Captain Tom Moore - Tomorrow Will Be A Good Day: My Autobiography

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First published

Copyright Captain Sir Tom Moore, 2020

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Jacket images: courtesy of Captain Sir Tom Moore and family; except Fields and Knighthood Getty Images
Photograph frames Shutterstock

ISBN: 978-0-241-48611-5

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Tomorrow will be a good day. Tomorrow you will maybe find everything will be much better than today, even if today was all right. My today was all right and my tomorrow will certainly be better. Thats the way Ive always looked at life.

Captain Sir Tom Moore, April 2020

Dedicated to all those who serve on the front line of any battle be it military, psychological or medical. I salute you.

This memoir is based on my own recollection of events, many long past. They may not always be exactly as others recall them. Any mistakes are my own.

Scene from the 19181920 Spanish flu pandemic.

Arthur Burrows read the first BBC radio news bulletin in 1922.

In 1927 Charles Lindbergh became the first person to fly solo non-stop across the Atlantic.

Scottish scientist Professor Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1929.

The Supermarine Spitfire prototype made its maiden flight in the summer of 1936.

St Pauls Cathedral survives the attention of the Luftwaffe in the winter of 1940.

The surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor naval base in December 1941 caused the United States to join the war.

The Imperial Japanese Army masses on the Burma border in 1942.

The Allies finally secured victory in North Africa in 1943.

6 June 1944. D-Day marked the beginning of the end of the war in Europe.

War leaders Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin meet at the Yalta Conference in February 1944.

VE Day in London, May 1945.

Nagasaki, 9 August 1945. Japan surrendered six days later.

Minister of Health, Aneurin Bevan, visits a Manchester hospital on 5 July 1948, the day the NHS was founded.

Britains first motorway, the M1, was opened in 1959.

US President John F. Kennedy addresses the crowds in West Berlin in June 1963.

In 1969 Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to walk on the moon.

The Bee Gees released their soundtrack to the movie Saturday Night Fever in 1977.

The Berlin Wall came down in 1989, heralding the collapse of communism across Europe.

Nelson Mandela was released from prison after twenty-seven years behind bars in 1990.

The normally teeming streets of London were empty after the Covid-19 lockdown in March 2020.

The ExCeL conference centre in east London was converted into the Nightingale Hospital in response to Covid-19.

Six-time world-champion, Lewis Hamilton, made this lifetime Formula 1 fan very happy when he wished me a happy 100th!

Tomorrow will be a good day.

I HEARD THEM LONG BEFORE I saw them, the throaty rumble of their Second World War engines reverberating in my hearing aids as I sat outside on the morning of my 100th birthday. With a blanket draped over my shoulders to protect me from the April chill and my face tilted to the sky, I spotted the valiant Hurricane first as it wheeled in from the west for my birthday fly-past. Then came the Spitfire, that gutsy little plane that captured the hearts of the nation and came to represent the British spirit.

As the aircraft came in low directly overhead, their two young pilots from RAF Coningsbys Battle of Britain Memorial Flight kindly dipped their wings at me before heading home. Raising a clenched fist, I punched the air and cheered along with everyone else, thrilled to bits by this timely reminder of all that helps make this country great. It is this very gumption that I knew would get us through the coronavirus pandemic that held us all in lockdown.

It was eighty years earlier that I saw my first Hawker Hurricane when three of them swooped low over our Yorkshire valley on the day war was declared. I was nineteen years old and I remember thinking to myself, So, this is what they mean by war. I saw more Hurricanes and Spitfires later as a trainee soldier, both bravely fending off German Messerschmitts over Cornwall during the Battle of Britain. And it was Spitfires 5,000 miles away out in Burma that helped us defeat the Japanese as we rolled in to fight them with our tanks.

As the relics of those dark days disappeared behind the clouds and my special birthday fly-past was over, I turned to the film crews back in our garden in force and said, I cant believe all this fuss is for me, and only because I went for a little stroll. In fact, the previous twenty-five days beggared belief, because everything that had happened had sprung from what was started as a family joke when I was recovering from a broken hip. The idea for the fundraising walk that was to change my life first came to me a few weeks after Id returned from another routine check-up at the local doctors surgery and as usual had taken the staff some chocolates to keep them going.

Youre such an inspiration, Tom, said Clare, one of my favourite nurses, after I told her I was considering ordering a treadmill. I cant think of many ninety-nine-year-olds whod be thinking about buying a running machine!

Its you lot who are the inspirational ones, I countered. For all the patience and kindness youve shown me over the last eighteen months, for the doctors who saved the life of my son-in-law, and for those who cared so wonderfully for my late wife Pamela. I only wish I could do more.

Clares parting advice to keep mobile was what sparked my mini challenge two weeks later, by which time we were all under lockdown. It was Sunday, 5 April 2020, the first really sunny day of the year, and my daughter Hannah and her family, with whom I live in Bedfordshire, decided to have a barbecue. Instead of doing my exercises in my room that day, I decided to take my walker outside for the first time and try a few laps of our 25-metre driveway. In what was a typical, fun conversation, my family began to tease me.