Dame Vera Lynn.

There is a documentary on bbc2 at 9pm, it's just started

Missed it granyben will watch later on catch up.

We caught up with it half way through and wished that we had watched it all the way through. You can't put a value on the immeasurable good she did for morale during the war. She was very single minded about her career after the war too, it seems. I didn't realise that she was the first recording artist to have a number one in America. Well done, Dame Vera, and congratulations on your hundredth year!

Someone who has had 100 years and made good use of them, bless her.

Watched it last night she is so loved and a wonderful example to all women.

Congratulations Dame Vera, an inspirational woman.

She visited and sang to a group somewhere where my Dad was posted in the war and he was thrilled to bits to act as her 'taxi' driver to take her back to wherever she was staying. He didn't talk much about the war but she certainly made an impression!!

I never have never met her but apparently she is a distant relation. According to my Grandma she was a 2nd cousin or something which would make her several times removed from me but GM always talked about this & had met her a few times when she was very young. I think this was long before she became a singer.
Mind you we are all related to each other in some way I believe- 9 degrees of separation or something.

I can still see my dad sitting by our radio on a Sunday morning, and hear Vera Lynn singing one of her songs; it always seems to be summer time. She could always engage her audience with her singing which made her so popular with the forces abroad, and those of us at home.

Heartwarming programme last night and the elderly gentlemen certainly brought home how much she meant to our servicemen. She has wonderful memories and a loving daughter.

I've got my tin hat on ready as I can't stand the woman.

OK Vera Lynn was a morale booster during the last world war but so were many other entertainers and it took me a long time to realise that. Since I first saw footage of British soldiers at war it seemed to always have VL in the background singing 'We'll meet again' or 'Bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover' or 'A Nightingale sang in Barclay Square' etc etc etc. She seems to get trotted out at every commemoration and IMO has lived on a reputation forged many years ago for doing the job she was paid for, the same as the soldiers, the war correspondents and photographers and countless other. She was a singer from her childhood, giving up school to tour the music halls, and the war was a great PR opportunity for her. I could go on but you get the picture.

My elderly neighbours were convinced the album recently released is actually her singing now, whereas it is a rehash of old recordings with co-singers engineered on to make it sound new

A really lovely programme and good to see Vera so attractive and alert at 100.

She was the right person for the right job at the right time, Swanny

Swanny I really like Vera Lynn but I think you're brave to voice your opinion - I never really liked Terry Wogan but have never admitted it till now!! I feel the same about VL as I do about the Queen, that somehow they're a link to my mother. That probably sounds a bit mad but it's true ...

Swanny. You don't say why you dislike VL. She raised spirits and gave hope to millions both in the forces and at home, I think that's why she's become an icon.

Really enjoyed the programme, reminded me of DOM who was born the same year but didn't quite make 100.

Many other entertainers contributed to keeping up morale during those years, both amid the shortages, worry and destruction at home and among those far from home, who faced personal danger and horrors, but were not even able to let their families know exactly where they were and what they had been doing, because their letters were rightly censored to black out anything that could help give detauils of military plans.

Vera Lynn was one of them, she

I do not mind Vera Lynn, I am sick to death hearing the same songs. I visited somebody in a care home a while ago and it was Vera Lynn songs which were blasting out whereas most of the residents were of the early rock and roll era.

Swanny I think that VL is admired because of her bravery - she was one of very few entertainers (& even fewer women) who insisted not only on entertaining the troops right on the front line, but especially the 'Forgotten Army' in Burma - and who visited the hospitals where the men who had suffered so terribly in Japanese POW camps and as slaves building the Death Railway were being treated.
She earned huge respect by visiting and entertaining men who were dying in the most terrible ways, and chatting to them as though they were in the next garden... I admire her greatly for her humanity - she could have been much more comfortable nearer home, but chose discomfort and danger to bring some relief to those men.

Vera Lynn was one of them, she may have received more publicity than some others and became the poster girl and the Forces Sweetheart, but she didn't go into it coldly, as a "career move", she could have done plenty of other things for her career, she could have shot off the the States for one thing. and I don't think she has ever minimised what others did.

I don't know what there is to hate about her. You might find her songs and style over-sentimental now, but they were of their time, and they still bring a tear to the eye.

What is relevant now is, that she is still around - she has outlived most of those other brave souls who toured war zones to bring some cheer to the lads. So of course she is still the poster girl.

That was the second half of my previous post, which somehow got cut off.

I agree with your sentiments Caro1954. Swanny is indeed entitled to her opinion. Likewise I was never a fan of Terry Wogan, or indeed many of the other so-called "national treasures".

Elegran I said I can't stand her, not that I hate her

Would someone enlighten me, please? I thought this thread only started this morning but I note an inclusion from Grannyben referring to VL programme 'just starting' at 2100. Yet something else I could use help with........ Ta in anticipation.