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Captain Sir Thomas Moore (30 April 1920 – 2 February 2021), popularly known as Captain Tom, was a British Army officer and businessman known for raising money for charity in the run-up to his 100th birthday during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Moore served in India and the Burma campaign during the Second World War, and later became an instructor in armoured warfare. After the war, he worked as managing director of a concrete company and was an avid motorcycle racer.

On 6 April 2020, at the age of 99, Moore began to walk one hundred lengths of his garden in aid of NHS Charities Together, with the goal of raising £1,000 by his 100th birthday. In the 24-day course of his fundraising, he made many media appearances and became a popular household name in the UK, earning a number of accolades and attracting over 1.5 million individual donations. In recognition of his efforts, he received the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Helen Rollason Award at the 2020 ceremony. He performed in a cover version of the song "You'll Never Walk Alone" sung by Michael Ball, with proceeds going to the same charity. The single topped the UK music charts, making him the oldest person to achieve a UK number one.

On the morning of Moore's hundredth birthday, the total raised by his walk passed £30 million, and by the time the campaign closed at the end of that day had increased to over £32.79 million (worth almost £39 million with expected tax rebates). His birthday was marked in a number of ways, including flypasts by the Royal Air Force and the British Army. He received over 150,000 cards, and was appointed as honorary colonel of the Army Foundation College. On 17 July 2020, he was personally knighted by the Queen at Windsor Castle. He died on 2 February 2021 at Bedford Hospital where he was taken after being treated for pneumonia and then testing positive for COVID-19.

Military service

Moore as a second lieutenant in the British Army (c. 1941) Moore was conscripted in the 8th Battalion, Duke of Wellington's Regiment (8 DWR) in May 1940, stationed in Cornwall, eight months after the beginning of the Second World War.[6][unreliable source?][7] He was selected for officer training later that year,[5] and attended an Officer Cadet Training Unit before being commissioned as a second lieutenant on 28 June 1941.[8]

On 22 October 1941, Moore became a member of the Royal Armoured Corps. This was because 8 DWR became an armoured unit designated as the 145th Regiment Royal Armoured Corps.[5][9] Later that year, he was transferred to the 9th Battalion (9 DWR) in India, which had converted to become the 146th Regiment Royal Armoured Corps.[10] While in India, he was tasked with setting up and running a training programme for army motorcyclists.[10] He was initially posted to Bombay[11] (now Mumbai) and subsequently to Calcutta (now Kolkata).[6]

He was promoted to war-substantive lieutenant on 1 October 1942 and to temporary captain on 11 October 1944.[12]

As part of the Fourteenth Army, the so-called "Forgotten Army", he served in Arakan in western Burma (now Myanmar) – where he survived dengue fever.[10] Moore returned to the UK in February 1945, to take a training course on the inner workings of the Churchill tanks, learning to become an instructor. He did not return to the regiment, remaining as an instructor and the Technical Adjutant of the Armoured Vehicle Fighting School in Bovington Camp, Dorset, until he was demobilised in early 1946.[5][13][14]

For 64 years, he organised the 8th Battalion's annual reunion, the longest continual annual reunion in the Duke of Wellington Regiment.[6]

On 6 April 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and with his 100th birthday approaching, Moore began a fundraising campaign for NHS Charities Together, a group of charities supporting staff, volunteers and patients in the British National Health Service (NHS). He aimed to complete one hundred 25-metre (27-yard) lengths of his garden, ten lengths per day, with the help of a walking frame, branding the endeavour "Tom's 100th Birthday Walk for the NHS".[16][22][23]

The initial £1,000 goal having been realised on 10 April, the target was increased, first to £5,000,[24] and later to £500,000 as more people around the world became involved.[25] Contributions rose quickly after British media publicised the endeavour, beginning when Moore made a brief appearance by telephone, on Michael Ball's Sunday programme on BBC Radio 2 on 12 April.[26] Moore, who joined Twitter in the same month, used the site to express joy at the public's generosity in donating such a large amount of money.[27]

He achieved his target of one hundred lengths on the morning of 16 April, watched at a safe distance by a guard of honour from the 1st Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment,[28] the regiment into which the DWR were merged in 2006.[29] He said he would not stop, and aimed to do a second hundred.[14]

On the morning of his birthday, he had raised £30 million.[30] The JustGiving page for his campaign closed at the end of that day; the final amount raised subsequently being stated there as £32,796,475 (plus another £6,173,663.31 expected in tax rebates under the Gift Aid scheme)[31] – a record for a JustGiving campaign,[32][33] beating the previous record of £5.2 million raised (partially posthumously) by Stephen Sutton.[34][35] More than 1.5 million individuals donated.[31]

Funds raised by Moore are being spent on such things as well-being packs for National Health Service staff facilitating rest and recuperation rooms, devices to enable hospital patients to keep in contact with family members, and community groups who support patients once discharged from hospitals.[14][36] Once his campaign ended, Moore encouraged people to continue to donate, directly to the NHS Charities Together's urgent appeal,[37] and subsequently via his own Captain Tom Foundation.[38]

On reaching £5 million, Moore explained his motivation:[39]