Some of the archive belonging to the “Forces’ Sweetheart”, Dame Vera Lynn, will go on display at the Imperial War Museum this Spring after it was donated to the museum by Dame Vera’s daughter, Virginia Lewis-Jones.
The Imperial War Museums will preserve the personal archive of the woman whose voice promised, “We’ll meet again,” to a generation living through war.
Born Vera Margaret Welch in East Ham in 1917, Lynn became known as the “Forces’ Sweetheart” during the Second World War. Through her BBC radio programme Sincerely Yours, launched in 1941, she broadcast song requests and personal messages between troops overseas and families at home.
At a time when separation and uncertainty defined daily life, her broadcasts – and songs such as We’ll Meet Again – became emotional lifelines.
And triggered a wave of nostalgia when The Queen used that same phrase in her Covid broadcast.
At the heart of the newly acquired archive is Lynn’s own BBC contract for Sincerely Yours, alongside around 600 letters sent to her by listeners. At the programme’s height she was receiving up to 2,000 letters a week.
The correspondence reveals in intimate detail what her music meant to those living through the conflict. One exchange traces a connection between Corporal David “Ted” Lindsey, stationed in India, and his family at home. After Ted described the joy among thousands of troops when Lynn appeared unexpectedly at an ENSA concert, his sister-in-law wrote asking for a signed photograph to send to him. Lynn replied with two. Later letters, written after the family had been displaced by bombing, thank her for her kindness. Ted himself eventually wrote to say how her songs sustained him – words that echo the quiet defiance of “we’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when”.
Other letters speak of loss. Lily Cowlard wrote to say her son had given her Lynn’s record Yours before leaving for war. Rifleman William Edward Cowlard was killed in Tunisia in April 1943. Hearing Lynn’s voice, she explained, kept his memory alive.
The acquisition also includes Lynn’s 1944 diary from her ENSA tour of India and Burma – the tour that cemented her bond with the so-called “Forgotten Fourteenth Army”. The diary records a relentless schedule of performances in Gibraltar, Egypt, Iraq, India and Burma, sometimes only miles behind the front line.
Lynn was among the first major stars to entertain troops in the jungles of Burma.
Among the more personal objects are a pair of khaki shorts worn on tour – a stark contrast to the elegant gowns of her stage appearances, and a reminder that entertaining the troops often meant enduring the same heat, dust and discomfort as the soldiers themselves.
Lynn, who died in 2020 aged 103, remained closely connected to the Armed Forces throughout her long life.
A selection of items from the collection will go on display at IWM London in spring 2026, while the wider archive undergoes conservation and cataloguing to ensure that the voice which once promised “we’ll meet again” continues to be heard by future generations.
