my proud memories of Dame Vera Lynn 20 March 1917 - 18 June 2020

You can find other details of Poems of the Poppies in BOOKS, and my poem Brief Encounter in POEMS. You will need to take my word for it that I am the person on the end of the front row three places from Dame Vera in the centre.

It was World War 2 veteran, 90-odd-year-old Len Johnson, then Chairman of the Macclesfield branch of the Legion who suggested that I should ask Dame Vera to write the foreword, insisting when I demurred: "I know she'll do it." And she did, most beautifully.
      When I published In Our Fathers' Footsteps on 11th November 2018 to mark the centenary of the Armistice and raise funds for the Legion, I sent Dame Vera a copy by way of thanks and received this warm letter of thanks from her which I shall always treasure.