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.’’ –