Two men have launched a project to have the efforts of military divers recognised.

Tony Sexton, who grew up in Lyme Regis, is heading a project with his friend Paul Guiver, both former Royal Navy mine clearance divers, to recognise the work of military divers.

A memorial of a 10 ft bronze statue of a diver is to be erected in the grounds of The National Memorial Arboretum in Alrewas, Staffordshire, but the pair need to raise £500,000 for the project.

They say the Royal Navy mine clearance divers and British Army Divers are often unsung and unseen heroes who undergo some of the most arduous military training there is, with just 40 per cent making it through the course.

The two world wars saw the biggest period of maritime mining in history and Royal Navy and Army divers have worked ever since to combat the threat of unexploded mines.

There is currently no national memorial to commemorate the divers and Tony and Paul want to do something about it.

Tony said: “Paul and I were visiting a friend, Gary ‘Jam’ Sewell in hospital who had cancer, and was also a mine clearance diver, and started talking about this. He said he would never see the day there was a memorial and unfortunately, he died three months later.

“This got us thinking and we said, ‘let’s do it, let’s give something back’.

“We started fundraising and we are selling 300 miniatures of the statue.”

To fund the project, sculptor Greg Polutanovich was commissioned to create a 21-inch statue of the intended memorial in clay and is now producing these statues in bronze.

The miniatures are mounted on a black granite base. They cost £2,995 and already more than 120 have been sold.

There will be a strictly limited edition of 300 individually numbered pieces available and on completion of these, the mould will eb destroyed to prevent further production.

Each owner will receive not only a statue, but also have their name engraved on a plaque mounted to the base of the full-sized memorial when it is unveiled in 2021. They will also receive a commemorative challenge coin in a presentation box, numbered with the same number of the statue, and a piece of the ceramic mould the memorial was cast in.

They will also get an invitation to the unveiling of the memorial and a celebratory banquet.

For more information, visit militarydivermemorial.com