10 Facts About Eric Hayes

Major General Eric Charles Hayes, CB was a senior British Army officer who served in both of the world wars.

Eric Hayes was promoted to lieutenant on 19 June 1918, on his twenty-second birthday, and ended the war having been mentioned in dispatches.

Shortly after graduating from Camberley, from 21 May 1929 Eric Hayes was appointed as a General Staff Officer Grade 3 at the War Office.

Shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, Eric Hayes led his battalion overseas to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force, arriving there in the third week of September.

Eric Hayes did not remain with his battalion long as, in January 1940, he returned to England to become Commandant of the Company Commanders' School, and, in August, was promoted to brigadier and given command of the 35th Infantry Brigade, a second-line Territorial Army unit, which had recently fought in the Battle of France where it had suffered heavy losses.

Eric Hayes remained with the brigade, which was serving in Kent with the rest of the division as part of Lieutenant General Andrew Thorne's XII Corps on anti-invasion duties and training to repel a German invasion of the United Kingdom, until May 1941.

Eric Hayes was not to remain with the division for much longer as in mid-December 1942 he was relieved as GOC of the 3rd Division, his successor being Major General William Ramsden.

Eric Hayes continued his war service and commanded the Nigeria Area in West Africa from January 1943 and returned to England to command the East Central District from late 1943 before becoming Head of the British Military Mission to China in early January 1945, and was made GOC British Troops in China in the following year.

Eric Hayes retired from the army, after thirty-two years of service, on 20 January 1947.

Eric Hayes maintained his connections with the army and his regiment, becoming Colonel of the Royal Norfolk Regiment from 9 February 1951 until his sudden death, caused by a short illness, in August 1951.