Sapper William Hackett was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross by George V but for 94 years his body has laid unmarked in No Mens Land.
His VC was described as "the most deserving out all those awarded in the war "by historian Peter Barton, who has written several books about the conflict.
Now a memorial is to be built in Givenchy in Northern France on the spot where Sapper Hackett died after a campaign led by a number of prominent historians and military leaders raised the required funds.
Sapper Hackett, a former miner from Mexborough, near Rotherham, was originally rejected three times by the York and Lancaster Regiment when he tried to join the Army because he was over-age at 42.
But he finally managed to join the war effort when he enlisted in the Royal Engineers tunnelling companies in 1915.
His moment of supreme bravery would come a year later while fighting on the Western Front at Givenchy, France on June 27, 1916.
Sapper Hackett, aged 43, and four other men were digging a tunnel towards enemy lines when a mine exploded on top of them.
The men were entombed underground but managed to make a hole through the fallen earth and broken timber, after 20 hours of solid digging.
They made contact with their comrades on the ground and Sapper Hackett helped three of the men out of the hole.
He could have followed them but refused to leave the fourth man, who had been seriously injured, saying: "I am a tunneller and must look after the others first."
The hole was getting smaller, yet he still refused to leave his injured comrade and the earth finally collapsed on top of them.
A rescue party worked desperately for four days but they could not reach the two men who still remain buried there to this day.
Mr Barton said: "This has been a five-year-long project and the amount of support we have had from a great number of people has been amazing.
"The memorial is to honour the tunnellers, and in particular Sapper Hackett, who fought a war underground that not many people are aware of.
"I think his VC medal was the most deserved out all those awarded in the war.
That is not to discredit the others, which were deservedly rewarded – but Sapper Hackett's actions on that day were of the most noble kind."
"We still don't know what killed them, they may have died in the tunnel collapse, asphyxiation or even flooding.
"I don't think anyone can really identify with what these soldiers had to go through in terms of charging all guns blazing at the enemy. But I do think we can relate to being in claustrophobic place.
"And this is where his moment of supreme bravery came, not on the battlefield, but some metres below in the cold and dark."
The posthumous Victoria Cross was presented to Sapper Hackett's widow Alice at Buckingham Palace on November 29, 1916. field-marshal Sir Evelyn Wood VC later said his actions were "The most divine-like act of self- sacrifice.
The VC medal is kept at the Royal Engineers Museum in Gillingham. The memorial will be officially unveiled at Givenchy on Saturday, June 19.