Proud old soldier Who lived to 101
CENTENARIAN TOM SERVED IN WORLD WAR II AND WAS A POW. HIS FAMILY REMEMBER HIM AS A ‘HAPPY AND KIND’ HUSBAND AND DAD, ‘WITHOUT A NASTY BONE IN HIS BODY’
WHEN Thomas Day, or Tom as he was known to his family and many friends, sailed for North Africa with the Essex Regiment from Greenwich Quayside in 1941, Dame Vera Lynn was singing her famous anthem We’ll Meet Again. It became his favourite song and one that would hold huge significance for him in life, and in death.
During Tom’s surprise 100th birthday celebrations last October, in Beeston, Nottinghamshire, the town he’d called home for 57 years, performer Jayne Darling got him singing the tune again. And it was also played at his funeral, held after a poignant two-minute silence on Remembrance Day at Beeston’s Bramcote Crematorium.
“That song meant a huge amount to Dad,” says Tom’s daughter Carol Warren, 57. “We organised a 1940s-style tea party for his centenary birthday and he was in his element. When he sang We’ll Meet Again, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
DEVOTION TO DUTY
“It seems to sum up the strong work ethic and devotion to duty that Dad passed on to his own children. He was a true gentleman, an incredible source of strength to me throughout my life and was known by everyone in the local community.”
Tom was born in Brentwood, Essex, to parents Thomas and
Ruby, and was the eldest of five siblings. It was a close family, and Tom remained particularly close to his youngest brother Ron until he died in 2004, aged 72.
Tom grew up on Days Farm in the Essex town and, having left school at 14, went on to work the land alongside his father until enlisting in the Army at the outset of World War II.
“Dad was posted to Iraq and then Libya, before spending around a year fighting in northern Italy,” says Carol, herself a mum to daughter Julia, and a grandmotherof-two. “Then, in 1943, he was captured by the Germans at the battle of the River Trigno. He was held for 18 months as a prisoner of war, at the Stalag 4D camp in Torgau, Germany. He didn’t talk much about it, but we knew that while crossing the river he’d seen friends shot and killed beside him. He told us that he’d ridden his luck that day, and didn’t know how he’d survived.
“One funny story he told about the camp was how he and his fellow soldiers used to dry out used teabags that they got in their Red Cross parcels. Then they would escape at night through a loosened railing on the picket fence outside their hut, and use them to barter with the Germans for eggs and cigarettes.
“The camp was liberated by the Americans in spring 1945 and my dad flew home on a Lancaster bomber. After six weeks of double rations to feed him back up, Dad used to laugh that he was posted back to Germany to guard the German POWS. He was in the forces for a total of 22 years and that’s also where he met Mum, who was an Army cook.”
Tom married Beatrice in 1958, and they went on to have five children: Robin, Richard, Carol, Sharon and Julie. The couple separated when Carol was nine, and she and Richard stayed with their dad, who raised them in what had been the marital home in Beeston.
“Dad was a single parent at a time when that was unusual for a father, and he was a brilliant one,
Celebrating his 100th birthday
Attending a lunch for the Scouts Guild
very caring and loving,” says Carol. “Richard and I were always particularly close to him. Dad had left the Army in 1962 and, after a time as a provost sergeant in the military police, he became a safety officer at British Celanese, until he retired. He was very active in his workers’ union, and I’ve followed in his footsteps, now working for Unison, after an 18-year career in education.” Tom never remarried, but was hugely active throughout his life and in the local community, with many interests and hobbies. “Dad was very involved with the local scouts and had also been a foster parent,” Carol says. “He travelled all over the world. Malta was probably his favourite place, and he sometimes visited three
times a year. He loved steam rallies too, and used to travel to them with Richard on the back of his motorbike, or in Richard’s Reliant Robin, which we used to call the ‘Plastic Pig’.”
Just a couple of years before he died, fiercely independent Tom was still doing all his own shopping and cleaning, popping into Beeston daily on his mobility scooter. But in April he had a fall and suffered a fractured back that put him in hospital for more than two months. Carol and husband Glenn, 61, moved back into the family home to help care for him.
“On Father’s Day we were told Dad had just a couple of days left, but he did a miraculous U-turn,” Carol says. “He was cheerful until the end, never complaining, telling his wonderful carers: ‘I mustn’t grumble’.
“Dad was just one amazing man, always happy and kind, without a nasty bone in his body. And that’s a pretty good way to be remembered.”
He was cheerful until the end, never complaining, telling his wonderful carers: ‘I mustn’t grumble’ Thomas’s daughter Carol Warren