D-Day Hero: CMS Stanley Hollis VC

by Mike Morgan

Overview

Stanley Hollis won the Victoria Cross when, on the 6th of June 1944, he single-handedly stormed a German pillbox before going on to save the lives of two comrades.

D-Day's only Victoria Cross winner, Hollis was uniquely recommended for this coveted award twice on 6 June. A tough, working-class rebel, Hollis was no model soldier: he was forever being 'busted' to corporal for various misdeameanours, only to win his stripes back again.

Few soldiers can have seen as much close combat action as Stanley Hollis. He fought with the Green Howards at Dunkirk, in the Western Desert, in Italy, on D-Day and through France and Germany to the end of the war. Seriously wounded and taken prisoner by the Afrika Korps, Hollis was personally congratulated by Rommel, then made a daring escape.

In Italy, he was recommended for the Distinguished Conduct Medal and was later mentioned in despatches, going on to undertake a dangerous undercover reconnaissance of the Normandy invasion beaches. On 6 June 1944 Stanley Hollis was involved in two actions that led to his award. During the primary assault, Hollis single-handedly stormed a German pillbox, saving his company from certain injury and death and enabling them to open the main beach exit. Later that day he saved the lives of two comrades trapped by heavy gunfire in a collapsing house.

Fully illustrated with archive photographs and ephemera, this unique biography of a little-known British Second World War hero shows the real man behind the heroic image. Mike Morgan has received the Hollis family's full co-operation and draws exclusively on personal diaries, letters and other memorabilia.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780752469553
Publisher:	The History Press
Publication date:	08/26/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	174
File size:	476 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

MIKE MORGAN is a senior journalist with the Middlesbrough Evening Gazette and is the author of Sting of the Scorpion, Daggers Drawn and D-Day Hero (The History Press). He lives in North Yorkshire.

Read an Excerpt

D-Day Hero

CSM Stanley Hollis VC

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By Mike Morgan

The History Press

Copyright © 2011 Mike Morgan
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-6955-3

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CHAPTER 1

A Rebellious Yorkshire Upbringing

At this stage, it is necessary to take a look at the upbringing and influences that forged Hollis's unique and indomitable character.

Stanley Elton Hollis was born on 21 September 1912, at 46 Archibald Street, Middlesbrough. This revelation, borne out by his birth certificate which has just resurfaced after many years, will come as a shock to many Teessiders, as it has long been thought locally that he was born at Loftus, a town in East Cleveland, just a few miles from Middlesbrough. However, as the copy birth certificate especially provided for this book shows, Hollis was born in Middlesbrough, the eldest son of Alfred Edward Hollis, a labourer at the iron works at the Rye Product Plant on Teesside, later a fishmonger, and Edith Jane Hollis, formerly White. He was one of three sons born to the couple, but one died in infancy. His other brother Alan still survives, living in Florida, USA, having emigrated several years ago.

Stan's cousin, Dorothy Bird, aged a venerable 91, who lives in Quebec, Canada, remembers Stan's boisterous early days with a twinkle in her eye. She said: 'Stan was born in Archibald Street, Middlesbrough. We all went to Carlin How at the beginning of the First World War [Stan's father Alfred was away serving in the army, was gassed but survived and returned home safely at the end of the war] and from there we went to Fylingthorpe, part of Robin Hood's Bay, near Whitby – top of the hill you might say!' Fylingthorpe is a North Yorkshire village which is situated above the picturesque old coastal fishing and former smuggling village of Robin Hood's Bay, which reputedly had connections with the famous Nottinghamshire outlaw. 'It was a beautiful old house. My mother called it Newton House and had a name plate made of iron and had it put on the front of the house and I think it is still there.' Dorothy continued:

I don't know why we moved out of that house, but my family moved into a funny little house in Robin Hood's Bay, quite close to the slipway near the sea. Aunt Eade (Edith) and Stan had a house next door. Stan and I first started school there and it was lovely being close to the beach. Stan had a whale of a time playing with toy boats, exploring the rugged coastline and scrambling up the cliff top paths. I don't remember how long we lived there, but Aunt Eade decided to take a job in munitions and go back to Carlin How, near Loftus. We had a short time living in Saltburn in a house in Pearl Street belonging to a friend of my mother's. After a few months there, we moved to Loftus to Dundas Street. The war had finished, so Uncle Alf came home after five years of being away. Aunt Eade had another baby to add to Stan and his younger brother Alan. [This was Stan's brother Billy, who only lived two weeks and is buried in a grave in Loftus cemetery.]

Stan, Bill Horobin (Stan's cousin) and I all went to a school there, only Stan didn't go much. He would take off and then meet us on the way home, just like us all coming back from school together. He got found out eventually and was in deep trouble! From there Aunt Eade, Stan and family went to Dormanstown, Middlesbrough, when Stan was 11, and then to North Ormesby.

Stan grew into a strong youth, with a tall athletic build, and was exceedingly tough. While living at Loftus, where he had attended Liverton Mines Infant School, now Whitby Farmers Feed Merchants; his parents had a fried and wet fish shop there. They later moved to Beaumont Road, North Ormesby, Middlesbrough, where after school he had to help in the fish shop, peeling potatoes and cutting chips.

Stan met his future wife Alice Clixby at this time, when he was almost 14 years old. They used to work together behind the shop counter and romance gradually blossomed. Courtships took their time in those days, however, and nothing was rushed. Stan was a robust and bright boy and, despite his self-imposed absences from school, passed a scholarship to go to Sir William Turner's School, at Redcar, but his parents could not let him go as they needed him in the shop.

Adventurous Streak at an Early Age

After running away several times to sea, when he was 17 his father decided to apprentice him to the Merchant Navy with the Rowland and Marwood Shipping Company of Whitby to learn to be a navigation officer. He sailed on the Dunsley out of Whitby and later joined the Elder, Dempster Line which made regular voyages to West Africa. In 1930, he fell seriously ill with blackwater fever in West Africa and this put an end to his Merchant Navy career until much later in life, much to his chagrin. The after-effects of this serious illness manifested themselves from time to time in the form of chest problems, but Stan typically made light of any discomfort and never let the occasional drawbacks interfere with his later life in the army. With his iron willpower, he succeeded despite these minor handicaps and ironically, later, in the Western Desert, perhaps with the benefit of the hot, dry climate, told his comrades, and his family back home in letters, that his health had never been so good.

Meanwhile, returning to the pre-war domestic front, his daughter Pauline recalls that after Stan's early attempts at courtship: 'Mum always said he was too short and didn't like his red hair! But when he came back from sea, he went to see her and asked boldly "Am I big enough now?"' He was over 6 feet tall by then, tough-looking and handsome, and Alice relented and fell head over heels in love. The couple were married at Middlesbrough Register Office in 1931 and moved to 19 Park Avenue, North Ormesby.

Stan worked for Tarmacadam and Crossley's brick company, on Teesside, as a lorry driver, making local and long-distance runs. He always had a dog, usually an alsatian, which always went in the cab with him wherever he went. When he was out of work, which happened frequently to most men in the recession-hit 1920s and '30s, he would work on local farms. Stan never in all his life went on the dole and also flatly refused family allowance payments and also, later, a war pension which was offered for his many wounds. His motto was 'I don't need any charity handouts'. His fierce pride and self-reliance burned brightly throughout his life, but never more so than in his days defending Britain's freedom in the Second World War.

When rumblings of war loomed over the radio airwaves, as they frequently did in the run-up to 1939 and the declaration of war against Hitler's Germany, he was taken off the road and employed by the army to drive munitions to the docks at Middlesbrough. Sometimes his wife Alice did not see him for days at a time. The firm he worked for did not pay him and he was paid only 15 shillings for three days work by the army, and had to live on a basic ration of pies. He could not, of course, refuse the army tasks as they were 'in the national interest'.

Meanwhile, he could not fail to note that his pals who had joined the Territorial Army were playing cards at Middlesbrough's Lytton Street depot and receiving full pay. Stan did not want to miss out on the action and wanted to be with his friends and so he joined up. He initially enlisted as a territorial in the 4th Battalion, The Green Howards. The recruitment staff assured him that they would transfer him to the Royal Navy, which was his first choice of service. But this was an empty promise and did not happen. The navy's loss was The Green Howards' gain. While in the army, Stan applied for a commission to become an officer, but his education – or lack of it – let him down and he had to start out as a private like countless thousands of other working-class recruits.

A Miracle Escape from the Hell of Dunkirk

He was mobilised at the outbreak of the Second World War and helped form the 6th Green Howards Battalion. They were sent to France in April 1940 to join the British Expeditionary Force, primarily to build runways for aerodromes behind the British lines. He was picked out as a bright prospect and chosen as the commanding officer's motorcycle despatch rider and promoted lance corporal. When the battalion later escaped from Dunkirk, Stan was promoted sergeant after sterling service on the retreat to evacuation. When he had recovered from his ordeal and his injuries after being wounded, he was sent with his battalion to Iraq, Palestine and Cyprus. He then fought with distinction from the great victory at El Alamein to the defeat of Rommel in Tunisia in the North African campaign as part of the victorious Eighth Army.

He was promoted to company sergeant major just before the invasion of Sicily in 1943 and was seriously wounded again at the battle at Primosole Bridge and recommended for, but not awarded, the Distinguished Conduct Medal. His commanding officer at the time, Lieutenant Colonel Robin Hastings, was certain that he had been awarded the medal and was amazed after the war to find that he had not, as can be seen in the following chapter.

Later, after D-Day in 1944 when he had won one of the most unique VCs in history and was the toast of The Green Howards and the British Army, the top brass actively encouraged him to take the elusive regular commission which he had earlier so desired. But Stan, typically, politely turned the offer down, preferring to stay a non-commissioned warrant officer saying, 'Thanks, but no thanks. I would make a lousy peace-time soldier.'

His daughter Pauline said:

Whilst stationed in barracks before the war, he was a very difficult and strong-willed soldier. He would climb out of the barracks on a Friday night and come home, telling mum that there were not enough beds and that this was allowed! He just wanted to be with mum. She obviously didn't know any better. Sometimes when he had to stay on jankers (punishment) because he got caught, he would be on extra PE duties as a punishment. When mum went to camp to find him, he would be painting the stones round the parade ground white, or pulling a heavy roller over the grass.

She was quite indignant and told his sergeant that they should have a horse to do this – she didn't realise that this was a punishment. Stan cheekily laughed it off and said it was his way of keeping fit. His early training in the fish shop came in good stead also as he peeled more potatoes in the British Army than any other soldier!

Later, when his good soldiering won him stripes as lance corporal and corporal, mum used to pin them on with a safety pin as he kept losing them so often and she got tired of sewing them on and taking them off again!

Still in Pauline's words:

Dad at heart was a very good family man. He loved my mum very much and it was evident in everything he did; I honestly don't think he would have survived everything he had to go through later in North Africa, Sicily and France if he had had nothing to come back to. Mum had absolute faith in him, and when the letters later came from the War Office saying he was missing in action, mum would simply throw them away. She said he loved us too much to leave us. People would often stop her in the street and say things like 'If it hadn't been for your husband my son, or husband, wouldn't be safe now'. Mum would say to them that he was missing because he was so busy looking after their men. This happened so often, she thought he was indestructible.

I didn't really know my dad when I was little because he was away at the war. My mum showed us photographs and read us letters and when he wrote he would always include a note for my brother Brian and a picture for me. All I remember is a man in uniform. I used to run up to soldiers and ask them if they were my daddy, which I imagine was an embarrassing problem for my mum.

I think it was just before the evacuation from Dunkirk where dad was a despatch rider for The Green Howards that my mum was in bed crying and muttering 'If I had said my prayers it wouldn't have happened' over and over again. The miraculous evacuation of the Royal Navy and the little ships took place and dad was helped to safety wounded and wrapped in a blanket. He had no clothes. They had been torn off as he escaped from the beach. Whilst he was in hospital, mum told him about a disturbing dream she had at this time and together they worked out the time and date and it coincided with the day he was left for dead. He later told us that the troops waiting on the beaches were told that there was not enough room to bring wounded men back and they had to be left behind. He swore he saw a white figure with wings beckoning him as he lay wounded on the beach, but something kept pulling him back. We believe it was the same night mum was saying her prayers over and over again, but his comrades would not leave him and decided to find him to bury him only to find him injured, but alive, and so they brought him home.

After a spell in hospital, he could have been invalided out, but he went back to his unit in The Green Howards. He was captured in the Western Desert and Rommel was so impressed with his fighting spirit that he asked to meet him personally to congratulate him. He was one of the Desert Rats, and was sent to a transit prison camp. I don't know if he did anything to upset his captors, but they kicked his face and head to such an extent that they broke his cheekbones and cracked his skull. Afterwards they fed him on potato peelings, which, I suppose, was better than nothing. He knew that this was the only time he could escape as once he reached Germany, he would have been trapped there for the rest of the war. His friends helped him to get away, but because of the treatment meted out to him he had to have metal plates put in his face when he got back to a British hospital. Obviously, this meant a lengthy stay in hospital but when he had recovered, he was more determined than ever to fight the Germans.

Secret Missions before D-Day

Pauline added: 'Before D-Day, I believe he was making secret missions to France to help identify potential landing sites for the invasion. He was taken over by submarine and collected some days later, and of course we only found out this after the war.'

It has not been possible to verify conclusively Hollis's part in these clandestine trips from regimental or other records, but neither have they been denied. Other similar probing recces were taking place at this time all along the coastline of Hitler's Fortress Europe – and especially in the Normandy area. They were made quietly and without fuss by small-scale British units under cover of darkness. Their mission was to map the key features of the landing areas and gauge the strength of the defences and extent of beach obstacles at sites such as Gold Beach's King Sector in preparation for D-Day, 1944. There were several small, specialist units, which organised and carried out beach reconnaissance missions like these along the Normandy coast, which Hollis could have accompanied, but very little is written or recorded about their activities. Certainly, Lieutenant Colonel Paddy Mayne, commander of the 1st Special Air Service Regiment in the Second World War, made several similar trips by submarine, boat and parachute behind enemy lines in France in 1944, prior to the major 1st and 2nd SAS and French and Belgian SAS operations after D-Day. He went into Occupied France to size up the strength and trustworthiness of the various French Maquis resistance groups, and to find the best sites in the forests within the proposed SAS operational areas where his men would form their headquarters and hiding places ready to venture out on their various missions and raids against the Germans. If Pauline's memory of what her father told her and the rest of the family is accurate – and there is no reason to doubt this – then CSM Hollis's task would have been in some way to help identify and map out the lie of the land, the key landmarks and identifying features and the beach minefields and coastal defences. Coincidentally, a friend of the author's and veteran of 1st SAS clearly remembers meeting Stan Hollis on a specialist 'cloak and dagger' course on the run-up to D-Day which, he says, could have been associated with this type of activity. It is a tantalising possibility.

Pauline's fascinating recollections are, in any event, just a taster of Stan's amazing story to come. Her memories of her father in a later chapter, together with those of her brother Brian, give a closer insight than ever before into this exceptional soldier, father and husband.

Brother Alan Throws More Light on Stan's Complex Character

Alan Hollis, 80, Stan's surviving brother, now lives in St Augustine, Florida, USA, and has written the following memoirs especially for this book, via Stan's son Brian.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from D-Day Hero by Mike Morgan. Copyright © 2011 Mike Morgan. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Contents

Foreword by Field Marshal Lord Inge,
A Modern View of Heroes by General Sir Michael Walker,
Preface,
Acknowledgements,
Prologue D-Day Cataclysm,
One A Rebellious Yorkshire Upbringing,
Two A Truly Indestructible Soldier,
Three Storm of Retribution,
Four A Fearless Fighting Legend,
Five Stan's Courage Inspired D-Day Victory,
Six Suicide Attacks,
Seven The Man They Couldn't Kill,
Eight Our Hero through the Years,
Nine Stan's Legend Lives On,
Epilogue,
Appendices,
I Stan's Official Citation,
II A Short History of The Green Howards,
III Gold Beach, Normandy, 6 June 1944 – Order of Battle,
IV The Green Howards Second World War Medal Winners,
V The Green Howards 6th Battalion Fighting Service during the Second World War,
VI The Green Howards Normandy Roll of Honour,
Bibliography,