Hello, I'm Kirsty Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1989 and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway on this, the 50th anniversary of the declaration of war, is a woman who was central to the British war.

Effort. Her missions were those most eagerly awaited by our troops and she became a symbol of British determination, fortitude and optimism. No secret agent she however nor a soldier either. In those days they simply called her the forces sweetheart. Today we welcome her more grandly but no less affectionately as Dame Vera Lynn. Welcome on this anniversary day to Desert Island Discs. I presume it feels nothing like 50 years ago since you heard those fateful words on the radio, Britain is at war with Germany.

Well, it's such a long time ago, you know, and so much has happened since then. But I can clearly remember simply sitting in the garden with my parents and Harry listening to the radio, expecting whatever was to come because everyone was very much on edge. And when we heard war had been declared. And of course it was a war in which you were to become very important and as well as very famous.

Regard yourself as much as a sweetheart as a messenger did you? Well yes I was the girl next door really because I wasn't a glamorous type and they didn't look at me as a sort of a pin-up kind but I did bring messages of love and and hope and just brought the parted ones that little bit nearer together. So the wives and the girlfriends weren't jealous they loved her too. Oh not at all, not at all no. Would you go as far as to... Say that in many ways you personified what the boys were fighting for? I suppose I reminded them of their sweethearts and their sisters or young wives that they'd left behind. So it was quite a responsibility you carried really? To me I was just doing what I thought my little bit of war work.

By entertaining and I never realised, not till after the war, the extent of what the programs really meant to them. Well, I know you've chosen one of your own records among your eight favourites and I think it's only fitting that we should start with it if you don't mind. So tell me which one it is. It's Room 504. I chose that because it was Douglas Bader's favourite song and He was one of our heroes in the Battle of Britain pilots. Wonderful man. And, um... I remember... And I'm... I remember doing a television show at Victoria Palace in aid of the RAF Association. And he hadn't been invited and I discovered this and I thought it was most unfair. So over the air I said this is a song I'm going to sing especially for Douglas Varda and I dedicate it to him. And so I do today.

♪ One hundred and five ♪ Vera Lynn singing Room 504 accompanied by Jay Wilber and his band. Well now the troops were hearing that and many other songs like it on a program called Sincerely Yours. Yes. That went out on a Sunday night? That's right after the nine o'clock news and sometimes after Churchill used to speak. Was it live? Yes everything was live in those days there was no pre-recording.

I was living in the East End, so I would have to drive up to London before the raid started and get myself ensconced in the underground studios and just sort of hang around, go to sleep until they would wake up. Me up and say you're on you know and this would go out across Europe they used to go all over the continent but the Nazis banned your program didn't they in in occupied Europe Well, they banned all listening to the BBC and I remember one Dutchman telling me that they used to hide in a big hay-rick right inside and they had this radio and they used to listen to it secretly and listen to my programmes and if they were discovered they were shot. There was no question about, you know, they were just taken outside and shot if they were found to be listening to the BBC radio. The BBC, it has to be said, was not at all sure about your programme in the...

Was it? I've got here a minute of the Board of Governors for December the 4th 1941 and it reads, Sincerely yours, colon, deplored but popularity noted. I know, I think a lot of them thought that it was too sentimental and would make the boys homesick. The BBC stopped you signing off the way you wanted to as well. They wouldn't let me say goodnight and God bless. They said you can say goodnight, but you've got to cut out the God bless. They're very stuffy in those days, please. So where did you get all these songs from? We'll Meet Again and The White Cliffs of Dover and I'll Be Seeing You. Where did you find them all? Well, I had been...

Used to going around all the music publishers since I was a child and in those days you went to the music publishers and they would say come on in we've got some great songs and if you had a broadcast or a record to make you would sit there for hours listening to all sorts of songs and choose what you thought was suitable. So you chose these songs? Oh yes. I was very fussy about the songs I chose. And do you now always, always get asked to sing We'll Meet Again whenever you appear anywhere? Oh yes. You know, people... Say to me sometimes when I'm at a reunion or something that is nostalgic. They say, How do you find this nostalgia? Does it bring back memories? I say, Well, really it's been a continuation. There's been no gap at all in my life because to me it's still that same period. In many ways you're perhaps the one...

Of the war still on active service. You could say that, yes. Shall we hear the second record you've chosen? Artie Shaw and his orchestra playing A Man and His Dream and Harry, my husband, he was mad on all the jazz records naturally and this was one of the records... I think he probably wooed me with. ♪ For a man and his dreams ♪ Artie Shaw and his orchestra playing A Man and His Dream sung by Helen Forrest.

Music to woo Vera. That is nostalgic to me. So Harry Lewis the clarinetist in the band wooed you and won you and you married him in 1941. Right. And he's been your friend and mentor ever since. Yes. And still is. Yes. Let's just go back a bit Vera if we can because you were born if you don't mind Mentioning it just before the end of the First World War. That was in East Ham. Right. Yes. What did the family do for a living? What sort of family was it? Oh, just an ordinary working-class family. I remember my father being a docker and my mother was a dressmaker. But there was a bit of the entertainer in your father

Oh my dad liked to sing. We were a singy family actually and he had a brother who was a semi-professional. He used to do all George Roby's songs and when I was about two and a half we used to have these family parties. And I remember on one occasion my uncle actually got me out of bed very late one night just to sing. To him and one of the songs I used to sing was I'm sorry I made you cry. You see... At an early age I was singing sentimental songs. But how did you know the words when you were so little? I see. Learned them I suppose my mother used to play the piano for me. She used to read tonic so far. She couldn't read music and I've just learnt them. But you went on the stage didn't you, you sang in public when you were about seven. - And the local working men's club. - That's right. I did when I was seven and I earned seven shillings and sixpence and I was very proud of that.

Of that. And did you get an encore? Not at that time no it was later on that one used to get encores. The clubs... People were done like the old-fashioned musical and there was a committee around the table and if they thought you went very well, they'd have a... Buh-buh-buh, shall we, shall we? And they'd all put throughens or tuppence into the pool in the middle and it... It up to one and six and they'd say would you sing another song well that was very handy because that paid for the fare for the mum and dad and myself on the tram or the bus. And the ability to sing was entirely natural. That you never had any real training? - I did at one point think that I ought to have a little voice training and that was, I had. Been broadcasting and recording by this time but I have actually a very small range it sounds bigger than it actually is and I thought I would like to extend it. So I did go to a music teacher and explained that I would like to extend my range, so he said, Well, give me a...

For instance, so I sang she said oh, that's a very strange voice isn't it she says That can't be the only voice that you have see because it It's lower on the register. I said well I've got my opera voice that I sing when I'm in the vase. She said well can I hear that? So I started la la la la you know she said oh that's the voice I'm going to train so I said oh I'm afraid that wouldn't be any good at all. If I turned up at my recording session with that voice I'd lose my contract. Oh she says I can't have anything to do with that other voice it's beyond my principles to train that voice. I said well thank you very much and I left. The best thing you ever did about the sound. I think so. Let's have the third record you've chosen. well Eli... Paige I'm a great fan of hers because I think she really has something that I've always wanted and that's a wonderful big range.

And she really makes the most of her voice. And I went to the opening night of Cats. And that memory, I think, she sings it better than anybody else. Like to have that. All alone in the moonlight I can't stop at the old days I was beautiful then *music* *I knew what happiness was, let the memory...* Elaine Page singing Memory from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats Your real name, Vera, was not Lynn, but Welch, wasn't it? That's right, yes. How and when and why did you drop that?

Well, I never liked the name Vera Welch. To me, it wasn't going to look right on the billboards, you know. And I remember us having a family conference. It was my grandmother. And my mother and father and myself would be sat round and we thought, right, well, what shall we rename you? You see, so my. My mother came up with the name of Lynn. She said that was her maiden name. Because I said, well, I want something that's not long, something that's short and that fits nicely. With even letters you see because the smaller, like the less words there are, the bigger the name it can be. So I thought, great, that's Vera Lynn. - So the whole family was obviously determined you should be a star.

Because when I left school, which I did at 14 as you did in those days, my mother was more anxious for me to have a career as it were, probably to follow her footsteps and learn dressmaking. And I even went as far as going to a local factory, where I started really at the bottom by saying, Buttons on. And I was so depressed that day we weren't even allowed to talk to each other. And of course I'd been living in a much more freer attitude than that. And when I got home at night, my father said to me, he said, Well, mate, did you enjoy it? He used to call me Mate. No, it was miserable and we weren't allowed to talk. And I didn't, he said, Well, how much are they paying you? So I said, Six and six for the week. He said, You can earn more than that by going out on one night and singing a couple of songs. I said, Yes, I couldn't. He said, Well, pack it in, girl, pack it in.

And then Joe Loss noticed you and you made your first broadcast with him. Oh I did yes, well that was through going through the music publishers. Because Walter Ridley who was an exploitationist as they used to be called in those days, was at Peter Maurice Music Company and he said Joe Loss is looking for a girl singer. Would you like to do the audition? He wanted somebody for his next broadcast so I said okay. And he came along and he heard me sing and he said fine. You were only 18 I think in the beginning. People didn't totally approve of this young thing surrounded by a whole band of men. Did they? Well no I was only 16 when I went with Billy Cotton and I only stayed with him a week and a half because he sent me a home. He thought I think I was too young to hang around these mad musicians. And he always said that was the worst day's work he ever did. Quite right. I want to hear a lot about your wartime experiences in a minute, but let's have your fourth record, I think we've got to. What is it?

Well, it's the Beatles, Till There Was You, and it's a song that I feel... That I was in on because in the 50s, early 50s, I went to the States to do some television and radio. And I stayed with Meredith Wilson, the composer, and he was writing Till There Was You, and it's a lovely song, and I'd like to have that. ♪ 'Til there was you ♪ ♪ There were birds in the sky ♪ ♪ But I never saw them winging ♪ Paul McCartney, Until There Was You.

You sang here in London all through the Blitzvira. What's your most vivid memory of the blackout in London? and I have... Little Austin 10. I remember I was doing a week at the New Cross Empire and one night he suddenly declared blackout for blackout. And this was before the little tiny pin points were-- Loud on the thing. It was just a complete blackout. On the headlights? Yes, afterwards there are these tin things you put on the headlights with a little tiny pinhole in the middle. Didn't give you any light, but you could see these little pinholes coming towards you from somebody else. I had to drive home on my own in my little car and it was pouring of rain. And my way driving all by myself through the Blackwall tunnel. But en route, I was-- Flagged down by a man who was drenched wet because it really was teeming down

And one never gave a thought in those days, giving people a lift. I would think twice about it today. And he said, Oh, where are you going? So he said oh, so am I he said can you give me a lift so and it turned out that? He was living just a couple of streets away from where I was living, so I was able to take him right the way home and drop him outside his door. To go off and my mother and father must have been absolutely wired out of there. My about you know what I'll be coming back but I never used to think about that I And off I'd go and if there was a raid en route you'd get out and lay in the gutter and uh... During the evening performances, the raid started, you didn't take any notice.

Just carried on singing. - You sang all the way through it? - Mmm. - And the audience stayed? - Yes, if the raid was still on, you know, and we couldn't go home anyway, we'd have a nice party on the stage, you know, we'd have dancing and sing song and gradually get tired and they think, oh, let's chance it, let's go home or let's go down to the subway. Would fade away and gradually go home on their own way. And I would probably be. Left all alone and I'd stay in the theatre until the all clear. Where did you sleep? Well you didn't. You just found the most, the safest wall and just sit on the floor and hope that you'd be alright. Let's have some more music. Being Crosby, uh... Television show not long before he died and He was sitting in his hotel and he was watching the program and he got on the phone the next day and said he would like to be

on the show and he phoned home and Harry answered the phone and he said this is Bing Crosby here. He said uh who are you kidding you know he said anyway he passed him over. To me and he said I saw your program I'd like to come on it. I was thrilled because I'd been a fan for so so many years and he came along he was charming and And that is a memory I'd like to take with me. ♪ Where the blue of the ♪ ♪ Tonight meets the gold of the day ♪ ♪ Someone waits for me ♪ ♪ And the gold of her hair ♪ ♪ Crowns the blue of her eyes ♪ ♪ Like a halo and a leaf ♪ - Bing Crosby singing Where the--

Of the night. It was in 1944 Vera that you made your famous tour of Burma to entertain the troops. And air miles, not an easy journey? Well no it wasn't and I suppose a lot of the mileage was taken up by making detours. I mean when I left... Here in the Sunderland flying boat. It took us seven hours to get to Gibraltar because we had to go right the way out to sea and back again. You actually came down in the Dead Sea at some point. Yes because of bad weather. There was a terrific sandstorm and we had to get... I wasn't very good at flying because I mean the planes then weren't like they are today and I used to feel awful and it wasn't bad enough being air sick. You come down on them.

Tedsey, which wasn't very dead at the time, I mean, to the storm. And we bobbled around there for about an hour before we could lift up again and go off. But if all of that didn't frighten you, surely when you got to Burma to the front, a young woman of, what, 27 by then, You must have been terrified. No, no, I really didn't think about it. The boys, I knew the boys were around and they were looking after me. My pianist was supplied with a revolver. And we stopped somewhere along the road in the jungle and tried to practice with it. I wasn't very good. You went to hospitals out there too, didn't you? Yes, the casualty clearing stations where the boys would be brought in first of all before they were sent further back to the real hospitals. and

You know I met two young lads in a tent. They were too ill to come to the concert and both had been badly wounded. One of them unfortunately didn't... Didn't make it. And you know you were aware of the fact all the time that so many of these boys that you were talking to and visiting, singing to, weren't just going to make it. You stood once and watched a bullet being removed from a man's arm, didn't you? Oh yes, that was it. To go in and out of tents you see you're not quite sure which tents I should go in and out of and one happened to be an operating tent and I think Excuse me! and try to exit the other side and the surgeon says I thought perhaps you might like a little souvenir of Burma and handed me this bullet that he'd just taken out of this chap.

Which I still have somewhere, but it's cleaned up by now. You've got a much larger souvenir since then because of course you were awarded the Burma Star, weren't you? Oh yes, I was so thrilled to have that. Something, you know... I don't know, I suppose when you're in certain circumstances and situations with people you'd like to be really... Feel associated with them and this was something that I felt I felt was missing so when they when I got round to having it 40 years later I was thrilled. And the Veterans of Burma, I know, have loved you ever since then and you join them every year I think. Yes, we still have the anniversaries of the Burma Reunions at the Albert Hall. Can you describe... The feeling you used to have standing before those men, not just out in Burma, but certainly one seen film of...

In Regent's Park actually, a mere slip of a girl, if one may say so, in a simple cotton frock standing in front of those thousands of soldiers and airmen who were quite obviously enchanted by you. It was a great power you had, wasn't it? But you felt you were doing your bit. You know, it certainly was very satisfying to think that you could entertain. In that amount of, and even when I went abroad to Burma, I mean, my audience could be two, but it could be 6,000. And to see all the-- always come in with their guns and just sit down on the grass and you could just for a little while you could take them back home.

Just in memory and think that you entertained them. Yes, you did feel so you were doing something. Let's have your sixth record. Well, I'm very fond of strings, orchestrations, and I used to hear this lovely record occasionally when I do listen to records over the air. And I would like to hear that, please. Adagio for strings.

Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings played by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormonde. I know... Well Vera, the joke in your household is that you've been trying to retire ever since 1945, but it's just never been possible, has it? No, the only real piece of it, retirement I had... When my daughter was born and I really didn't think that I would go back to work 18 months Later I was reminded by my recording company that I did have a contract and that I ought to do some recording.

And so I started recording again. In the 50s I did a series of... Around for about six years and then in the 70s I had another long series. In between, I've been able to tour all over Australia for many years, and Canada. Because that's the interesting point too, isn't it, that the calls have come not just here for... The British but from all over the world. That's right. Why do you think that is? How can you explain it? Why do so many people still draw emotion from the songs that you sing? A lot of the boys like Australians and the Canadians, they were over here during the war. They were billeted here and they went off from here. And it's all part of their young life and listening to the programs. And the messages and the kind of songs. Now, when they're back home with their families.

It reminds them of the time, the comradeship, everything that they went through, the loss of their friends. And it's sort of cemented something within them that they can't forget and I don't think they want to and they Seemed to connect me with it. Do you feel, in a way, then, from what you say, that war perhaps enhances the character of a nation in some way? Well, I think it does. I think all people, when there's real trouble, they are inclined to stick together and help each other, work for each other, work as a team. Like the people, the Londoners in the Blitz, I mean after a very bad night of bombing.

In the East End the lady would be whitening her doorstep. The house next door might have gone, but you know, life is to go on. And do you think that the young today understand sufficiently the... Sacrifices that what now they're grandfathered in. No I don't. I don't think the youngsters here. In Holland it's a different matter. On their anniversaries of armistice or liberation days. They have their youngsters going to the war graves of our boys, the British boys. And they all have them take in flowers and there's always a service. Will lay a bunch of flowers on a grave of one of our boys and they are told to look at the names and the ages 18, 19 some of them and to remember and not to forget the sacrifices that were made by our British lads to help them in their

And I really don't think there is enough of that here in this country. Shall we have another piece of music? BBC... Television program David Lloyd George had a lovely piece of music in it I would like to hear that please

'Key Mine' the theme from BBC television's David Lloyd George played by Ennio Morricone. You were of course created a dame in 1975, the Queen having been a fan I think since her girlhood Vera. Yes, I was at her 16th birthday party which happened during the war so and I was in a theatre and I had to close the theatre for the day not allowed to say why because of security and and wait.

To Windsor Castle and she was made Colonel of the Guards and I was one of the artists at the entertainment and it my crowd was there as the rest of the programme and she was 16 at that time so she was in the sort of young romantic age and her favourite song at that Moment was yours so of course I had to sing it. And when she gave you your your damehood what did what did she say did she refer to that occasion? You know, all she said, she says, Oh, you have to wait a long time for this. And, you know, I felt that she was genuinely... Pleased, you know, that I had it. I have to say, and again it's a rather personal remark, that there is simply

in which you look your age? Is there a secret or is it just luck? - Oh, I don't know. I think it's probably still keep going on. I think the more you do, I think the fitter you can keep yourself, not only physically active, but keep the old brain going and. So do you have no special diet or fitness regime or? Well, well a special diet, I don't eat red meat at all. I just eat fish and chicken and lots of salads and vegetables and fruit and don't smoke, don't drink very much, odd glass occasionally. Go to bed early. Go to bed early when I can, yes. Keep the same husband. Yes. I think you're a saint on the choir. No, I'm not. And do you still love singing as much as ever? It takes a bit of persuading sometimes for me to accept engagements, but once I get there and I get among all the crowd and particularly those that...

Remember, then I really do enjoy it. There must be millions of those people across the land today of all days remembering, as we've said, their shared experiences and friends long forgotten and friends and friends. Have still missed. It's a strange business in a way isn't it that we do actually feel nostalgic for wartime. Yes, it is. When you think of the horror of war and how... People, you know, and then when they meet you and they talk to you about it, first of all they meet you with a smile and then their eyes fill up. And the... Because they are remembering the boys that didn't go back with them. And I suppose they think that it was an important part of their life.

Made men of them and they they had so much in a funny way so much warmth from that period. And now to your last record which is fittingly another one of your own which one is it? This is a record that makes me feel very nostalgic and it's Heart of gold. ♪ And when the world is hard at hand ♪ Charlie Coons with the Cassani Club Orchestra and Vera Lynn singing Heart of the Wild.

Gold. So Vera, choices now to be made. Which of those records is most special to you? I think I'd have room 504 because as I... 'Go Around the World'. I know it was Dougie Bader's favourite song but I also think it was the favourite song of a lot of couples. They say, 'Oh yes, I was home on leave' or 'We just got married'. I think it would also bring back a lot of memories to me, make me remember Dougie and all his mates and what they meant to us. And were we to cast you away on our desert... Island and I simply haven't got the heart to. But were we to do so, what book would you like to take with you as well as the Bible and Shakespeare? Got to eat, haven't I? And as I'm more vegetarian, I should think, than anything else, I don't think I'd be able to catch fish or kill anything to eat.

That would tell me exactly on this island what I could eat, the things that were poisonous or the edible fruits and roots and vegetation that would keep-- Alive till I was rescued. Right we'll find one of those for you. And finally a luxury what could we supply you with that would make your life just that little bit more bearable? Well in between times when I have time I like to do a little bit of painting. Now to have oil paints I think that would be rather difficult wouldn't it? I mean, it would all go rather gooey. So I think I'd settle with some watercolors. Water would be no problem, and some brushes. And of course I'd need a lot of paper. Too wouldn't I? If you could throw that in as well it might help. You shall have all of that. Thank you. Dame Vera Lynn thank you. Very much for sharing your memories and your desert island discs with us. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/radio.