Dame Vera Lynn was not from Kent. But she certainly did more to make people aware of The White Cliffs of Dover than anyone, and she played most of the major theatres in the County, so I think we can claim her.

She was certainly a heroine. To entertain troops, she travelled to within six miles of Kohima, where one of the fiercest battles against the Japanese was fought. “I could clearly hear the guns firing,” she said.

I met Dame Vera on several occasion, and she was always ready to talk about her wartime experiences. Ironically, she first thought the War would kill off her career.

“I was sitting in the garden of my house in Barking, having tea with my mum and dad, when they announced over the radio that war had been declared,” she said. “I said to my parents: ‘Well there goes my career.’

“I had done my first broadcast in 1935 with Joe Loss and his orchestra, but it takes a long time to get your name well known. And now this had happened, and I thought everything would stop.

It was while living at the house in Barking that the Luftwaffe brought reminders that war had been declared. Twice she had to have windows replaced because the blast from bombs had shattered them. On emerging from her neighbour’s air raid shelter after one air raid she found a huge block of concrete in her garden. It came from a nearby bus station that had been blown up by a bomb.

Far from her career being over, Vera was extra busy performing guest spots in several different television and radio shows. Sometimes there were requests for special songs to be sung for soldiers serving overseas. She knew a radio producer called Howard Thomas and floated the idea of a 15-minute request programme in which mothers, wives and sweethearts could send messages to servicemen on active service. She even thought of a title: “Sincerely Yours”.

“Howard said he would think about it. I was performing in a show at the London Palladium called Applesauce, when I got a phone call at the stage door. It was Howard, and he said the programme had been agreed but it would be 30 minutes, not 15.

“As part of the programme, I visited wives who were in hospital expecting babies. Quite often I was able to tell the husband who was away at the war, that his wife had had a baby, and what sex it was and how much it weighed and so on. It was very heart-warming for these men to get little bits of family news.

“We built up a good audience. But not everyone approved. An MP got up in Parliament and criticised it on the grounds that it was ‘too sentimental’.”

Vera had not given up singing in theatres and toured the country giving performances. Quite often this involved visits to hospitals, where wounded soldiers were recovering from wounds. It made her feel close to the war. But she wanted to do more.

She volunteered for ENSA, the Entertainments National Service Association. “I told them: ‘I’m doing all these programmes for the boys, but I really would like to go out and sing for them.’ They asked me where I would like to go, and I told them: ‘Well where they aren’t getting anyone.’ They said: ‘Well no-one’s going to Burma.’ So, I said: ‘Right, well that’s where I’ll go.’”

So instead of living in the relative comfort of a house, and performing at theatres such as the London Palladium, Vera found herself sleeping in grass huts, with just a couple of buckets as bathroom facilities. “I had prepared myself mentally,” she said. “I knew where I was going and what it would be like, so nothing was a surprise to me. I expected the worst and that’s what I got.

“ENSA was in charge of me until we reached Chittagong, after which the army took over. And from then onwards it was jungle. I was the only female. I wasn’t accompanied by any women or girls. I had seen one or two nurses as I came through, where they were looking after the injured in field hospitals. But from Chittagong it was just me, my pianist and a driver.

“The piano was carried in an army truck. But travelling along the Arakan Road wasn’t very helpful to it. On one occasion when my pianist sat down the play the sides fell off. It had had so much jolting on the road. A couple of the boys sitting in the front row leaped up onto the platform and held it together while I did my show.

“I got as far as Dimapur, just six miles down the road from Kohima where the fighting was going on. Casualties from the battle were brought to hospital tents at Dimapur.

“The audiences were very appreciative. You can imagine, some of them had been away from home for six years. They hadn’t had any entertainment. I lived just as they lived, ate what they ate and slept in similar huts.”

Vera was returning from Burma in a Short Sunderland flying boat when she heard over the radio that the D-Day landings had taken place. “I thought: ‘This is the beginning of the end’,” she said.

On her return she was exhausted and went to stay with a friend of the family to rest. Then she resumed touring theatres and visiting hospitals where wounded servicemen were recuperating.

“After the war I went over to Europe several times. I hadn’t realised that my broadcasts had been listened to quite a lot over there on illegally owned radios. One family in Holland told me the listened in their cellar, on a radio powered by a chap on a bicycle, with the back wheel raised clear of the ground so he could pedal furiously, keeping the dynamo turning and the battery charged up.”

Asked which of her wartime songs was most memorable to her, Dame Vera said: “ ‘We’ll Meet Again’ is the one that stays forever. It fits for everybody in all sorts of situations. I used to close my radio programme with it. ‘Bluebirds Over the White Cliffs of Dover’ was a symbol of hope. We don’t have bluebirds here, but the song evokes happiness.