Captain Tom: Hero of the global village

Moore was a World War II veteran, but his knighthood was for his role in a more recent campaign — the fight against the pandemic.

Captain Thomas Moore becomes Captain Sir Thomas Moore as he is knighted by the Queen in July last year. Picture: Getty Images

Captain Sir Thomas Moore
Born Keighley, Yorkshire, April 30, 1920; died Bedford, Bedfordshire, February 2, aged 100.

-

In a few weeks starting last April, Thomas Moore rose from the virtuous obscurity of a quiet life in an English village to international acclaim, inspiring his country and, in turn, the world.

The sudden change to the life of the then 99-year-old was born of a suggestion at a family barbecue.

Concerned at the early deaths of people from COVID-19, Moore wondered how he might raise funds to help the staff of Britain’s revered National Health Service.

He had come to know some of them as he battled skin and prostate cancer and had a hip replaced after a fall in his kitchen. And they had cared for his wife as she suffered through dementia in her last years.

A family member said Moore might seek sponsorship to walk 10 times around his garden in rural Bedfordshire, in England’s east, assisted only by his newly acquired walking frame. And he did. But he added another 90 laps to the task to bring up the century he would soon accumulate for himself.

The world knows what happened next and the world knows Tom Moore, an uncharacteristically softly spoken Yorkshireman — a hero of his age and a hero in his home. Eventually, his 100 circuits in his garden in the village of Marston Moretaine raised more than £40m, scoring him a knighthood and two spots in the Guinness book of records.

He was a World War II veteran, but his knighthood was for his role in a more recent campaign: the world’s fight against the pandemic that so far has claimed almost 2.3 million lives globally.

Sadly, it was COVID-19 that loosened Moore’s grip on life at the weekend and he died from pneumonia on Monday. That was the day it was announced that the coronavirus death toll in Britain — worst hit of all developed countries — had passed 100,000.

When Moore died, his nation — which he had long ago defended against another mortal threat, and whose heart he had helped heal — grieved as if it had lost its much-loved collective grandfather.

The flags at 10 Downing Street were lowered to half-mast. And much of the world joined in to lament the passing of a bona fide warrior. This old cricketer had left the crease. But what a knock.

Moore came of age in an era when those who wished to live went out to face death.

He was 19 when Hitler invaded Poland. By the end of the war that ensued, he had served in India and what was then Burma.

His Burma Star from 1946 is engraved with the name of King ­George VI. Last year King ­George’s daughter, Queen Elizabeth, used her father’s knighting sword at Moore’s investiture.

His military career began when he joined the 8th Battalion, Duke of Wellington’s Regiment in 1940, days after Germany invaded and occupied Denmark and just as its forces swept across Holland and Belgium. Later he was part of the Royal Armoured Corps, before transferring to the 9th Battalion and serving across the subcontinent and ending up in Arakan (now Rakhine) in what is today western Myanmar, where he contracted dengue fever.

Captain Tom Moore on his racing motorcycle in the late 1940s.

He married in the late 1940s, but, he wrote in his autobiography, it was an unhappy union and he later became friends with Pamela who was to become his second wife. But not too soon.

They did not marry until 1969.

In his 50s, he had two daughters, Lucy and Hannah. Pamela died in 2006. Visiting her during her last years at a nursing home, he became aware of the crippling loneliness of so many of the residents. He saw Pamela “every day, without fail” — and long after she was able to recognise him — but other residents were not so lucky.

“Lots of old people, mainly ladies, they’d been there for ages and ages and no one ever came to see them,” he wrote. “Year in and year out not a soul came to see them.”

When Moore heard of the enforced isolation of COVID-19 patients, he thought of how debilitating that loneliness would be for the mainly older people, so ill, frightened and without a familiar hand to hold.

“So many people throughout the world are feeling lonely. Which is a shame because there’s a bright future for everyone,” said Moore, a full-time resident on the bright side of life.

His biography is titled Tomorrow Will Be a Good Day.

The day of his record-breaking walk — it was the most money raised by a single person on a charity walk — Moore’s indefatigable optimism shone through.

“You’ve all got to remember that we will get through it in the end. It will all be right,” he said. “For all those people finding it difficult at the moment, the sun will shine on you again and the clouds will go away.”

Some of the money raised by Moore was used to purchase iPads so hospitals could help patients keep in contact with family members on the outside, stranded there by the rules around the riotously infectious COVID-19.

Just 11 days after his 100 laps, Moore featured on a re-recording of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic stage song You’ll Never Walk Alone. It has several times topped the charts, and twice before as a charity single. After Moore uttered the opening lines “When you walk through a storm, hold your head up high, and don’t be afraid of the dark”, he was joined by British stage legend Michael Ball and the NHS Voices of Care Choir.

It went to No 1 on the UK charts — last year’s fastest selling single — in the week Moore turned 100. He is the oldest artist to top the charts, beating out Tom Jones by 32 years.

Last year he was made an honorary colonel, was nominated as the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year, and received more than 150,000 birthday cards, so many they filled a classroom at his grandson’s school. About the same time, more than 800,000 people signed the petition seeking his knighthood. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson approached the Queen to secure the honour and she presented it to Moore at a ceremony involving only the veteran and his family at Windsor Castle on May 20. It was her first official function since the pandemic broke out.

Moore enjoys time with family on a trip to Barbados in December. Picture: Twitter

The modest Moore was astounded when his daughter read the letter announcing his knighthood: “I must say, it feels rather different. To get this honour is so outstanding. I am certainly delighted. I thank (the Queen and Prime Minister) so much. I am overawed by the fact this has happened to me.”

The man who will one day be king of England was as impressed as his grandmother.

Prince William said: “It’s amazing … and it’s wonderful that everyone has been inspired by his story and his determination. He’s a one-man fundraising machine.”

And how could this hero forget his own? He told the NHS staff recently that they were putting themselves in danger “for the good of the people”.

“They are all so brave,” he added. And he’d know.