Flags across the country were flown at half mast this morning as the nations prepares to say goodbye to NHS fundraising hero Sir Captain Tom Moore.
The NHS fundraising hero’s funeral will take place just after 11am this morning and he will be buried in the family plot in his hometown of Keighley, West Yorkshire.
War hero Captain Tom inspired countless people across the globe by valiantly raising more than £32million for the NHS at the height of the pandemic last year.
During the Second World War, he served with the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment which later merged with two others from Yorkshire. It became known as the Yorkshire Regiment, which Captain Tom was made an Honorary Colonel of last August.
Six soldiers from the Yorkshire Regiment will carry his coffin into the crematorium today for a service he planned himself.
The pallbearers will be led by Regimental Sgt Maj Jamie Pearson, who was in charge of the guard of honour on Captain Tom’s 100th birthday — the day he finished his walk which raised £32 million for NHS charities.
Meanwhile, hundreds of bellringers across the UK will remember Captain Tom at 12 noon by tolling a single bell 100 times.
Captain Tom’s daughter Lucy Teixeira said her father’s funeral will be ‘quite spectacular’.
Captain Tom at his home in Marston Moretaine, Bedfordshire, after he achieved his goal of 100 laps of his garden in April last year
A firing party of 14 will each fire three rounds in unison during the funeral, and a bugler will sound The Last Post at the end of the private service.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said: “It is an honour to be asked to undertake such a prominent role.”
Amid the pandemic only eight family members will attend and police have urged the public to stay away from the area.
A flypast will be shown on BBC and Sky TV.
Captain Tom died on February 2 at Bedford Hospital after contracting pneumonia and coronavirus.
His funeral will be attended by eight members of his immediate family – his two daughters Hannah Ingram-Moore and Ms Teixeira, four grandchildren and his sons-in-law.
His daughter Ms Teixeira, 52, said the service will be ‘quite spectacular’, adding: ‘There’s just going to be the eight of us under full Covid restrictions, we will honour him the best way we possibly can.’
There are plans to plant trees around the world in his honour, with Ms Teixeira hoping that the Trees for Tom initiative will result in a wood in his home county of Yorkshire and the reforestation of part of India, where he served during the Second World War.
‘My sister and I have been creating the funeral that my father wanted,’ she said.
‘He was very clear in his wishes and if he could have been put into a cardboard box, he would have done that, rather than chop down a tree.’
She said she had received many messages from well-wishers, and that it was ‘wonderful’ to see people writing in an online book of condolence.
His family revealed Captain Tom had written about his funeral in a book before his death, saying he wanted it to end with Frank Sinatra’s My Way ‘because I always did things my way and especially like the line about having too few regrets to mention’.
The family has urged people to support the NHS by staying at home.
Once Covid-19 restrictions permit, they will inter Captain Tom’s ashes in Yorkshire, with his parents and grandparents in the Moore family plot.
Earlier this week, Ms Ingram-Moore said her father Captain Tom had set out his requests in a ‘lovely’ and ‘open’ conversation prior to his death.
She said the national treasure had wanted Victoria sponge cakes and sandwiches at his wake and had asked for his ashes to be taken to the family grave in his beloved Yorkshire.
Speaking in a heartwarming interview with Good Morning Britain, Ms Ingram-Moore said: ‘Of course, he was older so the concept of talking about death was a real one.
‘But we had a lovely conversation in his kitchen and I said to him the thought of a very quiet funeral might not cut it and that people might be quite interested, and he said in his Yorkshire accent “Do you think so?”.
‘And so I asked him what he wanted and his wishes were really clear, he said he would like to be cremated and his ashes taken to the family grave in Yorkshire.
‘He was very descriptive about the songs he wanted to be played and he wanted us to eat Victoria sponge cakes and sandwiches after, and was so glad he didn’t have to make them.’
Ms Ingram-Moore also revealed her father had asked to have ‘I told you I was old’ engraved on his headstone in tribute to a joke by his favourite comic growing up.
The witty line is inspired by comedian Spike Milligan’s famous epitaph ‘I told you I was ill’, which he said had ‘always made me laugh’.