“His actions directly contributed to the success of D-Day and, eventually, of the long, terrible battle for Normandy.”

By John Sadler

ON THE NIGHT of June 5, 1944, the greatest armada ever to set sail was on the seas, heading for the Calvados Coast of Normandy. Operation Neptune, the amphibious component of the Allied invasion would deliver tens of thousands of British, Canadian, American and Free French soldiers onto the beaches of France to begin the deliverance of Occupied Europe from Nazi Tyranny. One of those troops about to go ashore was Stanley Elton Hollis.

Born on Teesside, England in 1912, Hollis was already in his 30s when he landed on Gold Beach with the 6^th Battalion Green Howards. His outfit had trained hard up by Inveraray on Scotland’s rugged northwest coast. Now it was time to put what they’d learned to the ultimate test.

Reveille for the Green Howards on June 6 was around 2:30 a.m. They day began on the stormy English Channel aboard the transport Empire Lance with a quick breakfast for those who had the stomach for one. They’d then transfer to their landing craft, which they loaded up with kit and ammo beforehand.

They were about six miles from shore. It was a grey, choppy and gusty morning; the cold hour before action on a sour belly. Stan’s commanding officer, Major Ronnie Lofthouse, passed him a box of condoms by his CO and told the sergeant major to “give ‘em out.”

“Sir, are we going to fight ‘em or fuck ‘em’?” he answered wryly.

Of course, Hollis knew the contraceptives were to be pulled down over the muzzles of the men’s rifles to keep the seawater out.

Scrambling down the nets into the landing craft wasn’t easy. The violent pitching of both vessels and the ungainly weight of kit made every inch of the descent a challenge. If the motion of the ship was bad, things only got worse in the smaller boats, which had to cruise around in circles until all the troops could be embarked. Once loaded, the craft formed up in line abreast and made for the coast.

As the vessels cruised towards land, Stan identified a German strongpoint dead ahead through the gloom. In fact, it was a railway shelter. Grabbing a Lewis gun, he rattled off a full pan of ammo at the distant target; the marks from the bullets reportedly remained on the building for years afterwards. After blazing through the magazine, Stan yanked the machine gun from its bracket. Forgetting that the weapon had been stripped of its water-cooling jacket earlier, he seared his hands on the red-hot barrel. It was the first of several injuries he’d suffer in the coming hours.

As the craft reached the beach, the soldiers plunged into the surf. Just ahead of Hollis another old sweat, Sergeant Hill, slipped in a shell hole and went under, dragged down by his kit. As he thrashed in the water, the landing craft’s propellers chopped him to bits.

Mortar rounds were coming down at a distressingly high rate, though they weren’t facing any small arms fire yet. As they clawed their way onto dry land, the beach-master went down.

The battle plan called for Hollis to lead a mortar team and Bren gunners from each platoon to charge ahead and set up at the high-water mark. There, they’d provide smoke and covering fire to get the rest through the belt of mines ahead. On their right a tank exploded. The vehicle’s turret hatch flew towards them like a lethal projectile. It missed and hurt no one.

An enemy plane swooped down overhead but did no damage either.

Hollis’ group advanced up the beach and onto a low ridge of dunes festooned with thick wire entanglements. Birds sat on the coils apparently unconcerned by the battle raging around them. One wag suggested they had little choice as there no room left in the sky for all the flying lead.

Ahead was a dense belt of mines. D Company was first through after assault engineers had opened a gap. Stan and the others followed the reassuring lines of white tape. Beyond the minefield lay Meuvaines Ridge and the Mont Fleury batteries.

Once through the hedge beyond the belt of mines, the Green Howards bore the brunt of the fire from the German defenders dug in on the higher ground. As they struggled forward inch by fire-swept inch, Major Lofthouse spotted the pillbox that was doing most of the damage. Hollis saw it too and stormed forward, his Sten gun chattering. He quickly reached the position and lobbed a grenade in the door, killing two defenders. The rest staggered out with their hands up. “They were quite willing to forget all about the war,” the sergeant remembered.

Hollis barged ahead, up a shallow communications trench aiming for a larger bunker whose 20 or so inhabitants also promptly surrendered. A pretty decent haul, seeing that they were the fire control team for the battery up ahead.

As the battalion advanced up the hill, Stan looked back just for an instant and saw, from his position overlooking the shore the whole vast teeming invasion armada laid out before his eyes.

“It gave us a great feeling of confidence,” he later recalled.

It was just 9:30 a.m. and they could see enemy bolting from their positions and falling back behind a sheltering wall and firing. Hollis spied one German crazily loping along the top of the wall. Swapping his Sten for an Enfield rifle, he brought the fellow down with a single shot. Moments later, a bullet fragment nicked Hollis in the face.

“Not a lot of damage,” he said of his wound. “A lot of blood. It looked a lot worse than it was.”

On they went into the village of Crépon. With one of the unit’s lieutenants now dead, Hollis was given command of 16 Platoon. Major Lofthouse ordered the company to clear the farmhouses lining the approach road. Stan entered one of the silent steadings. It was deserted except for one terrified boy, perhaps 10 or 11 years old. The effect of seeing this ferocious, bleeding veteran bursting through the door must have been utterly terrifying for the youngster. As Hollis came out to check the rear, a heavy round smacked off the backyard wall, sending fragments whizzing. Aside from a pair of excited local dogs, he could just about make out the sound of an enemy gun.

After reporting back to Lofthouse, Hollis detailed half a squad to start shooting up the hedge in front of the enemy. The fusillade drew a sharp response and most of the group were killed straight off. Changing tactics, the major ordered Hollis to get hold of a PIAT anti-tank weapon along with a brace of Brens and creep forward through a rhubarb patch leading to a line of trees. They crept forward undetected. Hollis blasted off a round from the unwieldy PIAT. It missed and the German gun shot up the farmhouse in retaliation; stone timber, plaster and dust erupted. He crawled back to make his report, but intensive bursts of fire, both friendly and hostile, told him his two Bren-gunners were in trouble.

Stan grabbed a Bren himself and crawled back to help his comrades. He sheltered briefly behind what was left of one of the walls, then during a lull in the fighting, charged forward spraying the distant hedge. Under cover of this dramatic diversion the other two blokes made it back unscathed. A tank arrived and moved ahead of what was now a general advance, C Company on the left, A and B on the right. Hollis’ platoon was left of HQ sheltering behind the tank. It was raining. The tracks chewed through mud and then stopped; small arms fire all around them. More men were going down.

Stan spotted two Germans firing down the narrow lane; one shooting, one covering and re-loading. The Tommies were exposed and getting shot up. Stan reached into his pouch for a grenade. While he’d seen to it earlier that everyone else had plenty ammo and bombs, he’d forgotten his own supply. He hastily borrowed one from a mate and chucked it.

“I used to throw them like a cricket ball,” he later said.

The Germans ducked as the grenade landed near them. Hollis Darted forward before it exploded. But in his haste, he’d forgotten to pull the pin. It made no difference. He reached the Germans who were still heads down and finished them off.

His platoon was down to just over a dozen, but now they’d reached the enemy-held hedge. Another one lay just a few feet beyond. A sunken ditch between them meant Stan and his men could crawl in relative safety between the two, albeit in acute, wet discomfort. They slopped through the mire undetected right up on the flank of the Germans still holding out. Bringing up whatever automatic weapons they still had, Hollis got them to spray the far hedge and beyond. Enemy fire immediately slackened and then stopped. It was their first moment of quiet all day.

By now it was mid-afternoon and Hollis and his comrades were utterly exhausted by the strains of many hours close combat. They’d earned a rest.

Stan Hollis would win the Victoria Cross for his actions, the only one to be awarded on D-Day. And he was one of those who ensured the Allied beachhead was secured; his actions directly contributed to the success of D-Day and, eventually, of the long, terrible battle for Normandy. For the Germans this was no longer the end of the beginning but the beginning of the end.

For Stan, the war would continue through the bloody attrition of Normandy. He’d be wounded in the leg over the summer and ‘casevaced’ back to England that September. On Oct. 10, he received his VC personally from King George VI. Hollis would survive the war and go on to pursue a variety of civvy occupations, latterly as a well-known local publican. Stan Hollis died in 1972. He was 59 years old.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: John Sadler is the author of D-Day: The British Beach Landings from Amberly Publishing. A military historian based in Northumberland, he has written 42 published works of non-fiction and two war novels. He lectures at the former Centre for Lifelong Learning at Newcastle Univeristy, (now the ‘Explore’ Programme). He is an experienced battlefield tour guide for both World Wars, and specializes in living history with the re-enactment group ‘Time Bandits.’