From: Nigel Hay MILWEB (nigel@milweb.net)
Date: Fri Jun 24 2005 - 05:53:41 PDT
Those MV owners who came on my trip "3 Normandy Victoria Cross winners" last
June will remember this spot.... this is where Stan Hollis, started D Day as
an ordinary man. Hours later he showed he was an exceptionally extraordinary
man amongst thousands of extraordinary men..... please read this to get an
insight into his actions. NIGE
Recaptured: the hut stormed by D-Day VC
By Neil Tweedie and Robert Fox
(Filed: 16/06/2005)
Most battlefield tourists to the Normandy beaches content themselves with a
postcard or maybe a local gift commemorating D-Day as a memento of their
trip.
Few would entertain paying ?3,000 for a small, derelict tramstop shelter.
The shelter will become a monument to Stan Hollis, VC
Except the Green Howards, who hold that particular structure in high regard,
having expended enormous amounts of ammunition on it on June 6, 1944.
The shelter, at La Riviere, was misidentified as a strong point housing
machineguns when the regiment's 6th Battalion disembarked.
It immediately received the full attention of Sergeant Major Stan Hollis,
the only man to win the Victoria Cross that day, who thought it a pillbox.
Shortly afterwards, he stormed two of the real thing, earning himself a
slice of immortality.
The decision to buy the shelter, a less than impressive building measuring
9ft by 6ft and now sitting in the back garden of a seafront house, was taken
on the spur of the moment.
A distinguished group of tourists with Green Howard connections was
strolling along the King Beach sub-section of Gold Beach when they spotted
the shelter, still pockmarked with bullet holes and displaying a For Sale
sign.
Fearing an important piece of regimental history was in danger of
demolition, the party, including Field Marshal Sir Peter Inge, a former
Chief of the Defence Staff and a Green Howard, decided to buy it
immediately.
Sir Ernest Harrison, the 79-year-old former chairman of the electronics firm
Racal, put up the 4,500 euros necessary.
Brig John Powell, Colonel of the Green Howards, said the shelter had
attracted a devastating amount of fire.
"It is the only building from that time along that stretch of beach and it
still carries bullet marks courtesy of the regiment," he added. "It was a
snap decision but seemed a fine way to commemorate Stan Hollis and the men
who accompanied him."
Gen Richard Dannatt, Commander in Chief of Land Command and another Green
Howard, added: "We had to buy it. It was a no-brainer."
The shelter's moment in history came early on that day when Hollis, a
Middlesbrough man of 12 Platoon A Company 6th Green Howards, sprayed it with
fire as his landing craft negotiated a minefield.
He recounted: "I lifted a stripped Lewis (machinegun) off the floor of the
landing craft and I belted this thing with a full pan of ammunition.
"It was then that I received the most painful wound I had in the whole war.
I lifted the Lewis off and it was white hot. I got a bloody great blister
across my hand - as big as my finger and very painful."
Ashore, and under heavy fire, Hollis started to move his platoon up the
slope towards a house. The tram shelter had turned out to be just that, and
so survived.
Hollis realised that his platoon was about to be wiped out by fire from two
hidden pillboxes to the rear and right.
Major Lofthouse, the senior officer present, said: "There is a pillbox
there, Sergeant Major." He did not intend it as a simple observation.
Hollis charged the first emplacement. Climbing on to the roof, he paused to
change the magazine on his Sten gun before "posting" a grenade through the
slit. Two Germans died and four more surrendered.
Hollis then charged down a trench to the second pillbox, into which he threw
a second grenade. Eighteen more men surrendered to him. It was the first
action for which he was awarded the VC.
Later that morning, his company was held up on the edge of the village of
Crepon. He entered a barn to find 10-year-old boy cowering from fire coming
from beyond an orchard. As his men fanned out across the orchard they were
hit by a huge explosion. When the NCO crept along a rhubarb patch to get
clear sight of the enemy, the two Bren gunners with him were wounded.
"I got them into all this, so it was my job to get them out," he said
afterwards.
Jumping up in clear view of the enemy, he opened fire with his
sub-machinegun, allowing the two men to retire. Minutes later the German gun
positions were silenced. It was the second action mentioned in his citation.
"Stan Hollis was a remarkably resolute fighter," said Brig Powell. "He was
one of those people who through the force of his own personality could
change the course of a battle. Remember, he fought all through the war from
the Western Desert, to Sicily, Normandy and to the Rhine."
A quiet, no-nonsense man, Stan Hollis survived the war and died in 1972 at
the age of 59 following a stroke.
The Green Howards intend to place a plaque on the shelter and fill it with
memorabilia in tribute to him and the men who followed up that beach.
It might even become a venue for the odd regimental function - though the
guest list will, of necessity, be rather limited.
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