweetheart,” and long afterward the melodies lingered on: “We’ll Meet Again,” “(There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White

Cliffs of Dover,” “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.” Indeed, to the end of her life the veterans were her “boys,” still misty-eyed when she sang, “We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when.”

“Churchill didn’t beat the Nazis,” British comedian Harry Secombe once said. “Vera sang them to death.”

Lynn herself once said: “People used to say that my singing gave them courage and hope. I think that is a great compliment.”

At a time when American fighting men plastered their barracks with pinups of Betty Grable, Lana Turner and Rita Hayworth, it was Lynn and her simple, sentimental ballads that captured the affections of British troops. “I always believed what I was singing,” she once said. “My songs reminded the boys what they were really fighting for — precious personal things rather than ideologies.”

She had come a long way from East Ham, the London neighborhood where she was born Vera Welch on

March 20, 1917. Her father, Bertram, was a plumber. Her mother, Annie, fostered her daughter’s performing career.