CAPTAIN Sir Tom Moore’s daughter has blasted “vile” trolls who hounded her family during his £33million NHS fundraising mission.
Hannah Ingram-Moore said she shielded Sir Tom from months of online abuse because it would’ve broken his heart.
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Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Hannah also revealed her father’s poignant final moments.
The World War Two veteran was ‘excited about steak and chips and getting back out on his walker’, she said.
Sir Tom died on February 2, aged 100, following a battle with Covid and pneumonia after his heroic fundraising walk captured the nation’s hearts.
In an interview to be shown on tomorrow’s BBC Breakfast, Hannah said: “I think it would have broken his heart honestly if we’d said to him people are hating us. I couldn’t tell him.
HEARTLESS TROLLS
“Because how do you rationalise to a 100-year-old man that something so incredibly good can attract such horror.
“So we contained it within the four of us and we said we wouldn’t play to […] that vile minority, we wouldn’t play to them, we’re not because we are talking to the massive majority of people who we connect with.”
She also opened up about their last conversation together after Sir Tom was admitted to hospital with Covid.
Hannah said: “I said to him in the last few days, ‘So what do you want to eat when you come home?’ and we decided it was steak and chips.
“He was really excited about coming out for steak and chips and getting his frame back outside and his walker.
“The last real conversation was positive and about carrying on and that’s a lovely place to be.”
Hannah told the Beeb that when her dad went into hospital they “believed he’d come back out”.
She added: “We thought the oxygen would help, that he would be robust enough, [but] the truth is he just wasn’t.
“He was old and he just couldn’t fight it.”
She also discussed their final holiday together to Barbados where Sir Tom ticked off a Caribbean visit from his bucket list.
Hannah said: “It was just amazing, he sat in 29 degrees outside, he read two novels, he read the newspapers every day and we sat and we talked as a family.
“We went to restaurants (because we could there) and he ate fish on the beach and what a wonderful thing to do.
Despite losing “a huge part of our life” Hannah said Sir Tom’s legacy “is hope and joy”.
She added: “Let’s not lose sight of the fact that for him this was all about tomorrow will be a good day and being hopeful and no reason to sit and mourn for too long.
“Get on with it. And make a good job of it.”
The Second World War veteran set out to raise £1,000 for NHS Charities Together by walking 100 laps of his garden before his 100th birthday last April.
But his efforts struck a chord with the nation and donations flooded in, resulting in a mammoth fundraising total of more than £32 million.
He was knighted by the Queen at a special ceremony in July.
Sir Tom died in Bedford Hospital earlier this month shortly after testing positive for Covid, with tributes pouring in from around the world.
Meanwhile, his grandson, Tom Teixeira, said the the war hero would rather have a “small, intimate” funeral.
Tom, 20, told the Daily Mail: “I don’t think grandad would want a grand funeral.
“He’d like a small, intimate service with just the family. “March in, march out” he’d say. Pay your respects, then move on, get on with your lives.
“I know he believed he’d be reunited with grandma — he knew he was meeting her in heaven. That was a fact.
“So he wasn’t afraid of death. His favourite saying was: “We can get through this and tomorrow will be a better day,” and it would be a good day for him to be with grandma again.”
“I think we were all so pleased we managed to give him that.”
