that which appears to him to be the fact, and if unchallenged or
uncorrected, it is accepted as the proper deduction. Early in my visit
to Pall Mall I learned my lesson.
"Have you lived all your life in the valley?" I asked an old mountaineer
whom I met on the road as he was carrying on his shoulder a sack of corn
to the mill.
Into his eye there came a light of playfulness, then pity, quickly to be
followed by a twinkle of fun. He simply could not let the opening pass.
"Not yit," he said.
Later I saw a little fellow of six years of age chasing a chicken barren
of feathers over a yard that was barren of grass. When I accused him of
maliciously picking that chicken, his face was a spot of smiles as he
vigorously denied it.
"Are you going to school?" I asked him.
The smile changed to a look of surprize at an inquiry so out of line
with his immediate activities.
"When it starts," he called back as he and the chicken disappeared under
the cabin.
I dropped questions and adopted the direct statement as a method of
procedure in which there was less personal liability.
Alvin Terry, dressed in a patched corduroy with a hunting-pouch made of
the skin of a gray fox and with his long rifle in his hand, stopped at
the store and told how he "got a bear." There was a hunter's pride in
the achievement with apparently little value given to the bravery of the
personal role he had played.
He had been on a hunt back in the hills. His dogs had gone ahead of him
and he "knowed they had somethin'." When he came in sight of them they
rushed into a cave and some came out yelping and bloody. When they
wouldn't go back, then it was he "sized hit wur a bear." He looked at
the mountains around him, but there was not a cabin in sight where he
could get help.
"Ez the dogs couldn't git out whatever wuz in there, and wuz only
keepin' hit in, I sat down to think hit over. I lowed I would tell some
one en folks would say, 'that's the man who had a bear in a cave, and
did not git him.' Ef I went in en come out alive with scratches on me,
folks would say 'a bear done that, but he got the bear.'"
He cut a long pole, fastened a pine knot to the end of it and set it
afire. Getting to the side of the mouth of the cave he began slowly to
push in the burning knot, "leavin' the channel open ef anything wanted
to come out."
But the bear didn't come out, and the hunter grew afraid that the smoke
would not move his prey yet would prevent him seeing around in the cave
if he had to go in. The cave's mouth was low, a rock hung over it and he
could not crawl upon his hands and knees.
"I pushed the pine knot ez fur ez hit would go. I set my rifle, en
pushed hit ahead of me. Got my knife where I could git hit. Went down
flat en begun to pull myself on my elbows. When I could jes peep around
a rock I seed the bear. He wuz settin' on his haunches, his head turned
alookin' at the pine knot. I picked out a spot about three inches below
his collar-bone, en never drew such a bead on anything. Then I tetched
her oft. Ye should have seed me come backward out o' there."
He waited and there was no sound in the cave. He sent the dogs in and
they would not come out at his call. He reloaded his rifle and began to
crawl in again.
"As soon as I seed him I knowed he wuz dead. I got both hands on his paw
and began to pull. He wuz heavier than I wuz, so I slid to him. I tried
ketchin' my toes in the rocks, but I couldn't hold, en I never moved
him."
He went ten miles over the mountains to get help to pull his bear out of
the cave.
The language of the people of the Great Smokies and the Blue Ridge
mountains is filled with a quaintness of expression. Many of their words
and phrases that attract through their oddity were at one time in
popular use and grammatically correct. These people are clinging to the
dialect of their fathers who were Anglo-Saxons. The use of "hit" for
"it" is not confined to the mountains, but the Old English grammars give
"hit" as the neuter of the pronoun "he."
"Uns," too, had once a grammatical sanction, for "uon" or "un" was the
Early English for "one," and "uns" was more than the one. In many parts
of the South are found the expressions, "you-uns" and "we-uns." The
mountaineer says "you-uns" when he is addressing more than one person.
It is one of his plural forms for "you," and he is adopting an Early
English ending. But the true mountaineer does not employ "we-uns" The
"we" to him is plural, the suffix is superfluous. In the same way he
says "ye" when speaking to more than one, but he uses "you" when
addressing an individual. He seems, too, to make a distinction between
"you-uns" and "ye." The former is usually the nominative and the latter
the objective.
When he wishes to convey the idea of past tense, the ending "ed" is
popularly employed, but when he may he drops the "e." While he will
properly use the present tense of a verb he goes out of his way to add
the "(e)d." So he says "know-d," "see-d." But he is not always
consistent. He prefers "kilt," the old form, to "killed."
Generations passed in which they had little opportunity to attend
school, and there are today a number of the older people of the "Valley
of the Three Forks o' the Wolf" who can not read nor write. Some of the
younger generation have been away to college, but, as with Alvin York,
most of them grew to manhood with only a month or a month and a half at
school during a year, with many years no school in session.
The church is in the center of the valley at the edge of a grove of
forest trees. It is a frame structure, built by the Methodists during
the past century. The board walls of the interior are unplastered and
unpainted, and the pews are movable benches. The pulpit is slightly
elevated with a railing in front, ending in two pillars upon which rest
the preacher's Bible, song books and lamps. Along the entire front of
the pulpit runs the mourners' bench. In the rear of the church a ladder
rests against the wall and down toward it swings a rope from the open
belfry.
Everyone in the valley attends church and there are but few who do not
go to every service without regard to the denomination conducting it.
They come on horse- and mule-back, on foot, in wagons in the beds of
which are chairs for the entire family. In summer many of the men wear
their overalls, and all, excepting the young men acting as escorts, come
in their shirt-sleeves. Some of the women are in silks, but more of them
are in ginghams, and many sunbonnets are to be seen. At the door of the
church the men and women part and they sit in separate pews.
I attended a service at the end of a revival that was being conducted by
the Rev. Melvin Herbert Russell, of the Church of Christ in Christian
Union, the frail and eager evangelist who three years before had brought
Sergeant York to his knees before the altar of that church.
It was an August day and the sun's rays fell into the valley without a
single cloud for a screen. The little church was filled with worshipers,
while many sat in the shade of the trees that sheltered it, within the
sound of the minister's voice. Down through the grove the hitched horses
"stomped" and switched, but this was the only evidence of restlessness.
The minister conducted the services in his shirt-sleeves, without
collar, and with the sleeves rolled up. There is no organ in the church
and he played a guitar as he led the earnest singing.
The mountain evangelist had but few of the pulpit arts of the minister,
but he had the soul of a great preacher. His life, to him, was a mission
to the unconverted to point out the imminence of death and its meaning.
His belief had carried him beyond and above the pleading of the
uncertainty of death to arouse fear in the hearts of his congregation.
Instead, to him, the great clock of time was actually ticking off an
opportunity which the unconverted could not permit to pass. In his
earnest pleading his voice would rise from a conversational tone until
it rang penetratingly through the hall, and he would emphasize his words
with a startling resound from his open palm upon the altar-rail.
The mountaineers had brought their entire families, and during the
service the smaller children would fall asleep, to awaken with a cry at
the changing vibrations. Up and down the sounding, carpetless aisles the
parents would pass, carrying out some child to comfort it.
But the incidents were unnoticed by the minister, nor did they break the
chant of amens or the growing number of repetitions of the minister's
words by the devout worshipers. When the eyes of the auditors were
turned from the evangelist they reverently sought the face of some
expected convert. In the service, in the feelings of the people there
was real religion.
Sundays pass when there is no preaching in the church. Pastor Pile, the
local minister, has several charges and can conduct the services at Pall
Mall but once a month. But each Sunday morning there is Sunday School,
and in the afternoon a singing-class. Some one of the York boys leads
the unaccompanied songs, and Alvin's leadership and interest in these
services caused the catchy phrase, "a singing Elder," to be a part of
nearly every newspaper story of him that went over the country.
The singing-class draws to the church on Sunday afternoon the younger
element of the community. When the service is over, some go for a swim
in the Wolf River which runs along the foot of the grove, or on a
grassless space under a giant oak on the schoolhouse-yard there will be
a game of marbles. It is the old-fashioned "ring men" that they play,
where five large marbles are placed in a small square marked in the
dust, one marble on each corner and one in the middle.
Over in France when the officers of Sergeant York's regiment were trying
to obtain all the facts of his wonderful exploit, they asked him what he
did with the German officers he had captured when he started to bring in
his line of prisoners. His reply was a simile from his boyhood in the
mountains:
"I jes made a middler out of myself."
Among all the American officers present there was but one who
recognized his reference to the old marble game.
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.
VI
Sergeant York's Own Story
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.
VII
Two More Deeds of Distinction
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.
[Footnote: The Trustees of the York Foundation are: Bishop James
Atkins, Methodist Episcopal Church, South; W. B. Beauchamp,
Director-General of the Methodist Centenary, Nashville, Tenn.; George
E. Bennie, President, Alexander Bennie Co., Nashville, Tenn; C. H.
Brandon, President, Brandon Printing Co., Nashville, Tenn.; P. H.
Cain, Cain-Sloan Co., Nashville, Tenn.; Joel O. Cheek, President,
Cheek-Neal Coffee Co., Nashville, Tenn.; James N. Cox, Gainesboro
Telephone Co., Cookeville, Tenn.; Dr. G. W. Dyer, Vanderbilt
University, Nashville, Tenn.; Judge F. T. Fancher, Sparta, Tenn.;
Edgar M. Foster, Business Manager, "Nashville Banner," Nashville,
Tenn.; Judge Joseph Gardenhire, Carthage, Tenn.; T. Graham Hall,
Business Man, Nashville, Tenn.; Hon. Cordell Hull, Chairman of
Democratic National Committee and former Congressman from York's
district; Lee J. Loventhal, Business Man, Nashville, Tenn.; Hon.
William G. McAdoo, former secretary of the United States Treasury, New
York City; Hon. Hill McAllister, State Treasurer, Nashville, Tenn.; J.
S. McHenry, Vice-President, Fourth & First National Bank, Nashville,
Tenn.; Dr. Bruce R. Payne, President, George Peabody College for
Teachers, Nashville, Tenn.; Rev. R. C. Pile, Pall Mall, Tenn.; T. R.
Preston, President, Hamilton National Bank, Chattanooga, Tenn.; Hon.
A. H. Roberts, former Governor of Tennessee, Nashville, Tenn.; Bolton
Smith, Lawyer, Memphis, Tenn.; Judge C. E. Snodgrass, Crossville,
Tenn.; Dr. James I. Vance, First Presbyterian Church, Nashville,
Tenn.; Hon. George N. Welch, former State Commissioner of Public
Utilities, Nashville, Tenn.; F. A. Williams, Farmer, Pall Mall, Tenn.;
S. R. Williams, Farmer, Pall Mall, Tenn.; W. L. Wright, President,
Bank of Jamestown, Pall Mall, Tenn., and Sergeant Alvin C. York.]
The fund is already a substantial one, steadily growing, and success is
assured.
In connection with each school is to be land to be tilled by the
students as a farm, and besides providing instruction in agriculture,
the farm is to aid in the support of the school, and no child of the
community is to miss the opportunity to attend through inability to pay
the tuition charge. As each unit becomes self-supporting, another school
is to be established in a new district.
In this new endeavor, Alvin wished to do what he could to shield the
boys now at play among the red brush upon the mountainsides from being
compelled to say, after they had grown to young manhood, what he himself
had been forced to confess: "I'm just an ignorant mountain boy."
And he is making rapid strides of progress for himself. I saw him enter
the great banquet room of a leading hotel in one of the country's
largest cities. The hall was filled with men and women of refinement and
culture. As Sergeant York and his young wife entered, the banqueters
arose and cheered them. This demonstration was a welcome to "Sergeant
York, the soldier."
He paused, with a smile of appreciation as he looked over the vast
assemblage, and he bowed with a grace and dignity far beyond that which
was expected of him from what his audience had read and heard. Then
without turning his head, he reached for the hand of his bride and led
her to the speakers' table upon a raised platform. And he was again to
bring that assemblage to its feet and fill that hall with its cheers.
This time it was for Alvin York, the man--as he talked to them about the
boys of the mountains.
Three days afterward, he entered the store of John Marion Rains at Pall
Mall. As all the chairs and kegs of horseshoes were occupied, he put his
hands behind him, swung himself to a place of comfort upon the counter,
and took his part in the battle of wit as the firing flashed amid the
tobacco smoke. Pall Mall was home, and there he permitted no distinction
between individuals.
This has wandered far afield as a biography of Sergeant York. It is but
a story of the strength and the simplicity of a man--a young man--whom
the nation has honored for what he has done, with something in it of
those who went before and left him as a legacy the qualities of mind and
heart that enabled him to fight his fight in the Forest of Argonne. The
biography no doubt will be written later. He has not planned for the
long years that lie ahead, but is following after a principle with a
force that can not be deflected or checked. The future alone will tell
where this is to lead him. This is really a story of but two years of
his life--the period of time that has elapsed since Alvin York first
found himself--a period in which he has done three things, and anyone of
them would have marked him for distinction. He fought a great fight,
declined to barter the honors that came to him, and using his new-found
strength he has reached a helping hand to the children of the mountains
who needed him.
PALMAM QUI MERUIT FERAT!
[Let him bear the palm who has deserved it!]