Stan Hollis D-Day Hero

[Hobilar]

There were many thousands of heroes on D-Day. Brave but frightened young men who stormed ashore on the beaches of Normandy on Tuesday the 6th of June 1944 to liberate Europe from under the jackboot of NAZI domination.

As dawn broke, out of the great armada that had crossed the Channel during the night, the spearhead of the battle-hardened 50th Infantry Division led the way for the assault on to ’Gold‘ beach at the very eastern end of the twenty mile British and Canadian invasion zone. In the van were the veterans warriors of the 1st battalion, The Hampshire Regiment and the 6th battalion, of The Green Howards. These would be the men who, would be the first to engage with the defending Germans of the 716th Infantry Division who held that part of Hitler’s flaunted ‘Atlantic Wall’ in well constructed bunkers and pill-boxes situated along the shoreline.

The Green Howards contained many men that were veterans from the North Africa campaign. ‘A’ company landing on the extreme eastern part of the beach were to find that although the defences had been softened up by the preliminary bombardment the Germans were still able to put up a significant amount of resistance. For a time ’A’ company were to be pinned down on the beach by a machine gun firing from a German bunker and a 105mm howitzer that was situated nearby. Soon however a Sherman tank of the supporting 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards arrived and silenced the machine-gun with a well aimed shot through the firing slit of the Pillbox, thus allowing the men of the Green Howards to rapidly advance off of the beach.

The Battalion’s next task was to eliminate a 150mm-gun battery at Mont Fleur. This Battery was situated behind a house with a distinctive circular drive in whose grounds the Germans had emplaced a number of machine gun positions. ‘D’ company, now leading the advance, began to take heavy casualties from these guns, and although two platoons made an attempt to bypass the house they in turn came under hostile fire from a pillbox to their rear. Company Sergeant Major Stan Hollis, armed only with a Sten gun, without waiting for orders, charged the pillbox drawing the enemy machine gun fire onto himself. Reaching the bunker unharmed he poured a ferocious fire though the gun slit following up with a grenade for good measure. The machine gun fire ceased abruptly allowing CSM Hollis to burst into the strongpoint. Here he found two dead German soldiers and a number of others dazed or wounded. Stan Hollis then advanced along a communication trench to a second pill box where, the 20 or 30 German defenders, having seen the fate of their colleagues, decided wisely to surrender without further resistance. At the same
time another 40 prisoners, including a German Lieutenant Colonel, were being captured by ’C’ company from a Command complex that had not been included on the Battalion’s maps.

The Battalion next pushed on in the direction of Villiers-le-Sec. CSM Hollis had by now taken over personal command of a platoon that had lost both its Officer and its Sergeant in the fighting. Suddenly the platoon ran into a German field gun supported by more machine guns located in an orchard. After the Platoon had taken several casualties in an attempt to outflank this position, CSM Hollis armed with a PIAT Anti-Tank launcher with two other men with Bren Guns stealthily crept forward through a rhubarb patch to get within 100 yards of the enemy positions. Undetected so far, Hollis fired the PIAT but the round fell short of its intended target. This resulted in a return shot by the field gun that passed closely overhead to explode on a farmhouse behind. Hollis now decided that his position was rather to exposed and ordered his companions to follow him as he crawled back, only to realise when he reached a place of comparative safety that he was now alone. Grabbing a Bren gun he again returned to the orchard where he again blazed away at the German positions whilst his two wounded companions made their escape.

By nightfall, the Green Howards, were well clear of the beaches and had advanced to within a mile of St Leger on the Caen-Bayeux road. For his gallantry in action on this first day of the invasion, Stan Hollis was to ultimately receive the Victoria Cross Medal, Britain’s highest award for gallantry, and the only such medal to be awarded as a result of the fighting on D-Day