Captain 100: A flypast and a note from the Queen

In normal times, only Her Majesty the Queen gets a military flypast on her birthday. But these are not normal times and Tom Moore is no ordinary senior citizen. On Thursday, Captain Tom – as the nation now knows him – turned 100 and the whole country wished him the happiest of birthdays.

The Queen sent him a personal card and note, Prime Minister Boris Johnson recorded a video message of gratitude and Michael Ball, the star with whom he now has a number one hit single, sang Happy Birthday live on BBC breakfast television. The Army appointed Captain Tom an honorary colonel and 150,000 birthday cards filled a nearby school hall where his grandson is a pupil. He is now odds on to receive a knighthood.

He had started out in lockdown with the modest ambition of raising £1000 for the NHS by walking 100 laps of his daughter’s garden in the run-up to his 100th birthday. By last night, when the appeal finally closed he had been sponsored to the extraordinary tune of £30 million (NZ$62m). Almost 1.5 million people made donations.

He didn’t just get one flypast either, but two. The first saw a Spitfire and Hurricane fly above his home in Marston Moretaine in Bedfordshire, in a tribute from the RAF and was followed a few hours later by two Army Air Corps helicopters.

On the ground Captain Tom remained defiant in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic.

‘‘In the end we will get through,’’ he declared. ‘‘We will win and people will recover from this invisible enemy that we have got.’’ –

GETTY IMAGES Captain Tom Moore raises his arm to acknowledge the RAF flypast provided by a Spitfire and a Hurricane over his home on Thursday in Marston Moretaine.

GETTY IMAGES Mandy Alison adds to the thousands of birthday cards sent to Captain Tom Moore for his 100th birthday on April 30. The cards are displayed in the hall of Bedford School, closed because of the pandemic.