Glenn Thackston

108 years ago today, a red-headed farmer from Pall Mall, Tennessee did something in the Argonne Forest that still doesn't seem real. Alvin York grew up dirt poor, a hard drinker and brawler, until a religious conversion in his twenties changed his whole life. When the draft notice came in 1917, he asked to be exempted as a conscientious objector. His church opposed war and so did he. The Army said no. His battalion commander spent hours going through the Bible with him, trying to convince him that a man could fight and still be right with God. York went home on leave, prayed on it for two days on a mountainside, and came back ready. On the morning of October 8, 1918, York was one of 17 men sent to slip behind German lines and knock out machine guns near Chatel-Chehery, France. They surprised a group of Germans and captured them. Then the machine guns on the ridge above opened up. Six Americans were killed instantly and three more went down wounded, including the sergeant in charge. That left Cpl. York in command of seven men, most of them pinned flat guarding prisoners. So York went to work. Every time a German gunner raised his head to fire, York shot him. He'd been shooting turkeys in the Tennessee hills since he was a kid and he was not missing at that range. When six Germans charged him with bayonets, he drew his pistol and dropped all six, starting with the last man and working forward, so the ones in front wouldn't realize what was happening. A German officer, Lt. Paul Vollmer, emptied his pistol at York and missed every shot. Watching his men fall one after another, Vollmer finally called out in English and offered to surrender the whole position if York would stop shooting. York agreed. Then he used Vollmer to order other German positions to give up as they marched back through the woods. By the time he reached American lines, York had killed 25 men and was herding 132 prisoners in front of him with a handful of survivors. When a general told him he'd heard York captured the whole German army, York said "No sir. I got only 132." He was promoted to sergeant and received the Medal of Honor. New York threw him a ticker tape parade. Companies offered him a fortune to endorse their products and he turned almost all of it down. He went home to Tennessee, married his sweetheart, and spent years raising money to build a school for kids in the mountains who had no shot at an education. When Hollywood finally made his story in 1941, he agreed partly to fund a Bible school. Gary Cooper won the Oscar for playing him. The man who didn't want to go to war became the most famous American soldier of it.