HAYTON George

The following information and all photographs are courtesy and copyright of Alec Hayton:
My Father. Served with 3rd Battalion Grenadier Guards in Egypt from 1933-36. Came to Worcester and joined the City Police Force with several former colleagues because an ex-Grenadier officer was then Chief Constable and recruited them.

My father had a reserve liability and was called up in 1939 into CMP as a corporal and went with the BEF to France in a Traffic Control Company. On the retreat to Dunkirk, they were told to dump all of their motorcycles into the canal lock and they were taken by barge to a waiting ship.

On return to England he was promoted directly to WO2 and was involved in traffic control moving convoys. I am aware that at some time in late 1940 he and his Company escorted King George VI to an inspection of troops in Savernake Forest. He was commissioned into the Worcestershire Regiment in, I think, 1942 and was in several locations in north Yorkshire and Scotland. He was in Italy for a short time after the invasion at Salerno but hurriedly returned to the UK in preparation for the D Day invasion.

He arrived in France sometime after the invasion as Deputy Assistant Provost Marshal (Traffic Control) controlling military traffic movements. After Brussels was captured, he and a number of other officers were billeted in the La Plaza Hotel in Brussels (which had been a German HQ). The building had been searched and pronounced cleared. On 12th September 1944 my father and his colleague, Major Antony Wright (REME) were having dinner about 7 pm when a device exploded above the glass ceiling and killed them both. The discrepancy in the death date is that they were not found until 14th September.

Every year on 12th September a lit candle is placed in the dining room of the hotel with a framed commemoration.