Dame Vera Lynn: 'All I actually did was sing'

Aug 24 2009 By Hannah Stephenson

Forces sweetheart and national treasure Dame Vera Lynn, now 92, talks about her wartime experiences, her friendship with the late Queen Mother and how her charity work has filled the gap left when she retired from singing, as her memoir, Some Sunny Day, is published ahead of the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War Two.

When she sang We'll Meet Again and The White Cliffs Of Dover it reminded "our boys" that the country was four-square behind them and that the warm glow of home awaited their return.

But Dame Vera Lynn, now a sprightly 92, is struggling to find a comparison between that wartime era and the current conflict being fought by British soldiers in Afghanistan.

Although she has taken care to avoid controversy and remain apolitical over the years, she recently said she doesn't understand why British troops are in Afghanistan, pointing out that years ago we would fight for our own country but now we are involved in other countries' problems.

Indeed, she finds it hard to compare a war which is being fought in a foreign land to the Second World War when bombs were dropping on London, homes were destroyed and people lived for the day.

"The Second World War was at home. Yes, our boys were going away to fight but we were also fighting here and trying to deal with the problems. Everyone was coping with what we had," she says.

"When wars are away from your own country, naturally, although your boys are over there, if you haven't actually got anybody out there fighting who's close to you, you don't feel it so much."

Today, Dame Vera has long since given up singing - she performed publicly for the last time at the 1995 VE Day celebrations - but she's still very much in demand and her memory is as sharp as a knife.

She may have retired from singing, but not a week goes by when she isn't asked to cut a ribbon, attend a charity event - she is president of the Dame Vera Lynn Trust for Children with Cerebral Palsy and patron of the Breast Cancer Research Trust - or go to a veterans' anniversary.

She has also brought out her revised and reissued memoir, Some Sunny Day, ahead of the 70th anniversary of the start of the Second World War next month.

A quiet retirement in the Sussex Downs, where she lives next door to her only daughter, Virginia, simply isn't on the cards for the plumber's daughter from East Ham.

While she is deemed a "national treasure" by many, it's a tag she feels slightly uncomfortable with.

"It's wonderful to be called something like that, but it's hard to believe when all I actually did was sing," she says.

While she recalls the hardships suffered by those at home and abroad during the war, she reflects that people are no happier today.

"In the war, you never knew if you were going to be here the next day. People didn't dwell on that. They just kept going.

"People were happier because there was so little to have and they were willing to share what there was. What you never had you never missed. Today, the material things are there for people to have. The more they have, the more they want."

Dame Vera began singing at the age of seven in working men's clubs, pushed into it by her mother, and enjoyed a successful radio career before making her mark entertaining the troops.

By January 1940 she was selling more records every month than Bing Crosby, had worked with some of the famous bands of the era and performed to great acclaim at prestigious venues such as the London Palladium.

She entertained the Queen Mother and the Queen (then Princess Elizabeth) at Windsor Castle and formed a friendship with the Queen Mother which continued until she died.

One of her favourite photographs of herself sharing a joke with "Mum", as the Queen Mother liked to be known, is displayed on her grand piano in her sitting room.

"She was lovely, very down-to-earth and very much attached to the forces and very family-orientated," says Dame Vera.

But it was in 1944, when she went to entertain the troops in Burma - covering the unforgiving terrain of Egypt, Bahrain, Karachi, Bombay and Calcutta en route - that she truly became the Forces Sweetheart.

"I remember it being very hot. Imagine living on the edge of the jungle, with no running water, no sanitation, just living in a grass hut with a couple of buckets. Water was brought in, but it was an experience that has never left me."

Not only did she sing, but she socialised with the troops and visited hospitals to bring comfort to the injured.

"I wasn't a glamour girl. I was an ordinary girl they could relate to. I spoke their language and was on the same wavelength."

After the war, music changed and although she remained busy for the next decade, the Sixties were difficult.

"The Beatles came along and the tempo changed. The kind of songs that were accepted prior to and during the war were quite different. I had a problem finding new songs.

"It was quite frustrating because I used to like the modern songs, but people wanted the old songs."

In the Seventies, she decided to discreetly bow out and retire quietly, just fading from the limelight, although she continued to do benefit shows for charity.

"The final concert at Buckingham Palace was such a big event, I couldn't have had a better farewell concert and I thought it would be wise not to push it. I didn't want people to say, 'She's losing her voice, why doesn't she give up?'"

She says she doesn't miss singing per se, but she does miss the expression and emotions it brought.

"When you sing, you are using your emotions and are singing words you wouldn't normally say to people. It was a contact with people. That's what I missed when I gave it up, feeling close to people. It's like writing a love letter to someone."

She says she doesn't listen to music now. "I had so much of it when I was working, from being a small child. You don't always want to take work home with you."

Today, she lives alone. Her husband Harry, a musician who gave up his career to support hers, died in 1998 from a stroke after 57 years of marriage - and she still feels the loss.

"It was very hard. We'd had an unusual life together. Unlike most married people, where the husband comes home after work, we'd had every day and every hour together, so I probably felt the loss much more. He handled everything - I never even answered the phone.

"I tried to carry on as he would want me to. He revelled in my success."

Although she only has one daughter, Virginia, now 63, Dame Vera has an expanded family thanks to her daughter's stepdaughter and her three children, whom she regards as her great grandchildren.

"I was over there last night for dinner. We do a lot together. If I'm asked to go somewhere and need a bit of support, Virginia will come with me."

Dame Vera may not understand Afghanistan, but she hasn't lost faith in the British bulldog spirit.

"If we had to go to war now, I think we could cope very well. When the Brits are against the wall, that's when they start coming forward."