Ground control and Major Tom

Eighty-six-year old Maj Thomas Averill is from a Worcestershire farming family but was born in Canada, where his father spent more than a decade as a pioneer rancher.

The pinnacle of Major Tom's life was reached, to his mind, through the war years which saw his illustrious active service from 1939 until 1946 with the Worcestershire Territorial Army regiment of the Royal Artillery.

He was promoted in the field through the ranks from 2nd Lieut to Major and looks back on his war years "as the best days of my life - not for anything would I have missed the experience of what I did and where I went".

Holder of the Territorial Decoration (TD), he is now one of the few remaining Worcestershire survivors of Dunkirk, and was a founder member, chairman and vice-president of the Dunkirk Veterans Association - a body which, sadly, had to be disbanded in 2000 because of fast diminishing numbers.

Major Tom is also one of the oldest surviving past playing members of Worcester Rugby Club and earned his nickname during the 1980s when he was groundsman of the club's Sixways arena at Warndon.

The world-wide hit song Space Oddity by David Bowie in which part of the lyric is "This is Ground Control to Major Tom" was soon adapted to tag Tom Averill as "Major Tom - Ground Control!"

Tom's grandfather, Leonard Averill, was originally a farmer in Derbyshire, but in the late 1800s, his dairy herd was suddenly wiped out by a mysterious illness, leaving him in a desperate state. Luckily, however, the Earl of Dudley heard of his plight and invited him to join his estate team as farm bailiff at Witley Court, near Worcester.

Leonard's wife Ann also went to work with the kitchen staff at Witley Court, in particular looking after the dairy produce and the chickens.

Len and Ann were at Witley Court from the 1880s, until around the 1920s, and later lived in retirement at Wood End, Shrawley.

They had four children, one of them Morris Millington Averill, who was to become Major Tom's father.

Morris began his working life in the wines and spirits business in Bristol, playing rugby for the city and then for Devon and Exeter, turning out for them in their game against the first All Blacks team to come to the UK from New Zealand.

"My father was fond of recalling that three of those All Blacks were Maoris, who played bare-footed throughout," says Tom.

As a young man, Morris Averill became smitten with Marjorie Pheysey, daughter of a family of agricultural merchants at Stourport-on-Severn, who supplied goods and equipment to Witley Court.

Nevertheless, he decided in 1909 to sail off alone to a new life in Canada. He was assigned a ranch plot near Calgary by the Canadian Government, plus a team of horses, and was required to maintain the long trail between Cochrane and Calgary - a strategic dirt road which had to be kept free of potholes.

On the romance front, Morris kept in constant touch by letter with his sweetheart Marjorie, who at the start of the First World War had joined the VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) at Kidderminster, as a nurse. Her first patients were Belgian soldiers, many suffering from Trench Foot and facing limb amputations. Changing bandages for her became a harrowing task.

Late in 1915, Marjorie was persuaded by Morris Averill to join him in Canada, and they were married in Calgary.

"I know that my father very much enjoyed being a rancher, lasso-ing buffalo, breaking in horses and attending rodeos," says Tom, who was born on his parents' Canadian ranch in November 1917, about a year after the arrival of his sister Mary.

He was christened Thomas Eric in honour of two uncles killed during the First World War - his father's brother Lt Thomas Averill, and his mother's brother Eric, who was serving with the Australian Army.

However, by 1920 Morris Averill had decided there was no future in ranching and returned with his family to Worcestershire, where he set up in farming at Hollingshead Farm, Holt Heath. Another son, William, arrived later to complete the family.

Tom, who has no recollections at all from his first three years of life in Canada, was sent to the kindergarten school, Hazeldene, near to the windmill at Stourport, and later became a weekly boarder at The King's School, Worcester, for about six years.

Each Monday, his mother took him to school by pony and trap, though not before he had caught Minnie. "I was the only one who knew how to catch the pony because it always ran off when it sensed it was about to be put to work in the fields or pulling the trap!" he said.

At Hollingshead Farm, Morris Averill expanded his operations to the keeping of about 700 pigs, fed and reared pioneeringly then by The Danish System. The Averills supplied 50 or 60 lean bacon pigs a month to nationwide butchers, Marsh & Baxter, and, as a sideline, also nurtured one or two huge sows, up to half-a-ton in weight, which became champions at fatstock shows around the country.

On leaving The King's School, Tom joined his father in the business at Hollingshead Farm and was very much involved in the pig rearing operations.

According to Tom, his father was always "a great athlete," playing rugby well into his 40s and also cricket for Ombersley. Little wonder, therefore, that Tom was also drawn to rugby in his teens and began cycling into the Faithful City on Saturdays, in the 1930s, to play for Worcester Rugby Club.

"As our pigs had to be fed three-times-a-day, it would mean me giving them their midday feed and then jumping on the bike to get into Worcester in time for the kick-off. I soon became as fit as could be!"said Tom.

He would also be sent by bike to the Shambles, in Worcester, on Saturday nights, when the many butchers in the street sold off their meat cheaply as there was no refrigeration in those days in which meats could be stored over the weekend.

"It was sixpence a pound on the bone or nine pence off the bone, and I also had to buy a hand of bananas. On the way home, I would usually drop in for a shandy at the Wheatsheaf pub in Henwick Road, where the landlord was a Mr Baker."

In 1936, Morris Averill and his family moved from Hollingshead Farm to the superb Georgian property, Severn Bank House, near the Lenchford Hotel at Shrawley, and began farming its 80 acres, giving up pig rearing in favour of cattle and sheep.

The first captain under whom Tom Averill played with Worcester Rugby Club was Jack Roberts, who still lives in St John's. Another leading team-mate was the late Ray Shrimpton.

"I had the distinction of playing at Moseley in the finals of the Seven-a-Side North Midlands championship both in 1938 and again, after the war, in 1948."

In fact, Tom went on playing rugby until he was 44, for some seasons as Second XV captain, but finally had to hang up his boots in 1961, after sustaining a severe shoulder injury in a game against Worcester Teachers' Training College at Henwick.

"I well remember the discomfort of trying to milk our cows by only one hand!"

However, it had been in his younger days as a rugby player that Tom had taken what proved to be a momentous decision in his life.

"Chatting in the dressing-room in the winter of 1938-39, team-mates Bob Ward and Tony McEwan surprised me when they announced they were about to volunteer for the Forces - and in May, 1939, I also felt the urge to follow suit.

"I was 21 and drove to the Southfield Street Depot in Worcester, in my Austin Seven to sign on in the Territorial Army with Worcestershire's 67th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery.

"I began as a gunner but was commissioned in June 1939 as a 2nd Lieut - and little did I suspect then that I should be thrown so soon into active service as a volunteer soldier.

"It was obviously a rude awakening when a telegram came to Severn Bank ordering me to report to my regiment's Malvern Battery on September 1, 1939. My grandfather and father certainly didn't want me to go but I had no choice other than to pack my kit-bag and head off."

Tom soon found himself with his regiment undergoing intense training in Wiltshire.

"We were about 20 per cent short of being fully-trained soldiers but were polished up quickly and got into sharp order with lots of route marches and rifle and gun drills."

They then sailed from Southampton to Le Havre in January 1940, and immediately had to endure terrible winter months, "the coldest in living memory. It was a real tester but only one or two men got flu, which shows how fit we were."

Next they found themselves constructing gun emplacements in the French countryside and built them so well that they greatly impressed inspecting generals.

"We had got some fine Worcestershire tradesmen in our ranks, and there was a good spirit in our regiment, led by a wonderful CO, Col ACW Hobson MC who had been a captain in the First World War.

"We were proud to be moved into the First Army and advanced to the front line through the main streets of Brussels, which were lined by cheering crowds."

At the battlefront near the River Dyle, the Worcester gunners found themselves supporting the 1st Guards Brigade which made a significant gain of ground, thanks to a telling artillery barrage by the gunners. The Guards commander sent a message to the RA unit: "Thanks to you and your part-time soldiers!"

The advance continued until May 20, when the order came through for all British units to withdraw following the capitulation of Belgium and the reduction of the French to only pockets of resistance.

"We made our way in with our trucks and guns through a gap between Ypres and Cassel, had no end of trouble with road signs, and then fought a short rearguard action. At one point in making our way to the French coast, there was a gas alert, and we put on our respirators."

This turned out to be a life-saving move for Tom Averill in the first of what he describes as his series of "near misses" during the war.

"At a crossroads we came under heavy enemy shelling, but our driver, a chap called Hill, from Malvern, steered our truck effectively through the barrage. However, when we examined the outside of the vehicle later, we found it riddled with 15 bullet and shrapnel holes, and as I put my hand inside my jacket, I discovered that a piece of shrapnel was lodged in the canister of my respirator. A near miss for me!"

All along their route to the coast, Lt Averill and his men found the roads cluttered with columns of refugees and Belgian soldiers.

"They hampered our progress, and we were also appalled to see that the Belgian Army had abandoned no end of horse-drawn gun carriages and other vehicles on the roadsides, all with their horses tied up to them.

"Together with Fred Brewer of Pheasant Street, Worcester, and Bill Morgan from Bennett's Dairies, I went round uncoupling as many of these poor horses as possible, slapping them on the backside and sending them off with shouts of 'Good luck'.

"Later, I was to get up on top of a Belgian charger to look round the coastal area. I felt safer than in a truck."

Tom's troop arrived next in Poperinge, a French town which was in flames and where their progress was again hampered.

"In the end, we were forced either to ditch our vehicles in canals or to set them on fire. We also dismantled the essential mechanisms of our guns, rendering them of no use to the enemy after we had abandoned them.

"When we arrived on the beaches at Dunkirk, I found that 50 blokes had tagged on to me as I walked along the water's edge for about nine kilometres, looking for means of evacuation.

"Eventually, we turned back to Dunkirk where men were wadeing out into the sea to get on to boats and where resourceful groups were making piers out into the sea by using up to 20 three-ton trucks, lining them up nose-to-tail. This was in bids to get men out to the larger ships which could not pull in any closer to the shore.

"I suppose we were on the beaches for about three days, and at one stage I asked my signalman, Cliff Willis to go to the East Mole Pier at Dunkirk and see if there were any ships we could board. He came back to say that the destroyer HMS Worcester was there on its sixth round trip, and my joyful reaction was that there couldn't be a more appropriately named ship for our rescue.

"Between waves of firing and shelling by German planes, we made our dash to the HMS Worcester and got safely aboard."

However, that certainly wasn't the end of the traumas for the Worcester gunners regiment - the last British artillery unit to be in action before the Dunkirk evacuation.

Col. Hobson was to record in his notes that HMS Worcester was attacked by nine German bombers and developed a 30 degree list, casting some stretcher-bound dead and injured into the sea.

The regiment suffered 24 men killed and 100 wounded out of 450 on that voyage, and to make matters worse, the destroyer collided with a French ship, The Maid of Orleans, suffering further damage.

"The ship was a right cripple but mercifully managed to get us back to Dover where we had to get on to the portside by clambering over another ship."

The regiment was dispersed to all parts of the country - Tom and his men to Northampton - before finally being drafted to Leeds for the regiment to re-form. And it was there that Tom reached another significant milestone in his life. Before the war, he had fallen for Mavis Sinnett whose family had a dairy business in Worcester, and whom he had met when she was working in a sweet shop near the Theatre Royal in Angel Street.

At Leeds, Tom and Colonel Douglas Whatley, a solicitor from Malvern, decided it was high time to take a weekend's leave to get married back home.

"We were able to commandeer two of the best cars - a Ford V8 Pilot and a Mercury - and drove home separately. Mavis and I were married at Shrawley Church on June 15, 1940, and Douglas Whatley was wed the same day, elsewhere.

"Unfortunately we had to be back on the parade ground at Leeds by 8.45am on the Monday, and just made it, leaving our brides in the cars nearby."

The regiment was then based in Lincolnshire for about 12 months "getting bored", and Tom managed to go home on leave to help his father with the 1941 harvest at Severn Bank.

"I suppose I could have got out of the Territorial Army at that stage to return to agriculture full-time, but after only months, I put my uniform back on and re-joined the regiment which was transferred to Kilmarnock and Ayr in Scotland for further training.

Then, in May 1943, the regiment was sent to North Africa, sailing from Liverpool to Algiers. However, after only a short time, Tom was struck down with malaria and jaundice and was quite seriously ill for a few days.

Later, however, he was involved in the battle for the capture of Tunis, and had another of his "near misses" at "Banana Ridge".

"I had been promoted to Captain by then and was in charge of an ammunition column, We were out in no man's land when we suddenly bumped into a German unit on exercises. We had not expected to see them, nor them us, and we got into battle. I was in a three-tonner which came under heavy tracer bullet fire, and miraculously my driver, George Woolhouse got us out of the firing line even though the tyres of the vehicle were all flat and he was operating on only one gear. I recommended him for the Military Medal and he got it."

The next "near miss" for Tom was also not far off. It came when he and his men had arrived on Italian shores during the Anzio Landings of January 1944.

"We set up gun positions, and suddenly a shell landed right in the dug-out where I was with some of my men. I looked round to discover my crew had all made a dash for it and left me alone. Miraculously, the shell turned out to be a dud and never exploded. It was a direct hit and would have been a case of 'Tom's gone' had it exploded."

Next, Capt Tom Averill found himself in observation and gun posts at Florence, overlooking the River Arno and the famous Ponte Vecchio. It was there that another "near miss" was in store for him when a gun post close by suddenly exploded into flames. It seems a shell had somehow exploded inside one of the guns as it was being loaded, killing a sergeant from Malvern and severely wounding two other men.

From Florence, the regiment then saw action near Rome and on the Gothic Line, particularly at Monte Grande overlooking Bologna.

"At this stage, we had been in the battle lines non-stop for 18 months, and I had been through a lot of scary moments, particularly at those times when I was sent out with the infantry as a forward observation officer.

"I was then promoted to Major and we came out of the line and were sent first to Gaza, Haifa and Tel Aviv in Palestine, and next to Damascus, in Syria, until the Germans surrendered. It was then back via Cairo, to Palestine, where we had our farewell party and where the 67th Field Regiment was placed in what was officially described as 'suspended animation' in March, 1946. My return home was deferred for a further three months for finalising operations."

Interestingly, it was only last month that surviving members of the 67th Field Regiment had their 58th re-union dinner at Silver Street, Worcester.

On de-mob, Major Tom returned to Worcester and went into the corn and seed trade with Gascoynes for a time and also took to the field again with Worcester Rugby Club.

On the career front, his next move to buy a smallholding of 20 or so acres at Cradley, near Malvern, where he and his wife and family remained for 15 years.

"I was noted for keeping turkeys and sampled a lot of lovely fresh air and freedom, but never really enjoyed running a smallholding," he said.

In 1965, his wife Mavis spotted that a house was for sale in Hanbury Park Road, Worcester, and Tom decided to buy it as soon as he saw it. The substantial property is still his home today.

Having given up the land, Major Tom was then to spend 13 years as an employee of Worcestershire County Council, first as an administrative officer in the Civil Defence department under Sqdn Ldr Pengilley and then as a clerk on the construction of the M5 through Worcestershire.

He retired in 1979, at the age of 62, but was already taking a keen interest in the maintenance of the Bevere ground of Worcester Rugby Club - just a short distance away, when he was working at the county Civil Defence offices in Morton House, Fernhill Heath.

He assisted groundsman Stan Price part-time at Bevere, and in 1981, took over from him as full-time groundsman on a voluntary basis at the rugby club's new arena at Sixways, tending five senior and five junior pitches.

He remained in the post for five years and did such a good job that he was awarded the trophy of Club Man of the Year in 1984, also earning that nickname "Major Tom - Ground Control."

He was made a vice-president and then an honorary life member of the club.

He has been in the Royal British Legion for many years and a regular attender at the Remembrance Sunday services in Worcester Cathedral each November. And, in 1972, he was a founder member of the Dunkirk Veterans' Association whose standard was dedicated in Worcester Cathedral.

Over the years since, Major Tom has organised about 30 annual pilgrims of the Veterans back to Dunkirk and De Panne for stays of several days. He was a vice president of the association and, in its final years, the chairman, his proudest moment being to lead the final parade of the Dunkirk Veterans through the centre of Dunkirk in 2000, the year they disbanded.

Tom's parents, Morris and Marjorie Averill, retired to Falmouth, Cornwall, in the 1970s where they died some years later. Tom's sister Mary served with the WAAFs during the war and married a South African doctor, who did sterling service at Guy's Hospital, losing a leg in a bombing raid.

Tom and wife Mavis celebrated their Golden Wedding anniversary in 1990, though in poignant circumstances. Cheltenham Cobalt Unit had to be the scene of the celebrations because Mrs Averill was being treated for cancer and was very weak. She died only months later.

There are two children of the marriage - son Michael, who lives in Kidderminster, and works for the Environment Agency, and daughter Julia, who was for some years secretary to George Lodge, managing director of Kay & Co, in Worcester.

As Mrs John Downie, Julia now lives in Stratford-upon-Avon and has two sons.