[Milsurplus] Re: [MV] News from Normandy - may interest you folks(Racal fans)

[Joe Foley]

--- Nigel Hay  MILWEB <nigel at milweb.net> wrote:

> 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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