Funeral of Britain's Sir Tom Moore

Feb. 27, 2021, CTV News "Second World War plane flyby marks Capt. Tom Moore's  funeral" AP.

Church bells rang  and a Second World War II-era plane flew over Saturday's service to honor Captain Tom Moore who single-handedly raised millions of pounds for Britain's  health workers by walking laps in his backyard.

Soldiers  performed ceremonial duties for Moore, who died Feb. 2 at age 100  after testing positive for COVID-19

The service was small, attended by just eight members of his immediate family.  But soldiers carried the coffin and fired a gun salute while a  C-47  Dakota Transport plane flew past.

Moore served during the war in India, Burma and  Sumatra.

He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in a socially distant ceremony at Windsor Castle.

--GreGen

Military Service of Captain Sir Thomas Moore-- Part 2: Part of the 'Forgotten Army' in Burma and Worked With Churchill Tanks

As part of the Fourteenth Army, the so-called "Forgotten Army", he served in Arakan in western Burma where he survived an attack of the dengue fever.

Moore returned to Britain in February 1945 to take a training course on the inner workings of the Churchill tanks and learned how to become an instructor.  He did not go back to his regiment, however, as he  remained as an instructor and the Technical Adjutant of the Armoured Vehicle Fighting School in Bovington Camp until he was demobilized in early 1946.

Back in civilian life, he worked with a roofing company and then a concrete one.

He raced motorcycles competitively and had been riding them since he purchased his first one at age 12.

--GreGen

Military Service of Captain Sir Tom Moore-- Part 1

The last four posts have been about this man who had become quite the hero and representative of the Greatest Generation in the United Kingdom this past year.  Here is a short look at his military career.

From Wikipedia.

He was born on 30 April 1920 and grew up in the town of Keighly, West Riding of Yorkshire.

Moore was conscripted to the 8th Battalion, Duke of Wellington's Regiment (8 DWR) in May 1940 and stationed at Weston Park in Otley for eight months and was selected for officer training later that year.  After attending that, he was commissioned a second lieutenant on 28 June 1941.

On 22 October 1941, Moore became a member of the Royal Armoured Corps because 8 DWR  became an armoured unit designated as the 145th Regiment Royal Armoured Corps.  Later that year he was transferred to the 9th Battalion (9 DWR) in India.

While there, he was tasked with setting up and running a training program for army motorcyclists.  He was initially posted to  Bombay and later to Calcutta.

Later, Moore was promoted to war-substantive  lieutenant 1 October 1941 and temporary captain on 11 October 1944.

--GreGen

Britain's Captain Sir John Moore-- Part 4: And, What a Life

Imagine, interviews with media elites.  An audience with the queen.  A knighthood.  The flag above the Prime Minister's residence lowered in your honor.  A respectful pause taken in a contentious debate at the House of Parliament, noting your death.

A name written in fireworks across the London sky on New Year's Eve.

A No. 1 single ion the U.K pop charts.  Yeah.

A legacy of persistence, of sacrifice, of unselfishness, of humor and good cheer.

A quotidian life, suddenly of extraordinary usefulness by writ of its very ordinary nature.

What an incredibly wonderful way to go.

I hadn't heard of him before his recent death, but considering all the Google Alerts concerning his death, quite the man.

So Long Captain Tom.  --GreGen

Death of Britain's Capt. Sir Tom Moore-- Part 3: What He Accomplished

It's easy to be cynical about heroes and, somewhere early in the story of Captain Sir Tom Moore, there was a daughter with a press release.  But the modest aim, clearly, was just to raise a few British pounds for the NHS and help, a man who still felt the need to serve.  The rise of this man never felt like the result of a cynical algorithm.

Moore's extraordinary age and humility helped.  There was a book ("Tomorrow Will be A Good Day"). talk shows and other stuff, but he was still about as pure a hero as it is possible to be, not the least because his heroism was so  rooted in the ordinary.

A walk around his garden, that was all.  But a walk after living and serving for a century.

In some ways, the end of Moore's life is like a bucket-list fairy tale, something we might all wish in our most improbable dreams.  An ordinary life that became not just a great life, but one that acknowledged as such by much of the world.

--GreGen

Death of Britain's Capt. Sir Tom Moore-- Part 2: A Spokesman of His Greatest Generation

Most of the deaths from COVID-19 have taken place in the quiet shadows, in care homes and hospitals hidden not only from private view, but from the loving gaze of family members.  They did not spark protests or riots for they were cloaked in old age.  Few of them were rich people or citizens with access to social-media megaphones.  They have been, in short, mostly anonymous occurrences, assessed collectively.

Not only was Moore a member of the Greatest Generation, his walk around the garden to raise funds for Britain's National Health Service might well go down in the history books as one of his generation's last, great acts of beneficence. 

He could be the last chapter in that book.

And historians will argue it was not an insubstantial contribution.

He raised in excess of $50 million for the cause of public health, sure, but he was also a human motivation machine spawning countless other walks, runs, jogs, and bake-offs.

In the U.K., he was not the face of the virus, but the face of the war required to combat its ravages.  Most of those who have died were old.  It was right that their spokesperson was one of their own.

One of the Greatest Continuing To Be The Greatest.  --GreGen

Death of Britain's Captain Sir Tom Moore-- Part 1

From the Feb. 5, 2021, Chicago Tribune "Why the British hero Captain Tom Moore mattered" by Chris Jones.

Beloved centenarian died Wednesday from pneumonia, coronavirus.

"Why did an old man pottering around his perfectly ordinary garden come to mean so much to the British struggle against COVID-19"

"A hundred thousand reasons.  "On January 26, the United Kingdom reported its 100,000th death from the coronavirus.  It was a grim milestone, shared by the United States, which hit that number in May of last year...."

But. Captain Sir Tom Moore dying on February 3 came to represent another number: 60,375.  That was the moment the virus' victims surpass the number of folks killed during World War II on English soil between 1939 and 1945, mostly the consequence of German bombing.

"Moore  was a veteran of that war, and thus he provided a crucial link to a previous era, a mythology really, where many people sacrificed their lives for the common good.  Public health officials. desperate to get people to change their behavior, understood his symbolic power."

--GreGen