THE final obstacle preventing the creation of a memorial to one Teesside's greatest war heroes has been removed and it could now be installed within three months.

As expected Middlesbrough Borough Council today (Wednesday, August 19) officially approved the erection of a bronze statue to honour VC winner Stan Hollis and agreed to maintain it.

Campaigner Brian Bage, a retired businessman from Guisborough who knew Mr Hollis when he was alive, has campaigned for the memorial and raised £150,000 for a statue to be cast in bronze and placed outside the town's Dorman Museum.

Mr Hollis was the only man to win a VC on D-Day on June 6, 1944, and the statue has already been sculpted by Suffolk artist Brian Alabaster. Bigger than life size, it shows the soldier, who died in 1972, crouching and alert.

The father-of-two, a Green Howard who went on to be a pub landlord, served as a Company Sergeant Major at Dunkirk, North Africa and Sicily before helped a successful British invasion on the Normanby beaches.

Most of the money for the memorial has come from the Impetus Environmental Trust was awarded £120,000. Much of the rest has come from private donations, including from surviving old comrades. Officers at Middlesbrough council worked on the design, technical management and planning for no charge.

As well as Mr Hollis the memorial will commemorate the D-Day landings and every other Green Howard soldier awarded the Victoria Cross. Once completed it will be gifted to the council who will insure and maintain it.

The council's executive director of culture, leisure and sport committee, Cllr Lewis Young, was told that Mr Hollis was born in Archibald Street in Middlesbrough. The family went on to live in east Cleveland and after the war Mr Hollis worked as a pub landlord in Liverton Mines.

The former lorry driver and steel worker, aged 31 on D-Day, had waded from the sea with his men on to Gold Beach under mortar fire. The men suddenly came under machine-gun fire from a camouflaged pill box.

Hollis leapt to his feet and, ignoring the bullets, charged the pill box, ending up shoving the barrel of his sten gun through the slit and firing before climbing on to the roof and dropping in a grenade.

He then stormed another pill box alone, but this time the Germans poured out and surrendered. His action probably changed the entire course of the crucial battle.

Just three hours later his company was advancing but came under fire from Germans in an orchard. Eight of Hollis’s British comrades were killed and two others pinned down.

Hollis, dubbed ‘the man they couldn’t kill,’ by comrades, charged the enemy, again on his own, firing at will, until the two British soldiers could escape and his company could advance.

A council report said: "Stan Hollis was born in Middlesbrough and his bravery and significant achievements should be honoured." Acclaimed sculptor, Brian Alabaster, told of his pride when Mr Hollis's son, Brian, made the trip to Suffolk to see it and gave his approval.

It is hoped the memorial will finally be officially unveiled this November although it could be installed before that.