The death of his father when Alvin was twenty-one, relaxed a hand that had protected and guided him more than he realized. His two older brothers were married and he became the head of the family of ten that remained. He left to his younger brothers the care of the crops upon the farm and he hired out on any job that brought an extra revenue. In summer he worked on neighboring farms, and in winter hauled staves and merchandise when the roads could be traveled, or logged in the lumber camps.
He formed new associates and under the new influences began to drink and gamble. With his companions on Saturday and Sunday he would "go to the Kentucky line."
Through the mountains along the state-line between Tennessee and Kentucky there were road-houses, or saloons, that were so built that one-half of the house would be in Kentucky and one-half in Tennessee. The keeper paid his federal license and was free from the clutches of the United States Government. But he avoided the licenses of the states by carrying a customer from Tennessee into the Kentucky side of the house for the business transaction, and the Kentuckian was invited into Tennessee. No customer of the state-line saloons could swear before a grand jury that he had violated the liquor laws of his state, and he was not subject to a summons at his home by the grand jury of the county or state in which he made his purchase. Upon receipt of a "grapevine" signal that officers were approaching, the entire stock of liquids would disappear and when the officers arrived the saloonkeeper would be at work in the fields of his farm.
The nearest state-line saloon to Pall Mall was seven miles by the road and but little over half the distance by paths on the mountains.
This was the only period of Alvin's life when the wishes of his mother did not control him. These week-end sprees were relaxation and fun, and he worked steadily the remainder of the week. In them he grew jovial and the friends he drew around him were fun, not trouble, makers. His physical strength and the influence of his personality were quickly used to check in incipiency any evidence of approaching disorder.
His "shooting-up" consisted of pumping lead from an old revolver he owned into the spots on beech trees as he and his friends galloped along the road. And he became so expert that he would pass the revolver from hand to hand and empty it against a tree as he went by. When the eight Germans charged him in the fight in the Argonne, he never raised his automatic pistol higher than his cartridge-belt.
His mother knew the latent determination of her boy and she was ever in dread that there might arise some trouble among the men when he was away on these drinking trips.
"Alvin is jes like his father," she said. "They were both slow to start trouble, but ef either one would git into hit, they'd go through with the job and there'd be a-hurtin'."
But since the fist fights of boyhood Alvin York has never had a personal encounter. His intents and deeds do not lead him into difficulties, and in his eye there is a calm blue light that steadies the impulses of men given to explosions of passion and anger.
At a basket-dinner where he and his friends were drinking he took his last drink. To these outings the girls bring, in a woven, hickory basket, a dinner for two. The baskets are auctioned, the proceeds are given to some church charity, and the purchaser and the girl have dinner together. They are often expensive parties to a serious-minded mountain swain who can not surrender the day's privileges to a rival or will not yield his dignity and rights to fun-makers who enliven the biddings by making the basket, brought by "his girl," cost at least as much as a marriage license.
Alvin's mother had often pleaded with her boy that he was not his real self—not his better self—while drinking. Something happened at a basket-party in 1914 that caused the full meaning of his mother's solicitude to come to him. He left, declaring he would never take another drink, and his drinking and gambling days ended together.
Late in the afternoons in the fall months, when the squirrels are out [so the story runs in the valley, but without confirmation from the Sergeant], Alvin would be seen leaving home with his gun. He would cut across the fields to the west and pass along the outskirts of the farm of Squire F. A. Williams. Those who saw him wondered why he should take this long course to the woods, while on the mountain above his home the oak and beech masts were plentiful and other hunters were going there for the squirrels.
About this same time, the wife of Squire Williams noted with pleasure that Gracie, her youngest daughter—a girl of sixteen with golden hair and eyes that mirror the blue of the sky—went willingly to the woodlots for the cows. When she returned with them she was singing, and this, too, pleased Mrs. Williams.
The road from Squire Williams' home to the church passes the York home; and, after the service, as far as his gate, Alvin would often walk with them. As Gracie was silent and timid when any stranger was near, so diffident that when on their way home from church she walked far away from Alvin, the neighbors for a long while had no explanation for Alvin's squirrel-hunts along the base of the mountain instead of up toward the top of it; and Mrs. Williams, at her home, heard so many gunshots off in the woods in the course of a day that she attached no significance to them.
But Alvin's and Gracie's meetings along the shaded roadway that leads to the Williams home were discovered, and Mrs. Williams put a ban upon them—for Gracie was too young, she maintained, to have thoughts of marriage.
The real facts in that mountain courtship are known to but two, and even now are as carefully guarded as tho the romance had not become a reality and culminated happily.
But the neighbors have fragments out of which they build a story, and it varies with the imagination of the relator. The big Sergeant's confirmation or denial is a smile and a playful, taunting silence that leaves conclusion in doubt.
There is a path that leads from the store around the side of the mountain that edges a shoulder between the store and the Williams home. A little off this path is a large flat rock. Around it massive beech trees grow and their boughs arch into a dome above the rock. There are carvings on the trunks of those trees that were not found until the rock was selected as the altar for a woodland wedding at which the Governor of Tennessee officiated.
When Gracie would come to the store she passed the York home on her way. Often, when alone, she would return by the mountain path. It was longer than by the road, but it was shaded by trees, and as it bends around the mountain glimpses of the valley could be seen. The rock ledge among the beech trees was not half way to her home, but it was a picturesque place to rest, and down below was the roof of the York home and the spring-branch, as it wound its way to the Wolf River. It was their favorite meeting-place.
When the war broke in Europe, those who lived in the valley gave little heed to it. When there was talk of the United States' entry, there was deep opposition. They were opposed to any war. The wounds of the Civil War had healed, but the scars it left were deep. The thought of another armed conflict meant more to the old people than it did to the younger generation.
"I did not know," Alvin said of himself, "why we were going to war. We never had any speakings in here, and I did not read the papers closely, and did not know the objects of the war. I did not feel I wanted to go."
He had given up his work on the farm and was making more money than he had ever made before. The shortcut of the Dixie Highway—that part that runs from Louisville to Chattanooga—had been surveyed and was being graded through Fentress county. It runs through the "Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf," He was "driving steel on the pike," for his days in the blacksmith shop had taught him to wield a sledgehammer and many rocks were to be blasted to make a roadway. For this he was receiving $1.65 a day, for ten hours' work, while on the farm he had not been able to earn more than $25 a month, working from "can't see to can't see."
When he joined the church he had given himself to it unreservedly. They were holding many meetings and the church was growing. He had become the Second Elder. At the time, too, he was planning for the day when he could marry.
In June following the country's entry into the war Alvin registered for the draft and in October at Jamestown took his examination.
"They looked at me, they weighed me," he told on his return, "and I weighed 170 pounds and was 72 inches tall. So they said I passed all right!"
He was with Pastor Pile, and he turned to him:
"This means good-bye for me. But I'll go."
After his registration his mother had never ceased to worry over his going to a war so far away from her.
The situation troubled him. At times he would see his mother looking steadily at him, and there was always a sadness in her face. He knew that she needed him, for the next oldest of the brothers of those who were at home was only seventeen. But his country had asked him to stand by and would call him if it needed him.
The struggle within him lasted for weeks. Then he asked that they seek no exemption for him.
In his presence his mother never again referred to his going, but he would see her troubled face watching him.
But she talked with the influential men in the valley hoping there would be some suggestion that would honorably relieve Alvin from the duty of going. Pastor Pile had gone ahead to see what he could do, and he learned that those who were "conscientious objectors" would not have to go. The tenets of his church, he held, were against all wars. Alvin was an elder; he had subscribed to and was living the principles of his religion. He hurried home to Mrs. York.
But the soldier, himself, had to make the plea for exemption, no one could make it for him.
Alvin never made it.
In the middle of November his summons reached him. He had but twenty-four hours to respond.
He sent a note to Gracie, telling her his "little blue card" had come and he asked her to meet him at the church—which always stands open by the roadside. As they walked toward her home they arranged to meet the next morning at the rock under the beech trees, when she would leave to carry the cows to the pasture. And it was there she promised to marry him—when he returned from the war.
Men at the store saw Alvin come down from the mountain and he could not escape some banterings over the success or failure of his early morning tryst.
"Jes left it to her," he is said to have frankly confessed, "she can have me for the takin' when I git back."
He and his mother were alone in their home for several hours. When he left he stopped at the Brooks' porch where relatives and neighbors had assembled. As he walked away he turned, unexpectedly, up the path toward the rock on the mountainside. It is now known he went there to kneel alone in prayer.
When he came down to the store, to the men waiting for him, he spoke with an assured faith he had not shown before. "I know, now, that I'll be back," he told them.
His mother, weeping, tho hiding it from him, had slowly followed as far as the Brooks' porch.
Alvin, looking back toward the old Coonrod Pile home, saw her and waved to her, then hurried to the buggy that was to take him to Jamestown.
As the grating of the moving buggy wheels on the road reached the Brooks porch, Mrs. York gave a cry that went to responsive hearts in every home in that part of the valley. And she secluded herself, and sobbed for days.
When Alvin went to war he carried with him a small, red, cloth-covered memorandum book, which was to be his diary. He knew that beyond the mountains that encircled his home there was a world that would be new to him. He kept the little volume—now with broken-back and worn—constantly with him, and he wrote in it while in camp, on shipboard and in the trenches in France. It was in his pocket while he fought the German machine gun battalion in the Forest of Argonne.
The book with its records was intended for no eyes but his own. Yet painstaking, using ink, he had headed the volume: "A History of places where I have been."
As a whole, the volume would be unintelligible to a reader, for while it records the things he wished to remember of his camp-life, the trip through England, his stay in France, and tells in order the "places he had been," it is made up of swift-moving notes that enter into no explanatory details. But to him the notations could—even in the evening of his life—revive the chain of incidents in memory. His handling of his diary is typical of his mind and his methods.
To him details are essential, but when they are done carefully and thoroughly their functions are performed and thereafter they are uninteresting. They are but the steps that must be taken to walk a given distance. His mind instead dwells upon the object of the walk.
When he left his home at Pall Mall he reported to the local recruiting station at Jamestown, the county seat. He was sent to Camp Gordon near Atlanta, Ga., and reached there the night of November 16, 1917. His diary runs:
"I was placed in the 21st training battalion. Then I was called the first morning of my army life to police up in the yard all the old cigarette butts and I thought that was pretty hard as I didn't smoke. But I did it just the same."
His history tells in one sentence, of months of his experience in training with the "awkward squad" and of his regimental assignment:
"I stayed there and done squads right and squads left until the first of February, 1918, and then I was sent to Company G, 328 Inf. 82nd Div."
This was the "All America" Division, made up of selected men from every state in the Union and in its ranks were the descendants of men who came from every nation that composed the Allies that were fighting Germany.
In his notes Alvin records temptations that came to him while at Camp Gordon:
"Well they gave me a gun and, oh my! that old gun was just full of grease, and I had to clean that old gun for inspection. So I had a hard time to get that old gun clean, and oh, those were trying hours for a boy like me trying to live for God and do his blessed will. ... Then the Lord would help me to bear my hard tasks.
"So there I was. I was the homesickest boy you ever seen."
When he entered the army Alvin York stood six feet in the clear. There were but few in camp physically his equal. In any crowd of men he drew attention. The huge muscles of his body glided lithely over each other. He had been swinging with long, firm strides up the mountainsides. His arms and shoulders had developed by lifting hay-ladened pitchforks in the fields and in the swing of the sledge in his father's blacksmith's shop. The military training coordinated these muscles and he moved among the men a commanding figure, whose quiet reserve power seemed never fully called into action by the arduous duties of the soldier.
The strength of his mind, the brain force he possessed were yet to be recognized and tested. And even to-day, with all the experiences he has had and the advancement he has made, that force is not yet measured. It is in the years of the future that the real mission of Sergeant York will be told.
He came out of the mountains of Tennessee with an education equal to that of a child of eight or nine years of age, with no experience in the world beyond the primitive, wholesome life of his mountain community, with but little knowledge of the lives and customs, the ambitions and struggles of men who lived over the summit of the Blue Ridge and beyond the foot-hills of the Cumberlands.
But he was wise enough to know there were many things he did not know. He was brave enough to frankly admit them. When placed in a situation that was new to him, he would try quietly to think his way out of it; and through inheritance and training he thought calmly. He had the mental power to stand at ease under any condition and await sufficient developments to justify him to speak or act. Even German bullets could not hurry nor disconcert him.
He was keenly observant of all that went on around him in the training-camp. Few sounds or motions escaped him, though it was in a seemingly stoic mien that he contemplated the things that were new to him. In the presence of those whose knowledge or training he recognized as superior to his own he calmly waited for them to act, and so accurate were his observations that the officers of his regiment looked upon him as one by nature a soldier, and they said of him that he "always seemed instinctively to know the right thing to do."
Placed at his first banquet board—the guest of honor—with a row of silver by his plate so different from the table service in his humble home, he did not misuse a piece from among them or select one in error. But throughout the courses he was not the first to pick up a needed piece.
His ability to think clearly and quickly, under conditions that tried both heart and brain, was shown in the fight in the Argonne. With eight men, not twenty yards away, charging him with bayonets, he calmly decided to shoot the last man first, and to continue this policy in selecting his mark, so that those remaining would "not see their comrades falling and in panic stop and fire a volley at him."
Military critics analyzing the tactics York used in this fight have been able to find no superior way for removing the menace of the German machine guns that were over the crest of the hill and between him and his regiment, than to form the prisoners he had captured in a column, put the officers in front and march directly to each machine gun-nest, compelling the German officers to order the gunners to surrender and to take their place in line.
Calm and self-controlled, with hair of copper-red and face and neck browned and furrowed by the sun and mountain winds, enured to hardships and ready for them, this young mountaineer moved among his new-found companions at Camp Gordon. Reticent he seemed, but his answer to an inquiry was direct, and his quiet blue-eyes never shifted from the eyes of the man who addressed him. As friendships were formed, his moods were noted by his comrades. At times he was playful as a boy, using cautiously, even gently, the strength he possessed. Then again he would remain, in the midst of the sports, thoughtful, and as tho he were troubled.
Back in the mountains he had but little opportunity to attend school, and his sentences were framed in the quaint construction of his people, and nearly all of them were ungrammatical. There were many who would have regarded him as ignorant. By the standards that hold that education is enlightenment that comes from acquaintance with books and that wisdom is a knowledge of the ways of the world, he was. But he had a training that is rare; advantages that come to too few.
From his father he inherited physical courage; from his mother, moral courage. And both of them spent their lives developing these qualities of manhood in their boy. His father hiked him through the mountains on hunts that would have stoutened the heart of any man to have kept the pace. And he never tolerated the least evidence of fear of man or beast. He taught his boy to so live that he owed apology or explanation to no man.
While I was at Pall Mall, one of his neighbors, speaking of Alvin, said:
"Even as a boy he had his say and did his do, and never stopped to explain a statement or tell what prompted an act. Left those to stand for themselves."
And the little mother, whose frail body was worn from hard work and wracked by the birth of eleven children, was before him the embodiment of gentleness, spirit and faith. When he came from the hunt into the door of that cabin home and hung his gun above the mantel, or came in from the fields where the work was physical, he put from him all feeling of the possession of strength. When he was with her, he was as gentle as the mother herself.
She, too, wanted her son to live in such a way that he would not fear any man. But she wanted his course through life to be over the path her Bible pointed out, so that he would not have the impulse to do those deeds that called for explanation or demanded apology.
From her he inherited those qualities of mind that gave him at all times the full possession of himself. Her simple, home-made philosophy was ever urging her boy to "think clear through" whatever proposition was before him, and when in a situation where those around him were excited "to slow down on what he was doing, and think fast." I have heard her say:
"There hain't no good in gitting excited you can't do what you ought to do."
She had not seen a railroad-train until she went to the capital of Tennessee to the presentation of the medal of honor given her son by the people of the state. She came upon the platform of the Tabernacle at Nashville wearing the sunbonnet of stays she wore to church in the "Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf." The Governor in greeting her, lifted off the sunbonnet. His possession was momentary, for Mrs. York recaptured it in true York style. Her smiling face and nodding head told that the Governor had capitulated. It was pantomime, for the thousands were on their feet waving to her and cheering her. Calm and still smiling, she looked over the demonstration in the vast auditorium more as a spectator than as the cause of the outburst of applause. Later, at the reception at the Governor's mansion, guests gathered around her and she held a levee that crowded one of the big drawing-rooms. Those who sought to measure wit with her found her never at a loss for a reply, and woven through her responses were many similes drawn from her mountain life.
Under her proctorship the moral courage of her son had developed. In her code of manhood there was no tolerance for infirmity of purpose, and mental fear was as degrading and as disintegrating as physical cowardice. He had been a man of the world in the miniature world that the miles of mountains had enclosed around him. He had lived every phase of the life of his people, and lived them openly. When he renounced drinking and gambling he was through with them for all time. When he joined the church, his religion was made the large part of the new plan of his life.
It was while at Camp Gordon that he reconciled his religious convictions with his patriotic duty to his country.
The rugged manhood within him had made him refuse to ask exemption from service and danger on the ground that the doctrine of his church opposed war. But his conscience was troubled that he was deliberately on the mission to kill his fellow man. It was these thoughts that caused his companions to note his moody silences.
In behalf of his mother, who, with many mothers of the land, was bravely trying to still her heart with the thought that her son was on an errand of mercy, the pastor of the church in the valley made out the strongest case he could for Alvin's exemption, and sent it to the officers of his regiment.
Lieut. Col. Edward Buxton, Jr., and Maj. E. C. B. Danford, who was then the captain of York's company, sent for him. They explained the conditions under which it were possible, if he chose, to secure exemption. They pointed out the way he could remain in the service of his country and not be among the combat troops. The sincerity, the earnestness of York impressed the officers, and they had not one but a number of talks in which the Scriptures were quoted to show the Savior's teachings "when man seeth the sword come upon the land." They brought out many facts about the war that the Tennessee mountaineer had not known.
York did not take the release that lay within his grasp. Instead, he thumbed his Bible in search of passages that justified the use of force.
One day, before the regiment sailed for France, when York's company was leaving the drill-field, Capt. Danford sent for him. Together they went over many passages of the Bible which both had found.
"If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight."
They were together several hours. At last York said:
"All right; I'm satisfied."
After that there was no reference to religious objection. From the first he had seen the justice of the war. He now saw the righteousness of it.
York's abilities as a soldier were soon revealed. He quickly qualified as a sharp-shooter, both as skirmisher and from the top of the trench. In battalion contest formation, where the soldiers run and fall and fire, "shooting at moving targets," it was not difficult for him to score eight hits out of ten shots, and, with a rifle that was new to him. This, too, over a range that began at 600 yards and went down to 100 yards, with the targets in the shape of the head and shoulders of a man. In these maneuvers he attracted the attention of his officers.
The impressive figure of the man with its ever present evidence of reserve force, the strength of his personality, uneducated as he was, made him a natural leader of the men around him. Officers of the regiment have said that he would have received a promotion while in the training-camp but for the policy of not placing in command a man who might be a conscientious objector.
The "All America" Division passed through England on its way to France and the first real fighting they had was in the St. Mihiel Salient. From there they went to the Argonne Forest, where the division was on the front line of the battle for twenty-six days and nights without relief.
It was in the St. Mihiel Salient that York was made a Corporal, and when he came out of the Argonne Forest he was a Sergeant. The armistice was signed a fortnight later.
The war made York more deeply religious. The diary he kept passed from simple notations about "places he had been" to a record of his thoughts and feelings. In it are many quotations from the Bible; many texts of sermons he heard while on the battlefields of France. With the texts were brief notes that would recall the sermons to his memory. The book is really "a history" of his religious development.
When he would kneel by a dying soldier he would record in his diary the talk he had with his comrade and would write the passages of Scripture that he or the dying man had spoken. It was upon this his interests centered. To others he left the task of telling of the battle's result.
He wrote in his diary this simple story of his fight with the battalion of German machine guns:
"On the 7th day of October we lay in some little holes on the roadside all day. That night we went out and stayed a little while and came back to our holes, the shells bursting all around us. I saw men just blown up by the big German shells which were bursting all around us.
"So the order came for us to take Hill 223 and 240 the 8th.
"So the morning of the 8th just before daylight, we started for the hill at Chatel Chehery. Before we got there it got light and the Germans sent over a heavy barrage and also gas and we put on our gas-masks and just pressed right on through those shells and got to the top of Hill 223 to where we were to start over at 6:10 A.M.
"They were to give us a barrage. The time came and no barrage, and we had to go without one. So we started over the top at 6:10 A.M. and the Germans were putting their machine guns to working all over the hill in front of us and on our left and right. I was in support and I could see my pals getting picked off until it almost looked like there was none left.
"So 17 of us boys went around on the left flank to see if we couldn't put those guns out of action.
"So when we went around and fell in behind those guns we first saw two Germans with Red Cross band on their arms.
"Some one of the boys shot at them and they ran back to our right.
"So we all ran after them, and when we jumped across a little stream of water that was there, there was about 15 or 20 Germans jumped up and threw up their hands and said, 'Comrade.' The one in charge of us boys told us not to shoot, they were going to give up anyway.
"By this time the Germans from on the hill was shooting at me. Well I was giving them the best I had.
"The Germans had got their machine guns turned around.
"They killed 6 and wounded 3. That just left 8 and then we got into it right. So we had a hard battle for a little while.
"I got hold of a German major and he told me if I wouldn't kill any more of them he would make them quit firing.
"So I told him all right. If he would do it now.
"So he blew a little whistle and they quit shooting and came down and gave up. I had about 80 or 90 Germans there.
"They disarmed and we had another line of Germans to go through to get out. So I called for my men and one answered me from behind a big oak tree and the other men were on my right in the brush.
"So I said, 'Let's get these Germans out of here.' One of my men said, 'It's impossible.' So I said, 'No, let's get them out of here.'
"When my men said that this German major said, 'How many have you got?'
"And I said, 'I got a plenty,' and pointed my pistol at him all the time.
"In this battle I was using a rifle or a 45 Colt automatic pistol.
"So I lined the Germans up in a line of twos and I got between the ones in front and I had the German major before me. So I marched them right straight into those other machine guns, and I got them. When I got back to my Major's P. C. I had 132 prisoners.
"So you can see here in this case of mine where God helped me out. I had been living for God and working in church work sometime before I came to the army. I am a witness to the fact that God did help me out of that hard battle for the bushes were shot off all around me and I never got a scrach.
"So you can see that God will be with you if you will only trust Him, and I say He did save me."
"By this time," he wrote; "the Germans from on the hill was shooting at me. 'Well, I was giving them the best I had."
That best was the courage to stand his ground and fight it out with them, regardless of their number, for they were the defilers of civilization, murderers of men, the enemies of fair play who had shown no quarter to his pals who were slain unwarned while in the act of granting mercy to men in their power.
That best was the morale of the soldier who believes that justice is on his side and that the justness of God will shield him from harm.
And in physical qualities, it included a heart that was stout and a brain that was clear—a mind that did not weaken when all the hilltop above flashed in a hostile blaze, when the hillside rattled with the death drum-beat of machine gun-fire and while the very air around him was filled with darting lead. As he fought, his mind visualized the tactics of the enemy in the moves they made, and whether the attack upon him was with rifle or machine gun, hand-grenade or bayonet, he met it with an unfailing marksmanship that equalized the disparity in numbers.
Another passage in his direct and simple story shows the character of this man who came from a distant recess of the mountains with no code of ethics except a confidence in his fellow man.
Those of the Americans who were not killed or wounded in the first machine gun-fire had saved themselves as York had done. They had dived into the brush and lay flat upon the ground, behind trees, among the prisoners, protected by any obstruction they could find, and the stream of bullets passed over them.
York was at the left, beyond the edge of the thicket. The others were shut off by the underbrush from a view of the German machine guns that were firing on them. York had the open of the slope of the hill, and it fell to him to fight the fight. He wrote in his diary when he could find time, and the story was written in "fox-holes" in the Forest of Argonne, in the evenings after the American soldiers had dug in. Tho his records were for no one but himself, he had no thought that raised his performance of duty above that of his comrades:
"They killed 6 and wounded 3. That just left 8 and we got into it right. So we had a hard battle for a little while."
Yet, in the height of the fight, not a shot was fired but by York.
In their admiration for him and his remarkable achievement, so that the honor should rest where it belonged, the members of the American patrol who were the survivors of the fight made affidavits that accounted for all of them who were not killed or wounded, and showed the part each took. These affidavits are among the records of Lieut. Col. G. Edward Buxton, Jr., Official Historian of the Eighty-Second Division. At the time of the fight Sergeant York was still a Corporal.
From the affidavit by Private Patrick Donohue:
"During the shooting, I was guarding the mass of Germans taken prisoners and devoted my attention to watching them. When we first came in on the Germans, I fired a shot at them before they surrendered. Afterwards I was busy guarding the prisoners and did not shoot. I could only see Privates Wills, Sacina and Sok. They were also guarding prisoners as I was doing."
From the affidavit by Private Michael A. Sacina:
"I was guarding the prisoners with my rifle and bayonet on the right flank of the group of prisoners. I was so close to these prisoners that the machine gunners could not shoot at me without hitting their own men. This I think saved me from being hit. During the firing, I remained on guard watching these prisoners and unable to turn around and fire myself for this reason. I could not see any of the other men in my detachment. From this point I saw the German captain and had aimed my rifle at him when he blew his whistle for the Germans to stop firing. I saw Corporal York, who called out to us, and when we all joined him, I saw seven Americans beside myself. These were Corp. York, Privates Beardsley, Donohue, Wills, Sok, Johnson and Konatski."
From the affidavit by Private Percy Beardsley:
"I was at first near Corp. York, but soon after thought it would be better to take to cover behind a large tree about fifteen paces in rear of Corp. York. Privates Dymowski and Waring were on each side of me and both were killed by machine gun-fire. I saw Corp. York fire his pistol repeatedly in front of me. I saw Germans who had been hit fall down. I saw the German prisoners who were still in a bunch together waving their hands at the machine gunners on the hill as if motioning for them to go back. Finally the fire stopped and Corp. York told me to have the prisoners fall in columns of two's and take my place in the rear."
From the affidavit by Private George W. Wills:
"When the heavy firing from the machine guns commenced, I was guarding some of the German prisoners. During this time I saw only Privates Donohue, Sacina, Beardsley and Muzzi. Private Swanson was right near me when he was shot. I closed up very close to the Germans with my bayonet on my rifle and prevented some of them who tried to leave the bunch and get into the bushes from leaving. I knew my only chance was to keep them together and also keep them between me and the Germans who were shooting. I heard Corp. York several times shouting to the machine gunners on the hill to come down and surrender, but from where I stood I could not see Corp. York. I saw him, however, when the firing stopped and he told us to get along sides of the column. I formed those near me in columns of two's."
The report which the officers of the Eighty-Second Division made to General Headquarters contained these statements:
"The part which Corporal York individually played in this attack (the capture of the Decauville Railroad) is difficult to estimate. Practically unassisted, he captured 132 Germans (three of whom were officers), took about 35 machine guns and killed no less than 25 of the enemy, later found by others on the scene of York's extraordinary exploit.
"The story has been carefully checked in every possible detail from Headquarters of this Division and is entirely substantiated.
"Altho Corporal York's statement tends to underestimate the desperate odds which he overcame, it has been decided to forward to higher authority the account given in his own words.
"The success of this assault had a far-reaching effect in relieving the enemy pressure against American forces in the heart of the Argonne Forest."
In decorating Sergeant York with the Croix de Guerre with Palm, Marshal Foch said to him:
"What you did was the greatest thing accomplished by any private soldier of all of the armies of Europe."
When the officers of York's regiment were securing the facts for their report to General Headquarters and were recording the stories of the survivors, York was questioned on his efforts to escape the onslaught of the machine guns:
"By this time, those of my men who were left had gotten behind trees, and the men sniped at the Boche. But there wasn't any tree for me, so I just sat in the mud and used my rifle, shooting at the machine gunners."
The officers recall his quaint and memorable answer to the inquiry on the tactics he used to defend himself against the Boche who were in the gun-pits, shooting at him from behind trees and crawling for him through the brush. His method was simple and effective:
"When I seed a German, I jes' tetched him off."
In the afternoon of October 8—York had brought in his prisoners by 10 o'clock in the morning—in the seventeenth hour of that day, the Eighty-Second Division cut the Decauville Railroad and drove the Germans from it. The pressure against the American forces in the heart of the Argonne Forest was not only relieved, but the advance of the division had aided in the relief of the "Lost Battalion" under the command of the late Col. Whittlesey, which had made its stand in another hollow of those hills only a short distance from the hillside where Sergeant York made his fight.
As the Eighty-Second Division swept up the three hills across the valley from Hill No. 223, the hill on the left—York's Hill—was found cleared of the enemy and there was only the wreckage of the battle that had been fought there.
York's fight occurred on the eighth day of the twenty-eight day and night battle of the Eighty-Second Division in the Argonne. They were in the forest fighting on, when the story went over the world that an American soldier had fought and captured a battalion of German machine gunners.
Even military men doubted its possibility, until the "All America" Division came out of the forest with the records they had made upon the scene, and with the clear exposition of the tactics and the remarkable bravery and generalship that made Sergeant York's achievement possible.
Alvin York faced a new experience. He found himself famous.
Alvin was not prepared for the ovations that awaited him. The world gives generously to those who succeed in an extraordinary endeavor where the resource and ability of men are in competition. For intellectual achievement there is deference and wonder, for moral accomplishment there is approbation and love, but for physical courage there are all of these and an added admiration that bursts in such fervor of approval that men shout and toss their caps in air. It has been true, since the world began.
The first honors came to him from his soldier associates. Then the men of other regiments, and the regiments of other nations, wanted to see the American who single-handed had fought and forced a battalion of machine gunners to come to him. The people of France, too, were calling for him.
It was with a military yardstick the soldiers measured the deed, for they knew the fighting competency of a single machine gun and had seen the destructive power of the scythe-like sweep of a battalion of them. The civilian, in doubt and wonder, realized the magnitude of the achievement in visualizing the number of prisoners that had surrendered to one man.
The only contact Alvin York had had to the role of a man of prominence was to stand in line, at attention, as persons of importance passed before him. But when his regiment came out of the Argonne Forest, where its almost unbroken battle had lasted twenty-eight days, he was taken from the line and passed in review before the soldiers of other regiments. Under orders from headquarters of the American Expeditionary Force he traveled through the war zone. As a guest of honor he was sent to cities in southern France. In Paris he was received with impressive ceremonies by President Poincare and the government officials, It was during this period that many of the military awards were made to him, and brigade reviews were selected as the occasions for his decoration.
Against this background of enthusiasm, the tall, reserved, silent mountaineer, in natural repose, moved through the varying programs of a day. As all was new to him, he complied with almost childlike docility to the demands upon him, but he was ever watchful that his conduct should conform to that of those around him. If called upon to speak, he responded; and he stood before the cheering crowds in noticeable mental control. The few words he used did not misfire nor jam. They ended in a smile of real fellowship that beamed from a rugged face that was furrowed and tanned, and always with the quaint mountain phrase of appreciation, "I thank ye!" In the months he remained with the army in France he grew in personal popularity from his unaffected bearing.
The letters written home to his mother during this period show him basically unchanged.
These letters, usually two a week, were the same as those he had been writing all the while. In them were but few references to himself. Even in the privacy of his correspondence with his home, there was not a boastful thought over a thing that he had done, and only the vaguest reference to the homage paid to him, as tho it were all a part of a soldier's life. It was only through others that the mother learned of the honors given to her son in France.
At the beginning of each letter he quieted his mother's forebodings for him, and he turned to inquiries about home. Out of his pay of $30 a month as a private soldier he had assigned $25 of it to his mother. He wanted to know that the remittances had reached her. Two brothers had married and moved away. Henry, the eldest, was living in Idaho, and Albert in Kentucky. He wanted news of them. Two other married brothers, Joe and Sam, while still living in the valley, were not at the old home. He wanted every detail about their crops that told of their welfare.
His most valuable personal possession was two mules. Were George and Jim and Robert, the younger brothers, keeping those mules fat? How much of the farm were they preparing to "put in corn"? Corn was sure to be scarce and would be worth $2.50 by harvest time! Was Mrs. Embry Wright, his only married sister, staying with his mother to comfort her? Were Lilly and Lucy, his little sisters, still helping her with the hard work—of course they were! And in every letter there was an inquiry about the sweetheart he had left behind.
The mother, when each letter had been read, placed it upright on the board shelf which was the mantel of the family fireplace. When a new letter came she took down the old one and put it carefully away. So there was always "some news from Alvin" which was accessible to all the neighbors.
"Will" Wright, president of the Bank of Jamestown, received the first printed story that gave any description of the fight Alvin had "put up" in the Forest of Argonne, and Mr. Wright hurried to Mrs. York with it. With the family gathered around her in that hut in the mountains, and with tears running down her expectant face, she learned for the first time what her boy had done. She made Mr. Wright read the story—not once, but seven times.
America was ready for Sergeant York when among the returning soldiers his troop-ship touched port—the harbor of New York in May, 1919. The story of the man had run ahead—his fight in the forest, that had added to the cubic stature of the American soldier; the artlessness of his life and the genuineness of his character, which as yet showed no alloy; the modest, becoming acceptance of illustrious honors paid to him in France. The people saw in this simple, earnest mountaineer the type of American that had made America. They thought of him as coming from that stratum of clay that could be molded into a rail-splitter and, when the need arose, remodeled into the nation's leader. And quickly and unexpectedly, Sergeant York was destined to show by two other deeds, prompted by an inborn eminence, that the esteem was not misplaced.
In New York and Washington there were receptions and banquets in his honor, and around him gathered high officials of the army and navy and the Government, and men who were leaders in civilian life. It was with impetuous enthusiasm that the people crowded the sidewalks to greet him as he passed along the streets—the worn service uniform, the color of his hair, the calm face that showed exposure to stress and hardships, set in the luxurious leathers of an automobile, surrounded by men so different in personal attire and appearance, marked him as the man they sought. There is something in the man that creates the desire in others to express outwardly their approval of him. At the New York Stock Exchange business was suspended as the members rode him upon their shoulders over the floor of the Exchange where visitors are not allowed. In Washington the House of Representatives stopped debate and the members arose and cheered him when he appeared in the gallery.
There were ovations for him at the railroad stations along his way to Fort Oglethorpe, near Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he was mustered out of service.
And in the midst of all of these mental-distracting demonstrations Alvin York was put to the test. He was offered a contract that guaranteed him $75,000 to appear in a moving picture play that would be staged in the Argonne in France and would tell the story of his mountain life. There was another proposition of $50,000. There were offers of vaudeville and theatrical engagements that ranged up to $1,000 a week, and totaled many thousands. On these his decision was reached on the instant they were offered. The theater was condemned by the tenets of his church, and all through his youth the ministers of the gospel, whom he had heard, preached against it. The theater in any form was, as he saw it, against the principles of religion to which he had made avowal.
Then up to the surface among those who were crowding around him there wormed men who saw in Sergeant York's popularity the opportunity for them to make money for themselves. Some of the propositions that were made to him were sound, some whimsical, others strangely balanced upon a business idea—but back of all of them ran the same motive. The past in Sergeant York's life had been filled with hard work and hardships, the present was new, the future uncharted, but to him there was something in the voices of the people who were acclaiming him that was not for sale.
When he left Fort Oglethorpe for his home, the people of his mountain country, in automobiles, on horseback, upon mules, whole families riding in chairs in the beds of farm wagons, met him along the roadway as he traveled the forty-eight miles over the mountains from the railroad station to Pall Mall, and they formed a procession as they wound their way toward the valley.
Only a few months before, when Alvin had returned home on a furlough which he secured while in training at Camp Gordon, he had "picked up" a wagon ride over the thirty-six miles from the railroad station to Jamestown, and had walked the twelve miles from "Jimtown" to Pall Mall, carrying his grip.
His mother was among those who met him at Jamestown. They rode together, and the last of the long shadows had faded from the "Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf" when they reached their cabin home.
The next morning, while it was not yet noon, the Sergeant and Miss Gracie Williams met on "the big road" near the Rains' store. Those sitting on the store porch—and there was to be but little work done on the farms that day—saw the two meet, bow and pass on. Pall Mall is but little given to gossip. Yet there was a strange story to be carried back to the woman-folk in the homes in the valley and on the mountainsides.
Only the foxhound, that moved slowly behind his newly returned master, knew of an earlier meeting that day between Sergeant York and his sweetheart, and of a walk down a tree-shaded path that had given the hound time to explore every fence-rail corner and verify his belief that nothing worth while had been along that road for days.
But a quiet, uneventful life in the valley was not to return to Sergeant York.
The Sunday following was Tennessee's Decoration Day. From the mountains for miles around the people came to Pall Mall. During the ceremonies, while the flowers were being placed upon the graves in the little cemetery, they wanted Alvin to talk to them. He and Gracie were seated in the empty bed of an unhitched wagon down at the edge of the grove of forest trees that surrounds the church. He came to the cemetery, and his talk was the untrammelled outpouring of his heart for all that had been done for him. The spirit of the day, with his own people around him, his experiences and the changes that had come into his life since the last decoration services he had attended there, seemed to move him deeply, and here was first displayed a power of oratory which he was so rapidly to develop.
The people of Tennessee began to gather gifts for him before he left France, and the Tennessee Society of New York City entertained him when he left his troop-ship. The people of the South had always remembered with added reverence that Robert E. Lee had declined to commercialize his military fame, while some of the other generals of the Confederacy had sacrificed their reputations upon the altar of expediency. So when it became known that Sergeant York, with no knowledge of history to guide him, but acting from principle, had refused to capitalize the record of the few brief months he had spent in the service of his country, there was nothing within the gift of the people he could not have had.
His welcome home by the State of Tennessee was to be held at the capital on June 9th. But Sergeant York, before he went to war, had given an option—one over which he was showing deep concern. His mountain sweetheart was to "have him for the taking when he got back." So it was mutually—amicably—arranged that the foreclosure proceedings should take place in Pall Mall on June 7th, and their bridal tour would be to Nashville.
It was an out-of-door wedding so that all of the guests in Pall Mall for that day could be present, and they came not only from all parts of Tennessee but from neighboring States. The altar was the rock ledge on the mountainside, above the spring, under the beech trees that arched their boughs into a verdant cathedral dome. It had been their meeting-place when he was an unknown mountain boy and she a golden-haired school-girl. As the sunlight flickered on the trunks of those trees it showed scars of knife carvings that carried the dates of other meetings there.
The swaying boughs were draped with flags and flowers. The ceremony was performed by Governor Roberts of Tennessee, assisted by Rev. Rosier Pile, the pastor of the church in the valley, and Rev. W. T. Haggard, chaplain-general of the Governor's staff. The bridesmaids were Miss Ida Wright, Miss Maud Brier and Miss Adelia Darwin, and Sergeant York's best man was Sergeant Clay Brier, of Jamestown. Their friendship had been proved upon the fields of France. The wedding march was the wind among the laurels and the pines.
The "Welcome Home" for him, at Nashville, by the people of Tennessee, will long be remembered among the public demonstrations of the State. Tennessee has always been proud of the fact that the conduct of her sons in those times when the nation went to war had entitled her to the name of "The Volunteer State." That one of her sons should come back from the World War, having done, in the sum of its accomplishment, that which the Commander of the Armies of the Allies called the greatest feat of valor, while fighting solely on his own resources, of any soldier of all of the armies of Europe, made the welcome one that sprang joyously from the hearts of the people. And that this soldier, while poor and still facing the possibility of a life filled with the deprivation of poverty, with no assurance but the continued labor of his hands, should turn down the offers of fortunes because, to him, they were prompted by a motive that was unworthy—opened the very inner sanctuary of their hearts and the people came with gifts, that he should sustain no loss of opportunity and should never be in need. The offerings were not in money. They were presents from the people. There were fertile acres that he could till, as that was his selection of the life he wished to follow. There was a model, modern house in which he could live, and furnishings for it. There were blooded fowls and stock and farming implements, down to the files for his scythe. The donors were individuals, organizations and communities. Waiting for him was the state's medal which bears the device "Service Above Self." He was appointed a member of the Governor's staff and upon him was conferred the rank of Colonel. This was the wedding trip of Sergeant York and his bride.
To Nashville, in the bridal party, to see and hear the honors to be paid her son went Mrs. York, the mother. It was the first time she had ever seen a railroad-train. And, now, it was Mrs. York's turn. She, too, faced a battalion. Wearing her calico sunbonnet she came suddenly upon the gorgeous social battalion—so fully equipped with the bayonets of class and the machine guns of curiosity. And she captured it! As her son had never seen the man or crowd of men of whom he was afraid, she, with her philosophy of life, looked upon everyone as worthy of friendship and the meeting with them a pleasure and not an occasion for disconcertment. If they approached her with a greeting of wit, her answer was quick and gentle, and as playful as a mountain stream. If their mood was serious, she immediately impressed them with her frankness and her common sense. She went everywhere the program provided, and enjoyed every moment of it. As she was preparing to return home her appreciation was expressed in her declaration that she "intended to come again, when she could go quietly about and really see things—when policemen would not have to make way for her."
Alvin was beginning life anew, decorated with the Distinguished Service Cross and the rare Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest award of his country to a soldier; the Medaille Militaire and the Croix de Guerre with Palm, of France; the Croca di Guerra, of Italy; the War Medal of Montenegro; the Legion of Honor; medals for gallantry from Tennessee and the Methodist Centenary, and the Commonwealth of Rhode Island was beckoning to him, to decorate him with the medal the State's legislature had voted. There were the gifts the people of Tennessee had given him, and others that began to come from all sections of the Union. The mountaineers of the State of Georgia clubbed together and sent a remembrance—and presents came from the far West.
Several cities offered him a home if he would come to live among their people. Communities, wanting him, selected their most desirable farming sites and tendered them. But the "Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf" was home to him, and while in France he had said he wished to live "nowhere but at Pall Mall." So the Rotary Clubs, headed by the Nashville organization, raised the fund for the "York Home" through public subscription, and there has been given to him four hundred acres of the "bottom land" of the Valley of the Wolf and one of the timbered mountainsides—land that had been homesteaded and first brought into cultivation by "Old Coonrod" Pile, his pioneer ancestor—land that had remained in the possession of his family until lost in the vicissitudes of the days following the Civil War.
As his residence on his new farm was yet to be built for him, he carried his bride back to the valley and to the little two-room cabin that had been his mother's and his home.
It was impossible for Sergeant York to accept all of the invitations he received to visit cities and address conventions, and he had often to disappoint delegations who traveled the long, rough mountain road to urge in person his acceptance. And he could not, with a slow-moving pen upon a table of pine, answer all the communications that came. Before the war two letters for him in half a year was an occasion worthy of comment. Now each day, over the mountains upon a pacing roan, the postman came, and the mail-pouches, swung as saddle-bags, swayed in unison with the horse's step. Most of the letters were for the York home.
The public mind pays tribute to its heroes in ways that are odd. In the growing mass of mail that was kept in a wide wooden box under the bed—letters that in number "had got away" from the Sergeant's ability to answer—there were displayed many mental idiosyncrasies and an abundance of advice, and there were many strange requests. Some of them were pathetic begging letters, as tho the Sergeant were a rich man; some came from prison-cells, asking his influence to secure a pardon; some from those still desirous of securing a business partnership with him. Among them were even belated matrimonial proposals, describing the writers' attractive qualities. These the big Sergeant teasingly turned over to the golden-haired girl who, herself, had come but recently into that home, and they may safely be classed among those letters the Sergeant could never answer.
While he was at home, which was now only for brief intervals between trips in answer to the invitations he had accepted, it was noted that he was unusually quiet. Often he would sit for an hour or more upon the door-step, looking out past the arbor of honeysuckle, over the acres of land that had been given him, gazing on to the mountains. But he kept his own counsel. Some of those who lived in the valley, who saw him sitting, thinking, wondered if there had come a longing into Alvin's heart to be out in the world again.
But his problem was far from that. He had asked himself two questions: "What was the great need of the people who live far back in the mountains?" "What—since the world had been so generous to him, and lifted from his shoulders the trials of living—could he do for his people?" He was trying to answer them. Subconsciously, a great and a genuine appreciation of all that had been done for him was pushing him onward.
Unaided, he had solved the first. It was education. How keenly, within the few months that had passed, had he realized his own need!
But at that time he did not appreciate how rapidly he was building for himself a bridge over that shortcoming.
The second problem he found more difficult. He recognized he could do a greater good and his efforts would be more lasting and far-reaching if he proved to be an aid to the younger generation. In his effort to reach a practical plan he went as far as he could, with his limited knowledge of organization, before he sought counsel.
Then he asked that no other gifts be made to him, but instead the money be contributed to a fund to build simple, primary schools throughout the mountain districts where there were no state or county tax appropriations available for the purpose. Of the fund, not a dollar was to be for his personal use, nor for any effort he might put forth in its behalf.
So again the form of Sergeant York rose out of the valley, above the mountains, and the sunlight of the nation's approval fell upon it. Men of prominence volunteered to aid him in his efforts for the children of the mountains, and the result was the incorporation of the York Foundation, a non-profit-sharing organization, that is to build schoolhouses and operate schools. Among the trustees are an ex-Secretary of the United States Treasury, bishops of the churches, a state governor, a congressman, bankers, lawyers and business men.