Vera Lynn was a young voice of a singer for the Second World War with warm, coming home safe songs like ‘We’ll Meet Again’ and ‘(There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) White Cliffs of Dover’
A Brief One from Doug Draper
Posted June 18th, 2020 on Niagara At Large
Vera Lynn, during her Second World War era days
Most people reading this may not remember her, and I only do through my now late parents, but Vera Lynn was a youthful singer in Great Britain who helped allied troops fighting fascism want to finish it up and come home to their families and friends.
She was often called Britain’s “sweetheart” during those perilous years of war, and was a prototype for British singers like Petula Clark a few decades later.
Vera Lynn died this June 18th at age 103, but not before one of those Second World War era songs went viral again with a younger singer virtually accompanying here at the Royal Albert Hall.
The song was ‘We’ll Meet Again’ – a perfect message for soldiers fighting on foreign fields in the 1940s, and a perfect one again for those of us who have been dying, during this ongoing COVID-19 nightmare, to get back together with good friends.
To watch a recently produced video of Vera Lynn, in several moments over the years, singing that song, click on the screen below –
Vera Lynn was one of the last of the living icons from the Second World War era, and many of the people she sang her songs to – members of what have come to be known as “the greatest generation” – are gone.
One of the few of that generation left, Queen Elizabeth II of England, used the words ‘we’ll meet again’ in a recent global address she delivered to help us through the Coronavirus crisis.
Many of them have died over the last two or three months in underfunded long-term care homes in Ontario and other regions of Canada and the United States.
Michael Enright, on his program CBC Sunday Edition, recently reprised an interview he did with Vera Lynn about a decade ago. If you are interested in a link to the story around that and the podcast interview, click on – https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/the-sunday-edition-for-may-10-2020-1.5554451/a-virtual-performance-by-vera-lynn-to-mark-the-75th-anniversary-of-ve-day-1.5453165
Before we leave this little tribute to Very Lynn, it would be remiss of me not to reprise that last few minutes where her recording of “We’ll Mieet Again’ was used when the world ended in nuclear explosions in the dark film satire ‘Dr. Strangelove’. Here is that final scene –
So Long Vera Lynn. RIP
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