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 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.