A Corporal from Tennessee

 

The young man from the mountains of Tennessee was pinned down.  When the gunfire erupted he was in the open and unable to take cover.  He was all alone with nowhere to hide and being shot at by the enemy.

Well over 100 German soldiers fired pistols, rifles, and more than 30 machine guns down on him from an elevated position.  The bushes and weeds around the young American were being mowed down as he clutched his rifle.

Then the German horde charged.

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Young Alvin had found religion after what many would call a misspent youth.  When he converted, he took it seriously and dedicated his life to serving Christ.

In his late twenties he was drafted into the army but applied for conscientious objector status because of his religious beliefs.  That status would allow him to sit out the war at home or, at the very least, serve in a non-combat role.

His request was denied.  They assumed he was a coward and just wanted to avoid combat.

He may have wanted to avoid combat, but they would soon find out he was no coward by any meaning of the word.

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Faced with serving in a capacity where he would have to kill his fellow humans or go to prison, Alvin prayed and studied his bible.  He came to the conclusion that, although the Ten Commandments clearly command, “Thou shalt not kill.” it was allowed in defense of others.

He agreed to serve.  He would do what he had to do in defense of his country and his loved ones.

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Once he went active, he did so with enthusiasm.  Alvin especially distinguished himself as a marksman, which he attributed to all the hunting he had done to feed his family back in the hills of Tennessee.

By October 8, 1918 he had attained the rank of corporal.  That day he was part of a patrol sent to take out some German machine gun nests.  They advanced toward the emplacements and managed to capture a few prisoners on the way.  Some American soldiers were ordered to guard the prisoners while the rest of the unit tried to take out the nests.

Then the enemy machine guns burst to life.

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The chattering weapons mowed down most of the remaining soldiers who were with the corporal, including the officer in charge, which left him facing more than 100 heavily armed enemy troops…and doing so alone.

The corporal would later explain, “They killed all of Savage’s squad; they got all of mine but two; they wounded Cutting and killed two of his squad; and Early’s squad was well back in the brush on the extreme right and not yet under the direct fire of the machine guns, and so they escaped…all except Early.  He went down with three bullets in his body.  That left me in command.  I was right out there in the open.

“And those machine guns were spitting fire and cutting down the undergrowth all around me something awful.  And the Germans were yelling orders.  You never heard such a racket in all of your life.  I didn’t have time to dodge behind a tree or dive into the brush; I didn’t even have time to kneel or lie down.

“I don’t know what the other boys were doing.  They claim they didn’t fire a shot.  They said afterwards they were on the right, guarding the prisoners.  And the prisoners were lying down and the machine guns had to shoot over them to get me.  As soon as the machine guns opened fire on me, I began to exchange shots with them.”

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Alvin knew that the only chance he had was to keep firing so the enemy didn’t know they were facing just one man.  The Germans kept their heads down, only popping up to take a shot, and the corporal used the opportunity to put a bullet in them as they did.

Alvin said, “I knowed that in order to shoot me the Germans would have to get their heads up to see where I was lying.  And I knowed that my only chance was to keep their heads down.  And I done done it.  I covered their positions and let fly every time I seed anything to shoot at.  Every time a head come up I done knocked it down.  Then they would sorter stop for a moment and then another head would come up and I would knock it down, too.  I was giving them the best I had.”

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Unlike on television and in movies real soldiers can only carry a limited amount of ammo, so Alvin’s ammunition was soon running short.  His chances of surviving the fearsome battle faded with the disappearing ammo.

That’s when six Germans fixed bayonets and charged him from only 25 yards away.

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Alvin explained, “In the middle of the fight a German officer and five men done jumped out of a trench and charged me with fixed bayonets.  They had about twenty-five yards to come and they were coming right smart.  I only had about half a clip left in my rifle, but I had my pistol ready.  I done flipped it out fast and teched them off, too.

“I teched off the sixth man first; then the fifth; then the fourth; then the third; and so on.  That’s the way we shoot wild turkeys at home.  You see we don’t want the front ones to know that we’re getting the back ones, and then they keep on coming until we get them all.  Of course, I hadn’t time to think of that.  I guess I jes naturally did it.  I knowed, too, that if the front ones wavered, or if I stopped them the rear ones would drop down and pump a volley into me and get me.”

His religious beliefs may have allowed him to kill, but they forbade him to do it needlessly so, whenever he got a chance to catch a breath, he called out for the Germans to surrender.

No luck.

Alvin continued to pick off the machine gunners as they took over those positions from their fallen comrades.

Realizing he was faced with losing his entire unit the major in command of the German forces weighed the alternatives…and chose to surrender.

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Left in charge by the death of his commanding officer the American corporal quickly retrieved the eight or nine remaining members of his own unit who had been guarding their other prisoners and enlisted their help with the 80 to 90 new ones he had just captured.

Oh, did I mention that the American patrol, now outnumbered more than 10-to-1 by their prisoners, was behind enemy lines?

Yeah.

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They cautiously made their way back toward friendly territory, capturing a few more prisoners along the way.

Alvin said, “…I marched them straight at that old German front line trench.  And some more machine guns swung around and began to spit at us.  I told the major to blow his whistle or I would take off his head and theirs too.  So he blew his whistle and they all surrendered– all except one.  I made the major order him to surrender twice.  But he wouldn’t.  And I had to tech him off.  I hated to do it.  I’ve been doing a tolerable lot of thinking about it since.  He was probably a brave soldier boy, but I couldn’t afford to take any chances and so I had to let him have it.”

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As the group neared the allied line they were faced with the fact that, outnumbered as drastically as they were, they would appear to be an advancing German patrol.  Alvin was able to find a detachment on its way out, to relieve his unit, and he got his men safely back behind allied lines.

He was told to report to the commanding officer.  The corporal said,” I had orders to report to Brigadier General Lindsey, and he said to me, ‘Well…, I hear you have captured the whole —— German army.’

“And I told him I only had 132.”

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The corporal and his remaining men returned to their outfit and helped accomplish their original mission: reaching and destroying the Decauville Railroad.

Alvin added, “The next morning Captain Danforth sent me back with some stretcher bearers to see if there were any of our American boys that we had missed. But they were all dead. And there were a lot of German dead. We counted twenty-eight, which is just the number of shots I fired. And there were thirty-five machine guns and a whole mess of equipment and small arms.”

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Marshall Ferdinand Foch of France called the corporal’s actions, “the greatest thing accomplished by any private soldier of all the armies of Europe.”

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Because of his heroism on that day, Alvin received a promotion to sergeant and was awarded the Medal of Honor.

When Hollywood made a movie about the events of October 8, 1918, they chose to call Alvin by the rank he received afterward and cast Gary Cooper in the title role.  “Sergeant York” may be a slightly Hollywood-ized dramatization of those incredible events, but they didn’t exaggerate much.

The facts were hard enough to believe.

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Alvin York returned to Tennessee, married, and fathered seven children.  He used some of the money he made touring and giving speeches to found a school.  It still exists today.

When World War II came around Alvin tried to enlist but was turned down because of his age.  Instead he convinced the state of Tennessee that they needed a reserve force at home and so founded the Tennessee State Guard in which he served as a Colonel.

Alvin York passed away on September 2, 1964 at the age of 77.

 

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