Captain Tom Moore, 99, has raised an incredible sum for the NHS since starting his walk (Picture: PA)

A 99-year-old veteran who challenged himself to walk 100 lengths of his garden has raised an incredible £9 million for the NHS.

Captain Tom Moore, who served in India and Burma, originally set out to raise £1,000 but a burst of donations on Tuesday saw that sum pledged on average every 20 seconds.

The fundraiser had topped £1 million at 9am on Tuesday, before surpassing £5 million earlier this morning, and reaching £9 million this evening.

After reaching the £5 million milestone, his Twitter account said: ‘5 MILLION! Huge thank you to @JustGiving who had over 90,000 people on Tom’s page at one time, and had to try ensure that the site didn’t crash.




‘WOW – just speechless.’

Mr Moore, originally from Keighley in Yorkshire, was aiming to walk 100 lengths of his Bedfordshire garden before he turns 100 on April 30.

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His challenge and fundraising has been praised by a range of famous faces, with England hooker Jamie George saying he had been ‘truly inspired’.

Tom Moore’s JustGiving page repeatedly crashed because so many people were trying to donate

Carole Decker from T’Pau said he was an ‘amazing fella’, and the US ambassador to the UK Woody Johnson saying it was ‘amazing what people can do’.

Speaking about the fundraising efforts, Mr Moore told BBC News: ‘It seems almost like fairy land to think that we started off at 1,000 to a sum of money that’s not believable, is it?’

Mr Moore, who recently had a hip operation, is ahead of schedule with his walking, now hoping to finish the challenge by Thursday.

Mr Moore, who recently had a hip operation, is ahead of schedule with his walking, now hoping to finish the challenge by Thursday (Picture: Reuters)

Tom Moore, pictured front and centre, served in India and Burma during WWII

His fundraiser has led more than 200,000 individual donors to sponsor him for his 100 laps.

Mr Moore trained as a civil engineer before enlisting in the army for the Second World War, rising to captain/

He told the BBC: ‘I never imagined anything like this, but I’m so pleased, and I hope it just goes on because the services I got from all these doctors and nurses was absolutely outstanding.

‘And they’re such nice people too.’

If you would like to donate, click on this link to Tom’s fundraising page.

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