£29M HERO’S DAUGHTER

you are again, you are a hero. And I salute you.” Lucy said: “My father has been inspiring all his life. I’ve watched him be determined, I’ve watched him carry things out. His Yorkshire grit and British determination is stamped through him, as many people now see.

“He said that a Yorkshireman’s word is his bond – if he says he is going to do something, then he is going to do it. I would say that is his motto.” Lucy opened her family photo album as she chatted proudly about her dad, who walked her up the aisle when she married her husband, also Tom, in 1994.

She recalled: “My father walking me up the aisle 26 years ago was very special. He was very proud. In the car on the way to church, sitting with him, he turned the smile on.

“It felt quite emotional so I said, ‘Tell me a boring story.’

“So he told me an Army story and it calmed my nerves.”

Tom was born and brought up in Keighley, West Yorks, and completed an apprenticeship as a civil engineer, before joining the

Army as a 20-year-old at the start of the Second World War.

Tom served in India and then fought in bloody battles against invading Japanese forces in Burma. He met wife

Pamela when he was 50 and working as a salesman.

Lucy said: “My dad has had a very busy life. When he was in his 50s he had a young family. As I grew up, it never occurred to me that he was older than most parents. He behaved like a young man. We were always busy, always doing lots of things.

“When I was in junior school, he was head of the parent-teacher as