UNTIL recently, A&E staff might reasonably have viewed motorcyclists as their bêtes noires. Apart from bank holiday DIY enthusiasts sawing off fingers rather than planks, no other activity carries a higher risk of leading to a hospital gurney. Signs on country roads plead with motorcyclists to kill their speed, not themselves. Even so, there is a dare-devil temperament within the fraternity that defies warnings. The thrill, clearly, is to dice with death. And when the roll goes against them, A&E can stitch, pin and plaster the damaged parts back together.

Now, however, this sport has found its hero. As has the NHS, and the rest of us. Footage of motorcycling racer Captain Tom Moore doing laps of his Bedfordshire garden with the help of a walking frame, offered a rare and touching glimmer of cheer amid otherwise overwhelming reports of misery.

Learning of this former soldier’s passion for motorcycling allowed well-wishers to understand a little of the man who has been taken to the country’s heart. He might be a good age, but that has not deterred him. The sight of him turning his garden into another racing circuit was – to use a hackneyed word – inspirational. In this context, awesome takes on its original meaning.

Who, by now, doesn’t know the story? Captain Tom Moore, who had skin cancer treatment and a hip replacement in recent years, set out to walk 100 times around his 82-foot garden by his 100th birthday on 30 April. His aim was to raise £1000 for the NHS. At the time of writing, over £27m has been donated, and Captain Tom has said – medals glinting in the sunshine, his Yorkshire voice still firm – that so long as people continue to donate, he will carry on walking. His is the highest sum ever raised by a single individual on the JustGiving platform, but that record is of little interest compared with the man, and the chord he has struck.

The captain’s idea was to thank the NHS for the care it gave him and in the process play his part during this crisis. Explaining his motivation, he said, “We’re a little bit like having a war at the moment. But the doctors and the nurses, they’re all on the front line, and all of us behind, we’ve got to supply them and keep them going with everything that they need, so that they can do their jobs even better than they’re doing now.”

It is humbling to see a veteran of the battlefield pay tribute to those who are also facing potentially life-threatening danger whenever they clock in. In Moore’s words, “They’re all so brave. Because every morning or every night they’re putting themselves into harm’s way...”

Like those of his age who survived active service, or lived through the war, this army officer knows the meaning of courage, and of fear. Enlisting in the 8th Battalion, Duke of Wellington’s Regiment in 1939, he served in India and Burma, and later in Japan. Originally from Keighley, in the West Riding, he is widowed, and lives with one of his daughters and her family. None beyond his friends and family can claim to know him well, but from what we have seen of him, it’s fair to say that Captain Tom represents everything the country most needs right now.

For a man of his years to take on a gruelling physical challenge is in itself impressive. When it is the elderly who are bearing the brunt of the Covid 19 calamity, his dignified, encouraging, self-deprecating manner is a reminder of the cruelty of losing the aged in such numbers. That he remains fit and well is like seeing a lighthouse flash across a stormy, fog-bound sea. It is also immensely heartening to hear from a sector of the population that, for the moment, has been virtually silenced and made invisible, as they are forced to stay behind doors and out of sight.

Nor is the captain alone in showing resilience and fortitude, and giving us a wider perspective. A fellow veteran from the second world war has also made headlines, albeit in very different circumstances. 94-year-old Ken Bembow, who lives in a care home in Preston, was given a cushion printed with a photo of his late wife Ava, so he could keep her close. Previously he’d had a framed photo by his bedside, but his 17-year-old carer Kia Tobin worried that if it broke it could hurt him. She surprised him instead with this imaginative solution, which he hugged as if his wife was once more beside him.

The sight of a vulnerable pensioner being looked after with such kindness is another welcome and revealing glimpse behind the Covid Curtain. Mr Bembow’s gratitude for a memento of the woman he was married to for 71 years tugged the heart-strings. The gift, he said, had made him “the happiest man in the world”. It was an insight into someone’s capacity for thankfulness, despite his circumscribed situation, and a tonic for those benighted with sadness or worry.

Mr Bembow’s joy is poignant and uplifting, as is Captain Tom’s can-do attitude. His steadfastness, and calm assurance that we will get through this, come what may, sets a gold standard for the way Britain likes to see itself, even if the reality sometimes falls short. Talk of the bulldog spirit has pugnacious overtones; Captain Tom seems to me to embody something gentler and more profound: not bull-doggedness but belief, not blind faith but optimism, founded on experience. He also has a natural fundraiser’s fearlessness, as heard on his charity recording of You’ll Never Walk Alone, with Michael Ball and the NHS Voices of Care Choir. A sentimental tear-jerker? So what?

More than most, Captain Tom will appreciate the need for mascots in dark months like these. It is a role he has almost accidentally taken on, as people tune in to hear his grandfatherly advice, and his conviction that eventually “the sun will shine again”. You might say that unusual times produce unlikely role models. In the case of the captain and the care home resident, and countless others of their generation with generous, outward-looking hearts, these are individuals who were already heroes – we just hadn’t met them.

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