Statue unveiled of Middlesbrough Victoria Cross hero
A Teesside hero will be honoured on Friday with the unveiling of a new statue.
The ceremony will mark the centenary of Tom Dresser winning the Victoria Cross during the First World War in 1917.
The move follows a year-long fundraising campaign, with the effigy cast in bronze and located in the gardens of the Dorman Museum off Linthorpe Road.
The statue was sculptured by Brian Alabaster whose depiction of another Teesside VC hero - World War Two Green Howard Stan Hollis - stands nearby.
The unveiling and blessing will be carried out by Canon John Lumley in the presence of Private Dresser’s son Tom and his two grandsons, Brian and Paul Dresser.
Colonel Clive Mantell will speak on behalf of the Green Howards, Private Dresser’s regiment which now forms part of the recently formed Yorkshire regiment.
Tom Dresser moved to Middlesbrough from York as a child and attended St John’s and Hugh Bell High School, going on to work at Dorman Long’s Dock Street Foundry before signing up when war broke out.
In May, 1917 he was serving as a private in the 7th BattalionThe Green Howards in the Battle of Arras in northern France, when the call went up for a volunteer for a hazardous mission.
The Green Howards had won a strategically important trench but were pinned down by heavy gunfire and running short of ammunition – and a man was needed for the seemingly impossible task to get word back to Battalion Headquarters.
Private Dresser, 24, stepped up and after reaching HQ set off back to the frontline with two other soldiers carrying orders from HQ and sacks of bombs.
Despite being shot twice he made it back across no-man’s land, crawling the last 50 yards.
He was subsequently evacuated to Wrexham Hospital for treatment and on July 21, with his arm still in a sling, he was awarded the Victoria Cross by King George V at Buckingham Palace for ‘conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty’.
Private Dresser returned to Dorman Long after the war before taking over the family’s newsagent business, running the shop on Marton Road for 40 years, with his precious medal in a tobacco tin behind the counter.
He died in 1982 at the age of 90 and is buried with his wife Theresa in Thorntree Cemetery.