Greatest love of all: How Vera Lynn wooed the troops who kept her safe

IN AN age before television, when the only pictures were the pin-ups tucked into their vest pockets, Vera Lynn was the name on every soldier's lips.
Then and now: Dame Vera Lynn at 100Then and now: Dame Vera Lynn at 100
Then and now: Dame Vera Lynn at 100

She had neither the legs of Betty Grable nor the eyes of Bette Davis, but it wasn’t film star looks they were after. She was the girl next door, the one whose unbearably poignant songs reminded them of being back home. That’s why she was the one they picked as the forces’ sweetheart.

Yet, in a moving interview to be broadcast tonight, on the eve of her 100th birthday, she reveals that she needed them as much as they wanted her.

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At a defining moment in the nation’s history, Dame Vera’s radio letters to the boys on the front line embodied the very values they were fighting for.

Vera Lynn painting at her home in Finchley, London, in 1956Vera Lynn painting at her home in Finchley, London, in 1956
Vera Lynn painting at her home in Finchley, London, in 1956

“You’ll hear from me again next week,” she intoned every Sunday night, from November 1941. “Goodnight, boys. Sincerely yours, Vera Lynn.”

In a world in which nothing was certain, they echoed her words, longing them to come true. “We’ll meet again”, they wrote to their loved ones, but they did not know if they ever would.

Dame Vera had first travelled to entertain her “boys” in France, at the outset of the hostilities, and she continued to do so after VE Day, visiting the “forgotten Fourteenth Army”, still fighting in Burma.

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But it was an earlier posting to south east Asia that had brought her closest to danger, she reveals in tonight’s BBC2 interview.

Dame Vera LynnDame Vera Lynn
Dame Vera Lynn

It was on a 1944 outing with ENSA, the Entertainments National Service Association, that she had woken up to find four Japanese fighters prowling outside her hut.

“I always knew I was being very well looked after,” she said. “The boys never left my side.”

She also recalls the night British soldiers had to hold her piano together when it fell apart mid-performance, after a bumpy jeep drive through the jungle.

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But her biggest problem in Burma, she says, was the heat. “Trying to put make-up on was my first mistake, and I shouldn’t have got a perm.”

Vera Lynn painting at her home in Finchley, London, in 1956Vera Lynn painting at her home in Finchley, London, in 1956
Vera Lynn painting at her home in Finchley, London, in 1956

The programme includes interviews with war veterans who met her in the field.

One recalls a dangerous two-hour trip through the Burmese jungle to meet her, while another describes hearing her sing as “the best bottle of medicine”.

Dame Vera’s unique connection with the troops was forged through her choice of music.

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She introduced her programmes on the BBC forces’ service, broadcasting to “the boys in khaki and two shades of blue”, with her signature tune, Wishing (Will Make It So), and sprinkled their personal messages to their families back home with indelible favourites like (There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs Of Dover, an American tune in which the title is thought to refer not to wild bluebirds, which are not indigenous to Britain, but to the blue uniformed RAF pilots.

Dame Vera LynnDame Vera Lynn
Dame Vera Lynn

But the material did not come easily to her, she reveals tonight.

Having never had professional musical training, she had to spend “hours leafing through sheet music” in London’s Denmark Street to find the songs she wanted to perform.

“I always looked at the lyrics first because I thought they were more important, and if I liked them then I would look at the tune,” she says.

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Two generations on, her voice still evokes images of wartime spirit in a Britain that no longer exists.

To celebrate her 100th birthday, she will release a new album today, March 17, three days before she reaches the milestone.

The record features new re-orchestrated versions of her most beloved music alongside her original vocals.

It is thought the collection will make Dame Vera the first singer to have released a new album as a centenarian.