Residents of the United Kingdom were awakened Friday morning by a storied voice and song from World War II with an admonition to “keep smiling” during the current virus crisis.
On her 103rd birthday, Dame Vera Lynn, easily the best-loved British entertainer in wartime, walked out of the past with a video featuring her signature song “We’ll Meet Again.”
“We’ll meet again/ Don’t know where and don’t know when/But I know we’ll meet again/Some sunny day,” goes the ballad that soldiers and wartime audiences inevitably joined in singing with Lynn.
As the moving tune closes, Dame Vera herself is heard urging her countrymen to “Keep smiling, and keep singing.”
Her message of encouragement came on the same day that Prime Minister Boris Johnson began unveiling the government’s new emergency legislation to deal with the crisis. Among the measures proposed by his government are new powers for quarantining and bringing in retired nurses and doctors to assist in medical relief.
Known as “the Forces’ Sweetheart,” Lynn gave scores of outdoor concerts for British troops in Egypt, India, and Burma. Her hit songs were “White Cliffs of Dover,” “The Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” and her theme son, “We’ll Meet Again.”
Beloved by World War II veterans, she remained popular in postwar years through radio and TV and, at age 100 in 2017, she became the first centenarian to have an album in the charts.
In 2000, she was named the Briton who best exemplified the spirit of the 20th Century.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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