A dirt-poor farmer from Tennessee was the most decorated doughboy of WWI. Alvin York grew up in a two-room log cabin. He was one of eleven children. He grew up wild and loved to drink and party. His life changed after a friend was killed in a bar fight. The tragedy opened his eyes to where his life was headed and decided to change his trajectory. He joined a fundamentalist church, started reading the Bible, and became a good Christian. When the U.S. entered the war and he received a draft notice, he wrote “Don’t want to fight” on it because he took “Thou shalt not kill” literally. The Army did not care and rejected his claim to conscientious objector status. At boot camp, he was a model soldier and an extremely good shot on the rifle range (due to all the hunting and shooting matches when he was growing up), but he steadfastly refused to shoot Germans. Through the guidance of his commanding officer, he was convinced to reinterpret the 6th Commandment to mean thou shalt not murder. So, if you were fighting for your country and your country had God on its side, it was okay to shoot Germans.
On August 8, 1918, the 30-year-old corporal was fighting in the Argonne Forest. His unit was sent on a frontal attack against a strong German position defended by numerous machine guns. Sgt. Bernard Early decided to flank the Germans by going through a forested area. The Americans burst into a clearing where some Germans were having breakfast. The Americans quickly took the Germans captive, but the activity caught the attention of the Germans on the hill. The German leader had his men point their machine guns to the rear and then yelled in German for the German captives to get down. The machine guns sprayed the still-standing Americans, killing 6 and wounding 3. Now everyone was on the ground. The uninjured York crawled to boulder and opened fire on the Germans, who had to pop their heads up to fire their machine guns. York started picking them off. He never missed. After killing a dozen or so, a German officer decided to charge York with six of his men. They ran down the hill thinking York couldn’t get all of them. At this point, York remembered back to his turkey-hunting days in Tennessee. Turkey walk single file down forest paths and a smart hunter will shoot the last bird first and make his way to the front of the turkeys. Turkeys, not being the brightest of birds, would just keep on walking. So, York shot the last German first and worked his way to the officer in the lead. The Germans had no idea they were being picked off. Soon it was just the officer in the lead, but York was out of bullets in his rifle. He had enought time to pull a pistol which he used to kill the officer just feet away. The officer had fired a pistol load of bullets at York, but had missed. York then went back to picking off the machine gunners. After a few more deaths, the Germans surrendered. One of them had a grenade behind his back, but York noticed and shot him. After that, York had no trouble with the prisoners. As he herded them back to American lines, he put a pistol in the back of a German officer and forced him to call other Germans in to surrender. He killed around 20 and took 132 prisoners.
The incredible feat made York the biggest American hero of the war. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and was promoted to sergeant. Later, he was upgraded to the Medal of Honor. Gen. Pershing called him “the greatest civilian soldier of the war” and French Marshal Foch said his feat was the greatest single accomplishment of the war by any soldier. After the war, he returned to a donated house and farm and lived a simple life shunning the limelight. The limelight returned with the release of the movie “Sergeant York” in 1941. He used his profits from the movie to open a school.
- Uncle Salutes the Armed Forces 158-161
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_York
- https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-soldier-alvin-york-displays-heroics-at-argonne
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