York, Alvin Cullum (1887—1964)

World War I Hero

In the last days of World War I, Alvin C. York came marching out of the Argonne Forest with 132 German prisoners and a remarkable story of individual daring. One of the least likely combat heroes in American history, the Tennessee-born York initially sought conscientious objector status based on his membership in the Church of Christ in Christian Union—a small, pacifist denomination founded in Ohio during the Civil War. York reluctantly accepted induction only after the Selective Service denied his pleas for deferment on religious grounds. However, his army superiors persuaded him that America was fighting God's battle in the Great War, an argument that transformed the reluctant draftee into a veritable soldier of the Lord. With a newfound confidence in the rightness of the conflict, York shipped to France in May 1918, as an infantryman in the 82nd Division.

On the morning of October 8, 1918, during the final Allied offensive in the Argonne Forest, York and the other members of a small patrol found themselves behind German lines, cut off from American forces and under heavy fire. With half of his comrades dead or wounded, York, armed with a rifle and a pistol, boldly challenged a German machine-gun nest, killing approximately two dozen men and calling on the rest to surrender. In the course of a few hours, he silenced 35 machine guns and captured four officers and 128 enlisted personnel. Promoted to the rank of sergeant for a feat that Allied commander Marshal Ferdinand Foch called “the greatest thing accomplished by any private soldier of all the armies of Europe,” York received numerous decorations, including the Medal of Honor and the Croix de Guerre.

An April 1919 article in the Saturday Evening Post, the most widely circulated magazine in America at that time, made York a national hero virtually overnight. York's explanation that God had been with him during the firefight meshed neatly with the popular attitude that American involvement in the war was a holy crusade. As a conscientious objector turned citizen—soldier turned combat hero, York captured both the public's ambivalence about the war and its pride in military victory. York returned to the United States in the spring of 1919 amid a tumultuous public welcome and a flood of business offers from people eager to capitalize on the soldier's reputation. In spite of these lucrative opportunities, York decided to return to his Cumberland Mountain hamlet of Pall Mall, in the Valley of the Three Forks of the Wolf River, where he spent the rest of his life working to bring schools, roads, and economic development to his mountain neighbors.

York lived quietly in Tennessee until the eve of World War II, when his advocacy for military preparedness again made him prominent. Filmmaker Jesse Lasky persuaded York that a film about his World War I experiences would serve as a call to arms for the nation in a time of growing international threat. Directed by Howard Hawks with Gary Cooper in the title role, Sergeant York appeared in July 1941, just six months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Cooper received an Academy Award for his portrayal of Alvin York. The film brought York a financial windfall, but by the 1950s, mismanagement of the income and Internal Revenue Service claims against his earnings brought the old soldier to the brink of bankruptcy. Prominent friends provided financial support and helped him to negotiate a settlement with the IRS a few years before his death in 1964.

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