Yorkshire band backs VE Day milestone sing-song of Vera Lynn’s We’ll Meet Again

So memorable are its lyrics that the Queen chose to nod towards Dame Vera Lynn’s We’ll Meet Again when concluding her recent special address to the nation.

But as celebrations for the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day are due to be marked in a much quieter fashion than planned, potentially hundreds of women veterans will be joining each other online to sing around the country and “drive the dark clouds far away”.

It will take place through the Internet video conference tool Zoom and Colonel (Retired) Alison ‘Ali’ Brown, vice president of the organisation, predicts that around 10 per cent of about 3,500 members will join.

Many of the veterans it represents were part of the Auxiliary Territorial Service during the Second World War.

Ali, 56, who left the forces in 2010 after a 26-year career which took her to conflict zones such as Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Kuwait, said: “I see these ladies very much as the ones that broke the barriers down, the ones that enabled the career that I had.”

She added: “I think a lot of the ladies who were in the Auxiliary Territorial Service during the Second World War, a lot of them didn’t realised what they achieved until later in life.”

Betty Webb MBE, 96, who transcribed decoded Japanese messages at Bletchley Park in the war, agrees.

She told The Yorkshire Post: “It wasn’t until after the veil of secrecy had been lifted and books began to be written and read about the whole picture that we really understood how important our contributions, however small, how enormously important it was.”

She added: “My transcribed messages would have gone to officers in the field, I think, or depending on the content, would’ve gone to Churchill.”

Although she continued her work after VE Day - she was posted to the Pentagon in the USA in the months before Victory over Japan Day in August 1945 - she still remembers the jubilation of hearing about Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender on May 8.

“We were all absolutely over the moon at the news and I don’t know how, but I managed to get to London and joined all the thousands of people down by the Thames,” she said.

The Zoom session will start at 8pm, when Ali will talk about the history of VE Day, with the sing-along scheduled to begin at 9pm.

Speaking about the need for commemoration, Mrs Webb said “It’s important because if we had not conducted the war in the way we did, we would have been overrun and our lives would have been totally different today.”

We’ll Meet Again was penned by songwriters Ross Parker and Hughie Charles in 1939, the year the Second World War started .

It was used as the title of the 1943 British musical film, which also starred Dame Vera, who is now aged 103.

The opening lines of the song, which has been covered by many artists, are: “We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when, but I know we’ll meet again some sunny day.”