War-Time Songs Still Haunt Vera Lynn

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30058, 16 February 1963, Page 2

War-Time Songs Still Haunt Vera Lynn

Many an “old dig” of World War 11, now middle-aged and growing a bit sentimental in retrospect about his service days, will drift off into nostalgia when he hears Vera Lynn singing “Yours.” And that song has a special poignancy for the singer as well.

“At the time I was singing it most often I had just become engaged to my husband (Mr Harry Lewis) and he had joined the ‘Squadronairs,’ the R.A.F. dance orchestra,” Miss Lynn said in Christchurch yesterday. “We were parted for four years.”

They were emotional days when the Nazi bombs were falling on blacked-out London—ftir men and women separated indefinitely from the ones who meant most to them. Vera Lynn was one of them and her songs were full of fellow-feeling. Later, when the Commonwealth prisoners of war poured into Britain, that song in particular pierced their numbed spirits. Sentiment was a healing salve. “Sweeter Life" One of them, now greying at the temples and watching his weirfm, said yesterday: "Vera was terrific. Every lonely bloke who had been *in the bag’ suddenly remembered a sweeter life and felt like facing the folks at home

again. Whenever I hear that song about the lights going on all over the world again. I’m wafted back 18 years.” Songs like “The White Cliff® of Dover,” and “When the Lights of London Shine Again” carried a message of optimism.

“The war years were the most satisfying part of my career,” Miss Lynn said. “Everyone wanted to do something to help. If I was bringing some consolation to servicemen and women and the British themselves, I felt I was making a contribution.” Wherever she was—in Britain, Egypt, India, or Burma—the singer and the audience were in rapport.

“It was as if we were all sharing a certain something together,” she said. Throughout New Zealand old soldiers, seamen, and airmen have called on her backstage after her shows. Many of her visitors have been new settlers in the Dominion, who were living in England during the war. No-one forgets the fresh-faced, friendly Miss Lynn. In London, taxidrivers and doormen still stop and remind her of a certain concert in the blitz, a certain song. Sometimes they ask her to sing a bar or two. ‘‘lt’s nice that they still remember,” she said. Travelling with Miss Lynn on her tour are her husband, now a London music publisher, and their teen-age daughter, Virginia. Virginia Lewis has no inclination to sing. The footlights do not appeal. But the call of show business has not escaped her. She wants to do continuity work in films: in the meantime She is getting in practice by watching television for production flaws.

Presented Many

Times

Somewhere in the crowd cheering the Royal visitors during their week-end in Christchurch there will probably be a face familiar to the Queen—Vera Lynn’s. Miss Lynn, who opened her variety show in Christchurch last evening, has been presented to the Queen many times. “But whenever we hear the Queen is near we always dash out to see her,” Miss Lynn said yesterday. Vera Lynn was one of the artists in a concert programme held .at Windsor Castle by King George VI and the Queen Mother tq celebrate Princess Elizabeth’s sixteenth birthday. It is one of Miss Lynn’s happiest memories in a long career. "I have a lovely record album of this, signed by the Queen (then Princess Eliszabeth) and Princess Margaret,” said Miss Lynn, who has been a Royal command performer seven times.