"Roy Hayward, who has died aged 99, landed on D-Day with the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry and was badly wounded in the Battle of Normandy. Stanley Roy Hayward was born at East Molesey in Surrey on April 17 1925. His father, a dental mechanic, had served with the Lincolnshire Regiment in the First World War. Young Roy gained a scholarship to Surbiton County Grammar School. He played in the 1st XV at rugby and captained the cricket XI. Aged 16, he began work with the Westminster Bank and joined the Covent Garden branch in London. In 1943 he enlisted in the Army and was posted to the Royal Armoured Corps camp at Bovington in Dorset. After training in driving, gunnery and radio, he qualified as reserve tank crew and joined the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry in the New Forest shortly before D-Day. After being wounded in June 1944, he was evacuated to England in a landing craft and sent to a hospital at Cosham, near Portsmouth, where his bandages were changed. He then went by train to Preston Royal Infirmary, where he stayed for three months. At the Pensions’ Hospital in Leeds, measurements and casts were taken for the fitting of artificial limbs and these were sent to Roehampton Hospital in Surrey. After several fittings he was handed his new legs, and in May 1945 he was able to return to his job at the Westminster Bank. He commuted from Molesey to Covent Garden by bicycle, train and on foot, a procedure he later described as mad but which contributed greatly to his mobility and fitness in later life." Roy Hayward, D-Day veteran who paid a high price for his service in Normandy
