Lieutenant-Colonel Lieutenant colonel ( , ) is a rank of commissioned officers in the armies, most marine forces and some air forces of the world, above a major and below a colonel. Several police forces in the United States use the rank of lieutenant colonel. ...

Thomas Hugh Pitt Beeching (10 March 1900 – 31 December 1971) was an English businessman, soldier and

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

er who played

first-class cricket First-class cricket, along with List A cricket and Twenty20 cricket, is one of the highest-standard forms of cricket. A first-class match is one of three or more days' scheduled duration between two sides of eleven players each and is officiall ...

in the early 1920s.

Early life

Beeching was born at

Maidstone Maidstone is the largest Town status in the United Kingdom, town in Kent, England, of which it is the county town. Maidstone is historically important and lies 32 miles (51 km) east-south-east of London. The River Medway runs through the c ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

in March 1900, the son of Hugh and Pearl Beeching. His father was a

Major Major (commandant in certain jurisdictions) is a military rank of commissioned officer status, with corresponding ranks existing in many military forces throughout the world. When used unhyphenated and in conjunction with no other indicators ...

in the

Royal West Kent Regiment The Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment was a line infantry regiment of the British Army based in the county of Kent in existence from 1881 to 1961. The regiment was created on 1 July 1881 as part of the Childers Reforms, originally as the Quee ...

who later went on to work as a manager in a paper manufacturing firm.Carlaw D (2020) ''Kent County Cricketers A to Z. Part Two: 1919–1939'', pp. 17–18.
Available online
at the

Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians The Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians (ACS) was founded in England in 1973 for the purpose of researching and collating information about the history and statistics of cricket. Originally called the Association of Cricket Stati ...

. Retrieved 30 December 2021.) Beeching was educated at

Charterhouse School (God having given, I gave) , established = , closed = , type = Public school Independent day and boarding school , religion = Church of England , president ...

, playing in the cricket XI in 1917 when he

averaged In mathematics and statistics, the arithmetic mean ( ) or arithmetic average, or just the ''mean'' or the ''average'' (when the context is clear), is the sum of a collection of numbers divided by the count of numbers in the collection. The colle ...

81.66 runs per innings.Beeching, Lieut.-Colonel Thomas Hugh Pitt
Obituaries in 1971, ''

Wisden Cricketers' Almanack ''Wisden Cricketers' Almanack'', or simply ''Wisden'', colloquially the Bible of Cricket, is a cricket reference book published annually in the United Kingdom. The description "bible of cricket" was first used in the 1930s by Alec Waugh in a ...

'', 1972. Retrieved 26 March 2017. He also captained Charterhouse at

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

, played in the racquets pair and was considered a fine all-round sportsman, winning the victor ludorum award at school. After leaving school, Beeching attended

Royal Military College, Sandhurst The Royal Military College (RMC), founded in 1801 and established in 1802 at Great Marlow and High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, England, but moved in October 1812 to Sandhurst, Berkshire, was a British Army military academy for training infantry a ...

in 1918 and was commissioned into the Royal West Kents in November 1918 at the end of World War I.Lewis P (2014) ''For Kent and Country'', p. 37. Brighton: Reveille Press. Supplement to the London Gazette
''

The London Gazette ''The London Gazette'' is one of the official journals of record or government gazettes of the Government of the United Kingdom, and the most important among such official journals in the United Kingdom, in which certain statutory notices are ...

'', p.1185, 23 January 1919. Retrieved 26 March 2017. He served as a

Lieutenant A lieutenant ( , ; abbreviated Lt., Lt, LT, Lieut and similar) is a commissioned officer rank in the armed forces of many nations. The meaning of lieutenant differs in different militaries (see comparative military ranks), but it is often sub ...

with the first and third battalions of the RWK throughout 1920 before resigning his commission in December 1920 to join the family firm Beechings, a motor vehicle engineering company in

Aldershot Aldershot () is a town in Hampshire, England. It lies on heathland in the extreme northeast corner of the county, southwest of London. The area is administered by Rushmoor Borough Council. The town has a population of 37,131, while the Alders ...

Cricket

Beeching had captained the cricket team whilst at Sandhurst. He scored a century against

Royal Military Academy, Woolwich The Royal Military Academy (RMA) at Woolwich, in south-east London, was a British Army military academy for the training of commissioned officers of the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers. It later also trained officers of the Royal Corps of Sig ...

Lord's Lord's Cricket Ground, commonly known as Lord's, is a cricket venue in St John's Wood, London. Named after its founder, Thomas Lord, it is owned by Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and is the home of Middlesex County Cricket Club, the England and ...

and on the strength of this performance and his reputation from school cricket, was selected for

Kent County Cricket Club Kent County Cricket Club is one of the eighteen first-class county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Kent. A club representing the county was first founded in 1842 but Ke ...

in 1920. He played in eight first-class matches during 1920 and two in 1921 as a lower-order batsman,Thomas Beeching

CricInfo ESPN cricinfo (formerly known as Cricinfo or CricInfo) is a sports news website exclusively for the game of cricket. The site features news, articles, live coverage of cricket matches (including liveblogs and scorecards), and ''StatsGuru'', a d ...

. Retrieved 8 March 2017. as well as making a singe Second XI appearance for Kent in 1923. He played club cricket for amateur sides such as Band of Brothers,

Free Foresters Free Foresters Cricket Club is an English amateur cricket club, established in 1856 for players from the Midland counties of England. It is a 'wandering' (or nomadic) club, having no home ground. The Free Foresters were founded by the Rev. Willi ...

and

I Zingari I Zingari (from dialectalized Italian , meaning "the Gypsies"; corresponding to standard Italian ') are English and Australian amateur cricket clubs, founded in 1845 and 1888 respectively. It is the oldest and perhaps the most famous of the 'wa ...

War service

With the threat of war looming, he was activated from the

Reserve of Officers The Army Reserve is the active-duty volunteer reserve force of the British Army. It is separate from the Regular Reserve whose members are ex-Regular personnel who retain a statutory liability for service. The Army Reserve was known as the Ter ...

in May 1939 and served throughout World War II with the

Royal Army Service Corps The Royal Army Service Corps (RASC) was a corps of the British Army responsible for land, coastal and lake transport, air despatch, barracks administration, the Army Fire Service, staffing headquarters' units, supply of food, water, fuel and dom ...

. He landed in Algeria with the First Army in December 1942 and was awarded an

MBE Mbe may refer to: * Mbé, a town in the Republic of the Congo * Mbe Mountains Community Forest, in Nigeria * Mbe language, a language of Nigeria * Mbe' language, language of Cameroon * ''mbe'', ISO 639 code for the extinct Molala language Molal ...

in 1943 whilst serving as a Major involved in

logistics Logistics is generally the detailed organization and implementation of a complex operation. In a general business sense, logistics manages the flow of goods between the point of origin and the point of consumption to meet the requirements of ...

operations during the North African campaign.Recommendation for Award for Beeching, Thomas Hugh Pitt Rank
National Archives. Retrieved 26 March 2017. He ater served in

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

and was

Mentioned in Dispatches To be mentioned in dispatches (or despatches, MiD) describes a member of the armed forces whose name appears in an official report written by a superior officer and sent to the high command, in which their gallant or meritorious action in the face ...

in 1944. He reached the rank of

before being demobilised in October 1945.

Later life

Beeching had married Elizabeth Harrison in 1929. He was active in motor vehicle trader associations and after World War II was the managing director of Beechings until he retired in 1965. He died at

in 1971 aged 71.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Beeching, Thomas 1900 births 1971 deaths Military personnel from Kent Graduates of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst English cricketers Kent cricketers Sportspeople from Maidstone British Army personnel of World War II Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment officers Royal Army Service Corps officers