His own wounded he put at the rear of the column, and forced the Germans
to carry those who could not walk. The other Americans he stationed
along the column to hold the prisoners in line.
Sergeant Early, shot through the body, was too severely wounded to
continue in command. York was a corporal, but there was no question of
rank for all turned to him for instructions. The Germans could not take
their eyes off of him, and instantly complied with all his orders, given
through the major, who spoke English.
Stray bullets kept plugging through the branches of the trees around
them. For the first time the Americans realized they were under fire
from the Germans on the hill back of them, whom they had seen when they
came out of the deserted trench. The Germans stationed there could not
visualize the strange fight that was taking place behind a line of
German machine guns, and they were withholding their fire to protect
their own men. They were plugging into the woods with rifles, hoping to
draw a return volley, and thus establish the American's position.
To all who doubted the possibility of carrying so many prisoners through
the forest, or spoke of reprisal attacks to release them, York's reply
was:
"Let's get 'em out of here!"
The German major looking down the long line of Germans, possibly
planning some recoup from the shame and ignominy of the surrender of so
many of them, stepped up to York and asked:
"How many men have you got?"
The big mountaineer wheeled on him:
"I got a-plenty!"
And the major seemed convinced that the number of the Americans was
immaterial as York thrust his automatic into the major's face and
stepped him up to the head of the column.
Among the captives were three officers.
These York placed around him to lead the prisoners--one on either side
and the major immediately before him. In York's right hand swung the
automatic pistol, with which he had made an impressive demonstration in
the fight up the hill. The officers were told that at the first sign of
treachery, or for a failure of the men behind to obey a command, the
penalty would be their lives; and the major was informed that he would
be the first to go.
With this formation no German skulking on the hill or in the bushes
could fire upon York without endangering the officers. Similar
protection was given all of the Americans acting as escort.
Up the hill York started the column. From the topography of the land he
knew there were machine guns over the crest that had had no part in the
fight.
Straight to these nests he marched them. As the column approached, the
major was forced by York to command the gunners to surrender.
Only one shot was fired after the march began. At one of the nests, a
German, seeing so many Germans as prisoners and so few of the enemy to
guard them--all of them on the German firing-line with machine gun nests
around them--refused to throw down his gun, and showed fight.
York did not hesitate.
The remainder of that gun's crew took their place in line, and the major
promised York there would be no more delays in the surrenders if he
would kill no more of them.
As a great serpent the column wound among the trees on the hilltop
swallowing the crews of German machine guns.
After the ridge had been cleared, four machine gun-nests were found down
the hillside.
It took all the woodcraft the young mountaineer knew to get to his own
command. They had come back over the hilltop and were on the slope of
the valley in which the Eighty-Second Division was fighting. They were
now in danger from both German and American guns.
York listened to the firing, and knew the Americans had reached the
valley--and that some of them had crossed it. Where their line was
running he could not determine.
He knew if the Americans saw his column of German uniforms they were in
danger--captors and captives alike--of being annihilated. At any moment
the Germans from the two hilltops down the valley--to check the
Eighty-Second Division's advance--might lay a belt of bullets across
the course they traveled.
Winding around the cleared places and keeping in the thickly timbered
section of the hillslope whenever it was possible, Sergeant York worked
his way toward the American line.
In the dense woods the German major made suggestions of a path to take.
As York was undecided which one to choose, the major's suggestion made
him go the other one. Frequently the muzzle of York's automatic dimpled
the major's back and he quickened his step, slowed up, or led the column
in the direction indicated to him without turning his head and without
inquiry as to the motive back of York's commands.
Down near the foot of the hill, near the trench they had traveled a
short while before, York answered the challenge to "Halt!"
He stepped out so his uniform could be seen, and called to the Americans
challenging him, and about to fire on the Germans, that he was "bringing
in prisoners."
The American line opened for him to pass, and a wild cheer went up from
the Doughboys when they saw the column of prisoners. Some of them
"called to him to know" if he had the "whole damned German army."
At the foot of the hill in an old dugout an American P. C. had been
located, and York turned in his prisoners.
The prisoners were officially counted by Lieut. Joseph A. Woods,
Assistant Division Inspector, and there were 132 of them, three of the
number were officers and one with the rank of major.
When the Eighty-Second Division passed on, officers of York's regiment
visited the scene of the fight and they counted 25 Germans that he had
killed and 35 machine guns that York had not only silenced but had
unmanned, carrying the men back with him as prisoners.
When York was given "his receipt for the prisoners," an incident
happened that shows the true knightliness of character of this untrained
mountaineer.
It was but a little after ten o'clock in the morning. The Americans had
a hard day's fighting ahead of them. Somewhere out in the forest York's
own company--Company G--and his own regiment--the 328th Infantry--were
fighting. He made inquiry, but no one could direct him to them. He
turned to the nearest American officer, saluted and reported, "Ready for
duty."
What he had done was to him but a part of the work to be done that day.
But York was assigned to the command of his prisoners, to carry them
back to a detention camp. The officers were held by the P. C.--for an
examination and grilling on the plans of the enemy.
Whenever they could the private soldiers among the prisoners gathered
close to York, now looking to him for their personal safety.
On the way to the detention camp the column was shelled by German guns
from one of the hilltops. York maneuvered them and put them in double
quick time until they were out of range.
Late in the afternoon, back of the three hills that face Hill No. 223,
the "All America" Division "cut" the Decauville Railroad that supplied a
salient to the north that the Germans were striving desperately to hold.
As they swept on to their objective they found the hill to the left of
the valley, that turns a shoulder toward No. 223--which the people of
France have named "York's Hill"--cleared of Germans, and on its crest,
silent and unmanned machine guns.
Americans returned and buried on the hillside--beside a thicket, near a
shack that had been the German officer's headquarters--six American
soldiers. They placed wooden crosses to mark the graves and on the top
of the crosses swung the helmets the soldiers had worn.
Out from the forest came the story of what York had done. The men in the
trenches along the entire front were told of it. Not only in the United
States, but in Great Britain, France and Italy, it electrified the
public. From the meager details the press was able to carry, for the
entire Entente firing-line was ablaze and a surrender was being forced
upon Germany, and York's division was out in the Argonne still fighting
its way ahead, the people could but wonder how one man was able to
silence a battalion of machine guns and bring in so many prisoners.
Major-General George B. Duncan, commander of the Eighty-Second Division,
and officers of York's regiment knew that history had been made upon
that hillside. By personal visits of the regiment's officers to the
scene, by measurements, by official count of the silent guns and the
silent dead, by affidavits from those who were with York, the record of
his achievement was verified.
Major-General C. P. Summerall, before the officers of York's regiment,
said to him:
"Your division commander has reported to me your exceedingly gallant
conduct during the operations of your division in the Meuse-Argonne
Battle. I desire to express to you my pleasure and commendation for the
courage, skill, and gallantry which you displayed on that occasion. It
is an honor to command such soldiers as you. Your conduct reflects great
credit not only upon the American army, but upon the American people.
Your deeds will be recorded in the history of this great war and they
will live as an inspiration not only to your comrades but to the
generations that will come after us."
General John J. Pershing in pinning the Congressional Medal of Honor
upon him--the highest award for valor the United States Government
bestows--called York the greatest civilian soldier of the war.
Marshal Foch, bestowing the Croix de Guerre with Palm upon him, said his
feat was the World War's most remarkable individual achievement.
A deed that is done through the natural use of a great talent seems to
the doer of the deed the natural thing to have done. A sincere response
to appreciation and praise, made by those endowed with real ability,
usually comes cloaked in a genuine modesty.
At his home in the "Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf," after the
war was over, I asked Alvin York how he came to be "Sergeant York."
"Well," he said, as he looked earnestly at me, "you know we were in the
Argonne Forest twenty-eight days, and had some mighty hard fighting in
there. A lot of our boys were killed off. Every company has to have so
many sergeants. They needed a sergeant; and they jes' took me."
In the summer of 1917 when Alvin York was called to war, he was working
on the farm for $25 a month and his midday meal, walking to and from his
work. He was helping to support his widowed mother with her family of
eleven. When he returned to this country to be mustered out of service
he had traveled among the soldiers of France the guest of the American
Expeditionary Force, so the men in the lines could see the man who
single-handed had captured a battalion of machine guns, and he bore the
emblems of the highest military honors conferred for valor by the
governments composing the Allies.
At New York he was taken from the troop-ship when it reached harbor and
the spontaneous welcome given him there and at Washington was not
surpassed by the prearranged demonstrations for the Nation's
distinguished foreign visitors.
The streets of those cities were lined with people to await his coming
and police patrols made way for him. The flaming red of his hair, his
young, sunburned, weather-ridged face with its smile and its strength,
the worn service cap and uniform, all marked him to the crowds as the
man they sought.
On the shoulders of members of the New York Stock Exchange he was
carried to the floor of the Exchange and business was suspended. When he
appeared in the gallery of the House of Representatives at Washington,
the debate was stopped and the members turned to cheer him. A sergeant
in rank, he sat at banquets as the guest of honor with the highest
officials of the Army and Navy and the Government on either side.
Wherever he went he heard the echo of the valuation which Marshal Foch
and General Pershing placed upon his deeds.
Many business propositions were made to him. Some were substantial and
others strange, the whimsical offerings of enthused admirers.
Among them were cool fortunes he could never earn at labor.
Taking as a basis the money he was paid for three months on the farm in
the summer before he went to France, he would have had to work fifty
years to earn the amount he was offered for a six-weeks' theatrical
engagement. For the rights to the story of his life a single newspaper
was willing to give him the equivalent of thirty-three years. He would
have to live to be over three hundred years of age to earn at the old
farm wage the sum motion picture companies offered, as a guarantee.
He turned all down, and went back to the little worried mother who was
waiting for him in a hut in the mountains, to the gazelle-like mountain
girl whose blue eyes had haunted the shades of night and the shadows of
trees, to the old seventy-five acre farm that clings to one of the
sloping sides of a sun-kissed valley in Tennessee. He refused to
capitalize his fame, his achievements that were crowded into a few
months in the army of his country.
There was one influence that was ever guiding him. The future had to
square to the principles of thought and action he had laid down for
himself and that he had followed since he knelt, four years before, at a
rough-boarded altar in a little church in the "Valley of the Three Forks
o' the Wolf," whose belfry had been calling, appealing to him since
childhood.
Admiral Albert Gleaves, who commanded the warship convoy for the
troop-ships, himself a Tennesseean, made a prediction which came true.
"The guns of Argonne and the batteries of welcome of the East were not
to be compared to those to be turned loose in York's home state."
The people of Tennessee filled depots, streets and tabernacles to
welcome him. Gifts awaited him, which ranged from a four-hundred acre
farm raised by public subscriptions by the Rotary Clubs and newspapers,
to blooded stock for it, and almost every form of household furnishings
that could add to man's comfort. It took a ware-room at Nashville and
the courtesies of the barns of the State Fair Association to hold the
gifts.
He was made a Colonel by the Governor of Tennessee, and appointed a
member of his staff. He was elected to honorary membership in many
organizations. As far away as Spokane the "Red Headed Club" thought him
worthy of their membership "by virtue of the color of his hair and in
recognition of his services to this, our glorious country."
The nations of Europe for whom he fought had not forgotten nor had they
ceased to honor him. After he had returned to the mountains of
Tennessee, another citation came from the French Government for a
military award that had been made him, and in a ceremony at the capital
of Tennessee the Italian Government conferred upon him the Italian Cross
of War.
The "Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf," where Alvin York was born
and lives, which has been the home of his ancestors for more than a
hundred years, is a level fertile valley that is almost a rectangle in
form. Three mountains rising on the north and south and west enclose it,
while to the east four mountains jumble together, forming the fourth
side. It seems that each of these is striving for a place by the valley.
It is down the passes of these mountains on the east that the three
branches of the Wolf River run, and it is their meeting and commingling
that gave the quaint name to the valley.
The forks of the Wolf rush down the passes, but the river runs lazily
through the valley. It flows beside a cornfield, then wanders over to a
meadow of clover or into a patch of sugar-cane, turning the while from
side to side as the varying mountain vistas come into view. At the far
end where it is pushed over the mill dam and out of the valley, the Wolf
roars protestingly; then rushes on to the Cumberland River a silver line
between the mountains.
Pall Mall, the village, is co-extensive with the "Valley of the Three
Forks o' the Wolf." As a stranger first sees Pall Mall it is but a
half-mile of the mountain roadway that runs from Jamestown, the county
seat of Fentress county, to Byrdstown, the county seat of Pickett.
The roadway comes down from the top of "The Knobs," a thousand feet
above, and it comes over rocks of high and low degree, a jolting,
impressive journey for its traveler. It reaches the foot of the mountain
along one of the prongs of the Wolf, crosses them at the base of the
eastern mountains and passes on to the northern side of the river.
At the post office of Pall Mall, which is also the store of "Paster"
Pile--a frame building upon stilts to allow an unobstructed flow of the
Wolf when on a winter rampage--the road turns at right angles to the
west. Through fields of corn it goes, across a stretch of red clover to
the clump of forest trees which is the schoolhouse grounds and in which
nestles the little church that has played such a prominent part in the
life of the village. Then the road goes beside the graveyard and again
through corn to the general store of John Marion Rains, which with five
houses in sight--and one of these the York home--marks the western
confine of Pall Mall.
One can be in the center of Pall Mall and not know it, for the residents
live in farm houses that dot the valley and in cabins on the
mountainsides. The little church, which sits by the road with no homes
near it, is the geographical as well as the religious center of the
community--it is the heart of Pall Mall.
Passing the Rains store the roadway tumbles down to the York's big
spring. A brook in volume the stream flows clear and cool from a low
rock-ribbed cave in the base of the mountain.
Across the spring branch, up the mountainside in a clump of honey-suckle
and roses and apple trees is the home to which Sergeant York returned.
It is a two-room cabin. The boxing is of rough boards as are the
unplaned narrow strips of batting covering the cracks. There is a
chimney at one end and in one room is a fireplace. The kitchen is a
"lean-to" and the only porch is on the rear, the width of the
kitchen-dining room. The porch is for service and work, railed partly
with a board for a shelf, which holds the water-bucket, the tin wash
basin and burdens brought in from the farm.
Parts of the walls of the two rooms are papered with newspapers and
catalog pages; the rough rafters run above. The uncovered floor is of
wide boards, worn smooth in service, chinked to keep out the blasts of
winter.
The porch in the rear is on a level with the mountainside. To care for
the mountain's slope a front stoop was built. The sides of it are
scantlings and the steps are narrow boards.
The house has been painted by Poverty; but the home is warmed and lit by
a mountain mother's love. The front stoop is a wooden ladder with flat
steps but the entrance to the home is an arbor of honey suckle and
roses.
On summer nights the York boys sat on that stoop and sang, and their
voices floated on the moonbeams out over the valley. The little mother
"pottered" about, with ever a smile on her face for her boys. They were
happy.
It was from this home that Alvin went to war, and it was to it he
returned.
Visitors know, and it is well for others to realize, that Pall Mall and
the "Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf" are back among the rising
ranges of the Cumberland Mountains forty-eight miles from the railroad.
Alvin York came from a line of ancestors who were cane-cutters and
Indian fighters. The earliest ancestor of whom he has knowledge was a
"Long Hunter," who with a rifle upon his shoulder strode into the Valley
of the Wolf and homesteaded the river bottom-lands. Here his people
lived far from the traveled paths. Marooned in their mountain
fastnesses, they clung to the customs and the traditions of the past.
Their life was simple, and their sports quaint. They held
shooting-matches on the mountainside, enjoyed "log-rollings" and
"corn-huskings." Strong in their loves and in their hates, they feared
God, but feared no man. The Civil War swept over the valley and left
splotches of blood.
Friends of Sergeant York, knowing that the history of his people was
rich in story, and that the public was waiting, wanting to know more of
the man the German army could not run, nor make surrender--and instead
had to come to him--urged that his story be told.
He had been mustered out of the army and come back to the valley wanting
to pick up again the dropped thread of his former life. He was striving
earnestly and prayerfully to blot from recurrent memory that October
morning scene on "York's Hill" in France.
His friends and neighbors at Pall Mall waited eagerly for his return.
They wanted to hear from his own lips the story of his fight.
No man of the mountains was ever given the home-coming that was his. It
was made the reunion of the people, with the neighbors the component
parts of one great family.
When home again, Alvin wanted no especial deference shown him. He wished
to be again just one of them, to swing himself upon the counter at the
general store and talk with them as of old. He had much to tell from his
experience, but always it was of other incidents than the one that made
him famous.
Months passed. He lived in that mountain cabin with his little mother,
whose counsel has ever influenced him, and yet not once did he mention
to her that he had a fight in the Forest of Argonne.
His consent was gained for the publication of the story of his people,
but it was with the pronounced stipulation that "it be told right."
Weeks afterward--for I had gone to live awhile among his people--the two
of us were sitting upon the rugged rock, facing to the cliff above the
York spring, talking about the fight in France.
He told of it hesitatingly, modestly. Some of the parts was simply the
confirmation of assembled data; much of it, denial of published rumor
and conjecture--before the story came out as a whole.
I asked the meaning of his statement that he would not "mind the
publication if the story were done right."
"Well," he said with his mountain drawl, "I don't want you bearing down
too much on that killing part. Tell it without so much of that!"
A rock was picked up and hurled down the mountain.
I then understood why the little mother was "jes' a-waiting till Alvin
gits ready to talk." I understood why the son did not wish to be the one
to bring into his mother's mind the picture of that hour in France when
men were falling before his gun. I saw the reason he had for always
courteously avoiding talking of the scene with anyone.
"But," and he turned with that smile that wins him friends, "I just
can't help chuckling at that German major. I sure had him bluffed."
According to the code of mountain conversation there followed a silence.
Another rock bounded off the sapling down the cliff.
"You should have seen the major," he resumed, "move on down that hill
whenever I pulled down on him with that old Colt. 'Goose-step it', I
think they call it. He was so little! His back so straight! And all
huffed up over the way he had to mind me."
I had watched the rocks as they went down the cliff and it seemed nearly
every one of them bounced off the same limb. I commented on the accuracy
of his eye.
"Aw! I wasn't throwing at that sapling, but at--that--leaf."
He straightened up and threw more carefully; and the leaf floated down
to the waters of the York spring.
Down by the spring I met the little mother bringing a tin bucket to the
stone milk-house which nature had built. Her slender, drooping figure,
capped by the sunbonnet she always wore, reached just to the shoulder of
her son, as he placed his arm protectingly about her.