In 1972 the Provisional IRA began an intensive bombing campaign. Soon the centre of Londonderry, where Martin McGuinness was IRA commander, resembled its near namesake in the Blitz. The following year parcel bombs were sent to high-profile targets in both Northern Ireland and the mainland.

On October 3, 1973, Captain Raymond Hazan was a company second-in-command with 2nd Battalion the Royal Anglian Regiment in Londonderry when a parcel was delivered to the United Technologies “Essex” electrical factory in Bligh’s Lane near the nationalist Creggan estate.

Precisely how, and to whom it was addressed, was never clearly established, but the CLF (commander land forces), Major General (later General Sir) Peter Leng was visiting that day, and the parcel was given to one of his escort, who took it to the nearest military unit — Hazan’s.

“I asked him where he got it from,” Hazan recalled in a BBC interview the following year. “My maths wasn’t very good and two and two didn’t equal four. It went off and everything suddenly went black. I was 28, had been married three years and was about to be a father in about five months’ time.”

The bomb killed Second Lieutenant Lindsay Dobbie of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC), and Hazan lost his right hand and his sight.

Raymond (Ray) Lazare Hazan was born in 1945 in Cheshire, the eldest of two sons and twin daughters, to Jewish parents. His father, Victor Hyam Hazan (obituary, December 8, 2006), a war-commissioned officer in the South Lancashire Regiment, had been recruited by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) for his linguistic ability and in 1942 was parachuted into Vichy France to help train the Resistance in the use of plastic explosives.

It was a doubly hazardous undertaking after a German order in January for Jews throughout France to be rounded up. He subsequently worked with the psychological warfare department in Cairo, and after the war joined the new Nato headquarters in Paris for translation work, where his children also acquired a facility with French.

Ray Hazan was educated at Charterhouse, where he was head of house, head of choir and head of the combined cadet force. Lean, with dark good looks and proven leadership, he went straight to Sandhurst at 18 for the two-year course and was commissioned in 1965.

Two years later, when his battalion was serving on a UN tour of duty in Cyprus, he met Jennifer Marriner, who was finishing her A-levels in Dhekelia, where her father was an RAOC officer. They married in 1970 and had two sons: Jonathan, a former Royal Tank Regiment officer, now an executive coach; and Giles, a doctor. All survive him.

The marriage was dissolved, however, and in 1988 Hazan married Margaret Johnson, whom he met while working for St Dunstan’s, the charity for blind veterans, where she was the archivist. Margaret died in 2021.

After months of hospital treatment, and rehabilitation at the charity’s training establishment at Brighton, in 1974 Hazan was formally discharged from the army in the rank of captain. In 1976 he followed in his father’s footsteps by joining the NATO school of interpreting, by then in Belgium, leaving the following year to become assistant public relations officer at St Dunstan’s.

The charity (now Blind Veterans UK) had been founded in 1915 by the newspaper proprietor Sir Arthur Pearson, who had become blind from glaucoma. Alarmed by the number of troops returning from France with serious eye injuries, many sustained in mustard gas attacks, he donated £5,000 towards a special home for them “to learn to be blind”. St Dunstan’s Lodge in Regent’s Park was purchased, now the site of Winfield House, the residence of the US ambassador.

One of the first things Hazan did on joining the staff was to set up a ski club. Spectacular falls and collisions seemed to cause more distress to the guides than to the blind skiers, who would get up, brush the snow (and often blood) from their faces and carry on. Hazan recounted how “we have a chap here who lost his left hand and his sight, so when we go skiing together, we share gloves. He has the right one and I have the left one.

In 2004 Hazan became president of St Dunstan’s, and later of the International Congress of War Blinded Associations. There was increasing work to be done, with troops blinded in later years in Northern Ireland, and then Iraq and Afghanistan. He commissioned research to understand better what type of support was most beneficial in helping veterans recover their independent life, and which element of assistance — emotional, practical and financial — was most important to them.

Some 50 per cent responded that practical support was most important, followed closely by emotional, with only 15 per cent stating that financial help was the most essential. “This led me to reflect on my own experiences,” Hazan said in 2009. “My thoughts are that the recent debate surrounding the financial support of UK veterans, while important, should also call for a focus on a holistic approach to care within the ex-service community — one which embraces the financial, emotional and practical.

“After the blast, my world came to a grinding halt: the sense of loss was like a bereavement. The thought that I would never read, kick a football or see my children was an extreme blow, and I felt almost paralysed with shock.”

He recalled how his first recognition that he hadn’t lost everything came just a few weeks after the explosion. “I was visited by a member of the St Dunstan’s team, who gave me a tactile watch and taught me to tell the time through touch. It was this practical support which for the first time made me realise I could regain independence — it was something to live for.”

He remembered his first day at St Dunstan’s, some six weeks after the blast: “I heard the chatter and laughter of other St Dunstaners and thought, ‘Perhaps blindness isn’t that bad.’ The positive attitude of those I met was catching . . . My son was born a few months later and I had no opportunity to get down or introspective. I had to be a father to my son and this was another challenge to keep me going. The thought of getting back to work was hugely motivating for me. I wanted to be able to provide for my family.”

Hazan was appointed OBE in 2012, and finally stood down as president in 2017. His successor said of him that he “had the unique ability to both command respect and to inspire people at the same time. A fantastic orator, he was an intelligent, articulate, thoughtful and charismatic man.”

Ray Hazan would often tell a joke but invariably fail to get to the punchline before laughing uncontrollably. When asked why he so often laughed at his own jokes he’d reply simply: “Because I’ve heard them before and they’re so funny.”

The Times 10 May 23