Alvin York Captured Machine Gun Nest - Oct. 8, 1918

Alvin York led a group of soldiers to capture a German machine gun nest on this day in 1918. There's more in the October 3, 2018 episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to This Day in History class from how Stuff
Works dot Com and from the desk of Stuff you
Missed in History Class. It's the show where we explore
the past one day at a time with a quick
look at what happened today in history. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson, and it's October eight.
Alvin York's heroic actions on this day in nineteen eighteen

(00:25):
would later on earned him the Medal of Honor. Alvin
York was born December eighty seven in Palmell, Tennessee. After
his father died in nineteen eleven, Alvin was the oldest
child who was still living at home. His older brothers
had started their own families, and he became the head
of his family, basically taking his father's place. But he
didn't shoulder all of this new responsibility very well, or

(00:46):
his grief over his father's death. He started drinking and
gambling and crossing the border into Kentucky to drink and fight,
and soon he had an arrest record. But a couple
of things happened around nineteen and nineteen fifteen the really
changed him completely. One was that he met a young
woman named Gracie Williams, who he was very fond of.

(01:07):
And the other is that he had a religious awakening
at a revival on New Year's Day nineteen fifteen. This
revival had lasted the whole last week of nineteen fourteen,
and he had gone there because he wanted to see
Gracie and he knew that she would be there. But
on the last day of the revival, something was different.
When he described it quote as if lightning had struck
my soul, he really was a changed man. From this

(01:29):
point he gave up drinking and fighting and playing cards
and started trying to live his life in a Christian way,
including becoming a pacifist. But then in June of nineteen seventeen,
the same month that he got engaged to Gracie Williams,
he also had to register for the draft for World
War One. He tried to be classified as a conscientious objector,
but his application was turned down. It was turned down

(01:51):
because the church he was a member of wasn't considered
to be a recognized and established sect, and also because
it didn't have any particular creed beyond the Bible to
prevent its adherents from undertaking military service. All of this
really continued to trouble Alvin York's conscience for quite some time,
but he ultimately reconciled himself to the idea of serving

(02:12):
in the military. And then on October nineteen eighteen, his
platoon was ordered to cross a valley to capture a
machine gun nest that was preventing their advance. They faced
really heavy machine gun fire and immense casualties just trying
to cross over an open stretch of land to get
to where they needed to go. York was one of

(02:33):
only seventeen men who made it across the clearing. That
was the first step in achieving this objective. And then
they followed two German soldiers through some brush, and on
the other side of that brush they surprised a whole
group of German soldiers who were eating breakfast. These German
soldiers had been marching through the night. They were exhausted,
and they were hungry, and they really thought these seventeen

(02:54):
Americans who had suddenly burst in on them were the
advanced guard of a much bigger force, and so most
of them started surrender. But that is one of the
machine gunners who were up on the hill noticed what
was happening. By the time they were able to take cover,
only eight of the American force, including York, were still
alive and able to fight. They returned fire against the

(03:14):
machine gunners, with York especially carrying the day. When a
German lieutenant and about six soldiers tried to charge down
the hill with bayonets trying to take down whoever it
was that was shooting the machine gunners, York shot each
of them with his pistol. He started at the back.
This was something he had learned while hunting birds when
he was living in Tennessee. He would shoot the formation

(03:36):
of birds from the back so the ones in front
wouldn't get startled. In this case, he was doing it
because he didn't want the people in the back to
be able to take cover behind the bodies of fallen
men in front of them. After they had taken care
of this, they captured four German officers and a hundred
and twenty eight German soldiers, along with several machine guns.

(03:58):
York was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the quater gear
with palms, and the Medal of Honor for his heroism
on that day, but after he got back to Tennessee,
he largely refused the hero's welcome that was waiting for him. Instead,
he dedicated himself entirely to opening a school in Fentriss County, Tennessee,
where he had grown up, which had no high school

(04:20):
at all until that point, and this would be a
major focus for most of the rest of his life.
When the movie Sergeant York was made in nineteen forty one,
the real York put almost all the money that he
earned from it back into that school. He died on
September two, nineteen sixty four, at the age of seventy six.
He was survived by his wife, Gracie, who he married
just days after getting out of the army, and seven

(04:42):
of their ten children. Some of those children and York
himself have said that starting that school was to him
a much bigger accomplishment than what he did that earned
the Medal of Honor. You can learn a lot more
about this from the October three episode of Stuff You
Miss in History Class. Thanks to Terry Harrison for all
of audio work on this podcast, and you can subscribe

(05:02):
to the Stay in History Class on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts,
and wherever else you get your podcasts. You can tune
in tomorrow for an assassination