Blogging A to Z: "V" is for 3 Veras (and a P. S.)

VERA LYNN

Lovely English singer. I call her "The Nightingale of World War II." She entertained the troops and recorded one hit after another, including "The White Cliffs of Dover," "I'll Be Seeing You," "We'll Meet Again," and my personal favorite wartime song,"A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square."

VERA-ELLEN

One of the best dancers ever to grace the silver screen. Who doesn't love her in films such as On the Town, White Christmas, and Three Little Words ? (So she didn't do her own singing -- so what?) I've always thought she was a Barbie doll in the flesh, with her blond pony tail and that incredibly tiny waist that I was always afraid would break mid-dance. In fact, I wondered where the heck she put her internal organs, she was so tiny.

VERA BRITTAIN

She was a British writer, feminist, and pacifist, best known for her three "testaments": Testament of Youth is a deeply affecting memoir of her experiences as a nurse in World War I; it has become a classic of WWI literature, and rightly so. Testament of Friendship is a tribute to and biography of her friend and fellow writer Winifred Holtby, who wrote South Riding and other acclaimed novels. Testament of Experience continues Vera's own story after WWI. She also wrote fine novels.

Photo ©The Vera Brittain Literary Estate, 1970/The Brittain Fonds, McMaster University Library

Here is a gorgeously written and moving excerpt from her diary, Chronicle of Youth, on which the more famous Testament of Youth was based. In this passage she writes of a meeting with her fiancé, Roland Leighton, who eventually died in the war:

Whatever the future may bring -- whether it be the sorrow I fear more than anything on earth, or the joy which now I scarce dare dream of, much less name -- as long as I have memory & thought, I shall not forget to-day & yesterday. My beloved one has been here and departed again, & now indeed I may see his dear face never any more. I cannot write about it much; it is not only useless but impossible to try to record in words anything I felt so poignantly & shall always remember so vividly. When I first came back here after saying goodbye to him -- or rather, it was "Au revoir" that I said, because my courage would not even contemplate a last  farewell, though I tried -- I simply could not take up my pen & write; I felt paralysed. Now he has gone I can scarcely bear to think of him, & yet I cannot think of anything else.

P. S.

Photo credit: geniusbeauty.com