TOM RICHMOND: CAPTAIN TOM’S MEMOIR HOLDS LESSON FOR THE FUTURE
I’d like to think, at a time when the teaching of history can cause conjecture, that schools can be encouraged to find a place for Sir Tom’s incredible book on the curriculum.
THERE IS a haunting passage in Captain Sir Tom Moore’s new memoir which is a timely reminder that we are still the lucky ones – despite the unfolding tragedy of Covid- 19 – to be following in the footsteps of Britain’s ‘ greatest generation’.
Now Yorkshire’s most famous centenarian, and one of the county’s greatest ever sons, he was just four when he witnessed the unveiling of Keighley’s war memorial in 1924 that his grandfather, Thomas, had helped to build with painstaking precision.
In the years after the Great War, he describes in Tomorrow Will Be A Good Day how there were “parents walking shell- shocked sons who were gibbering wrecks after the trenches”.
He goes on: “I remember one veteran with a leg that was a round wooden peg, and there was another who had no legs at all and wheeled himself round in a little trolley.”
Vivid testimony, such humbling words help explain Sir Tom’s sunny optimism, and appreciation of his own good fortune, when he completed all those laps of his garden, ahead of his 100th birthday, to raise an astonishing £ 33m for the NHS.
They also matter even more, at the start of the annual season of remembrance, because the Covid pandemic will inevitably impact on Royal British Legion fundraising events – and the national service in Whitehall exactly 100 years after the Cenotaph was built.
But we will do a disservice to the ‘ greatest generation’ if we do not find new ways to honour them, and wear our poppies with even more pride and gratitude.
And, as we look for new ways to reflect and remember, I’d like to think, at a time when the teaching of history can cause conjecture, that schools can be encouraged to find a place for Sir Tom’s incredible book – and story – on the curriculum, and especially in the county which shaped his life.
Could a way be found to provide free copies, certainly for every child in Keighley? I’d like to think Sir Tom’s spirit, and civility, can have a galvanising effect for years to come.
After all, Tomorrow Will Be A Good Day is far more than an autobiography charting this Yorkshire solider’s own war service and then that stoic walk like no other.
It’s also a gripping social history of our times – a childhood remembered fondly for chances to explore the West Riding countryside, a lifelong love.
Of struggle – Sir Tom’s grandfather, who ran the family building business, insisted that the wives of his staff came to the works every Saturday “so that they’d receive some of the money or the men might drink it all away”. Many of his men went to Uncle Chadwick’s pawn shop each week to borrow the suits they would need to wear at church on Sundays. How times change.
Of fear – the Moore family staring at each other blankly as the Second World War as hostilities were declared.
Of values – Sir Tom’s first marriage was a deeply unhappy one, but he goes on to describe how he respected his marriage vows for many, many years before a parting of the ways.
Of community – Sir Tom had become a member of Keighley Round Table in 1955 when negligence led to the deaths of eight people in a mill tragedy. A later inquest discovered that basic fire precautions were virtually non- existent and his group fundraised tirelessly for victims while a spate of similar fires in Yorkshire led to landmark changes to the law.
And of hope – Sir Tom uses his book to put Covid in the context of the 1918 epidemic of Spanish flu which, coming at the end of the Great War, caused even greater social hardship. Perturbed by the prevailing pessimism, he even suggests scientists produce graphs showing the number of people who have had the virus – and survived – to place alongside those charting deaths. “As long as good old common sense is employed, then nobody needs to panic.” Few will disagree.
There are also passages about Sir Tom’s second wife Pamela – and how the issues of social care and loneliness, so pertinent now, overshadowed her own decline as dementia took hold so cruelly. Tearful pages, they also spurred him to overcome a broken hip, and other ailments, and value his own health and care.
His modesty was summed up by his reaction when he was told, at the start of his walk, that he had accrued 5,000 Twitter followers in hours. “Who are they following?” he asked. “You,” his daughter Hannah replied. To which he ventured with characteristic naivety and charm “Why on earth would anyone follow me?”
It’s because this indomitable gentleman has reminded us – just like the Queen during this gruelling year – of the true meaning of Britishness.
Not only does Captain Sir Tom Moore’s bible of Yorkshire encapsulate our county’s history over the past century, but tomorrow will, to quote the great man, be a good day if we all strive to learn from his lessons in life. And humanity.