During the second world war, Vera Lynn felt it was her special duty to cheer up those who were forgotten
her pay for singing with the Bert Ambrose band was doubled in 1938, Vera Lynn bought herself a fur coat. She also got a green Austin 10 with a soft canvas top, and a three-bed semi for herself and her parents in Barking. There she could soak in her very own big bath and go to the lavatory indoors. But the coat was the first thing she bought. It cost £75. Every young girl in the 1930s wanted that sort of coat, of course.
So she proved during the second world war, when songs she’d found— “We’ll Meet Again”, “The White Cliffs of Dover”, “There’ll Always be an England”—had an extraordinary effect on Britain. Her voice, whether on scratchy 78s, crackling through a wireless or live in London halls with sirens wailing outside, became the bluebird of “White Cliffs” that flew hopefully above the horrors.
It was her special duty, she felt, to cheer up boys who were forgotten. In Burma, the toughest part of the trip, she was one girl among 6,000 men. She swapped her flowing chiffon frock for shapeless khakis that at least kept the mosquitoes out, and sang until her make-up ran in the humidity and her voice became a croak. In camp she lived as the boys did, in a grass hut, washing out of a bucket.
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