June 18, 2025 • 42 mins
If you were alive between 1918 and 1940, it is absolutely certain that you would have heard of Alvin York’s famous exploits in World War One. But would you know the truth about the man, and about what he did one desperate day on the battlefield? Chances are you’d only know part of his story. But the tale behind his actual heroism is far more interesting, and far more human.
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Episode bibliography:
Gregory, James Patrick Jr. Unraveling the Myth of Sgt. Alvin York: The Other Sixteen. Texas A&M University Press, December 26, 2022. https://www.amazon.com/Unraveling-Myth-Sgt-Alvin-York/dp/1648430759
Nelson, James Carl. The York Patrol: The Real Story of Alvin York and the Unsung Heroes Who Made Him World War I's Most Famous Soldier. William Morrow, February 23, 2021. https://www.amazon.com/York-Patrol-Unsung-Heroes-Soldier/dp/0062975889.
Perry, John. Sgt. York: His Life, Legend & Legacy: The Remarkable Untold Story of Sgt. Alvin C. York. B&H Books, September 15, 1997 https://www.amazon.com/Sgt-York-Legend-Legacy-Remarkable/dp/0805460748.
Skeyhill, Tom. Sergeant York and the Great War. The Vision Forum, October 23, 1998. https://www.amazon.com/Sergeant-York-Great-War-Courage/dp/1889128465.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
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(00:27):
The link is also in our show notes below.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Pushkin.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
At three in the morning and the pitch dark and
drizzling rain, the men were told that it was time
to march. It was October eighth, nineteen eighteen. Company G
of the three to twenty eighth Infantry of the US
Army had been in France for almost five months, sleeping
in wet and dirty trenches, enduring German bombardments that rattled
(01:09):
their bones and made their ears ring, strapping on masks
to save themselves from the suffocating and burning and blinding
mustard gas, watching as their comrades got picked off by
sniper fire, and now in the blackest part of the night,
Company G was on the move. They marched past bombed
out towns and trees that had been burned to stubbs.
(01:32):
The road was a maze of trucks and horses, slippery
and almost impossible to navigate. Their wet boots hit the
puddled roads, and a kind of drum beat, the clump
of horseshoes keeping time, the boom and flash of German
artillery shells serving as terrifying punctuation. Deep in the mass
(01:54):
of men was Private Alvin York. He had come to
France from a time rural town in Tennessee, leaving the
county of his birth for the very first time at
the age of twenty nine. Now he was here wrestling
with the fact that he was being sent into a
terrible battle, one that would see certain death for some,
(02:17):
if not most, of his company. He was wrestling with
something else as well. He was a man of intense faith.
He had committed himself to the service of God and
the Bible. He believed wholeheartedly and one of the main
tenants of Christianity thou shalt not kill. Sniper bullets zip
(02:40):
past the muddy and exhausted men as they finally reached
their destination, a hill near the French town of Chatel Jahari.
On the far side of the hill, an entrenched German
force weighted with machine guns pointed at the fields below.
When they reached the top of the hill, the men
of company were told at six ten a m. Zero hour,
(03:03):
you'll go over the top down to those fields into
the sights of those waiting German guns. At zero hour,
the men fixed their bayonets and they went over the
hill into the shooting. I'm Jr. Martinez and this is
(03:24):
Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage. The Medal of Honor
is the highest military decoration in the United States, awarded
for gallantry and bravery and combat at the risk of life,
above and beyond the call of duty. Each candidate must
be approved all the way up the chain of command,
from the supervisory officer in the field to the White House.
(03:48):
This show is about those heroes, what they did, what
it meant, and what their stories tell us about the
nature of courage and sacrifice. Happened on that October day,
in that valley, that death trap would give America the
hero that they needed at a moment when thousands of
their brothers, sons, and fathers were coming home in coffins.
(04:14):
That hero would be Alvin York And in the weeks
and months and years that followed, his story would be
polished and shined up till it became a myth for
Alvin York. That myth would become a way to do
good in the world, it would also be a terrible burden.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
It's not your creed or your high, not the color
of your eyes that makes an Americans. It's our freedom, man,
equality over the Constitution, and our scale of rights that
makes in the medical in an almighty fighter.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
That's Alvin York you're hearing. And descended from a long
line of fighters. Both his grandfathers had served the Union
in the Civil War. Keeping the country free ran in
the family.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
Once the man.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Asked tasted that freedom, he'd rather die fighting than to
do without it for himself and his children.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Alvin grew up in Paul Mall, a tiny mountain hamlet
right around where the famous Davy Crockett supposedly wrestled a bear,
many many miles from what anyone would consider an actual town.
Alvin's father was a blacksmith, and his mom raised eleven kids.
(05:47):
They all lived in a little cabin that once had
been a corncrib. School was only open a couple of
months a year, and young Alvin got the equivalent of
a second grade education. When Alvin was in his early twenties,
his father died, which meant Alvin was the head of
the family. He didn't take it well. According to his granddaughter,
(06:08):
Deborah York.
Speaker 5 (06:09):
He became kind of the bread winner, he often said.
The pressures of that led him to drink and become
kind of a hellion.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
He drank, he gambled, He thought anyone and everyone he
could find. He went, as he put it, hogwild. As
he later said, quote I kind of thought I could
whip the world, and more than once set out to
do it. He entered moonshine, drinking contests, He got in
(06:37):
a knife fight over a girl. He shot at things
for no good reason. When he got home from partying,
his mother, Mary would be sitting up waiting for him,
praying for his soul. She pleaded with him to get
right with the Lord, and on January one, nineteen fifteen,
he did. He thought about all the sacrifice, says she
(07:00):
had made for him, and then, as he put it, quote,
I gave up smoking, drinking, cussing, and brawling completely and forever.
By all accounts, Alvin, salvation was a good thing. His timing, however,
was terrible because at that very moment, Europe was gripped
with what would become known as World War One and
(07:23):
Paul mall As In much of Rule America, people didn't
pay a lot of attention to conflict overseas, so when
Alvin was drafted in nineteen seventeen, he was horrified. He
later said, quote, I never had killed nobody, even in
my bad days. I didn't want to begin now. Yet
he was also deeply patriotic. He was in conflict with himself, and.
Speaker 5 (07:48):
He often said it wasn't that he was afraid to
die for his country. He didn't want to kill for
his country. That was what he was grappling with.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Alvin wrote to the draft board asking for really from
service as a conscientious objector. His request was rejected once,
then twice, and then the third and final time.
Speaker 5 (08:10):
His church that he belonged to was too small of
a sect to be recognized by the government, so they
denied as conscientious objector status.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
So in November nineteen seventeen, Alvin Yorke reported for duty.
He was six feet tall, tightly muscled from his years blacksmithing, hunting,
and fighting, and pictures from this time, he has a
full mustache and looks uncannily like the actor Benedict Cumberbatch. Handsome,
if a little intense around the eyes. Alvin joined the
(08:42):
three twenty eighth Infantry, eighty second Division the US Army.
They were known as the All American Division for good reason.
At least to hear Alvin tell it.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
The All American Division was made up of voys from
all over the country. There were boys from the mountains
like me, and boys from the small towns and cities.
There were Southerners, New Yorkers, Middlewesterners, as well as boys
from the cow country in the Pacific coast.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
And there were a.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Man whose folks had been Greek, Italian, Jewish, German, Polish, Swedish,
and I.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Three men stood out to Alvin from the company. There
was Bernard Early, an irishman and bartender who liked to
drink and fight in equal measure. There was Otis Merrithew
twenty one years old, and an orphan who had gone
under an assumed name to enlist. Alvin later described those
two as quote just about the hard boiledest soldiers I
(09:45):
ever knew. There was Murray Savage, another religious man who
became Alvin's closest friend. Friendship, though, was pretty hard for
Alvin to come by. The guys in company g knew
Alvin had tried and fell to be a conscientious objector,
and he was the subject of endless mockery. It made
(10:05):
them doubt whether he'd even be any use to his
country on the battlefield. How could they rely on him
to have their backs if he didn't even want to
shoot the enemy? As Merrithew put it years later, quote
would he run and leave us exposed? Would he fight?
I didn't know, and not knowing bothered me. It was
(10:26):
clear that some of the men really didn't like this
Bible thumping, slow talking rube from Nowhere, Tennessee. The jeering
and skepticism surely got to Alvin, but his days of
brawling and fighting were over, at least where his fellow
soldiers were concerned. The Germans would be another thing entirely.
(11:03):
Bombs fell constantly as the men of the three twenty
eighth marched towards the Argonne Forest in the northeast of France.
The weather was rainy and miserable, but it was the
noise that got to Alvin. Most the airplanes buzzing like
hornets overhead the thunder of artillery. The roads were blocked
by the corpses of horses and men. It looked like
(11:26):
a cyclone had ripped through the woods. Alvin thought this
must be what armageddon is like. By this point, in
early October nineteen eighteen, Alvin had been in the army
for eleven months and in France for almost five. Two
important things happened in the meantime. First, Alvin had his
(11:48):
dark night of the soul. Before his company left for Europe.
He had been granted a ten day furlough to go
home and make peace with his role in the conflict
to come. He went into the woods and prayed. He
believed that quote, no matter what a man is forced
to do, so long as he is right in his
own soul, he remains a righteous man. Ultimately, Alvin convinced
(12:12):
himself that he wasn't going to France to take lives.
They were there to make peace, and that was something
he could live with. He returned to the army. When
he did, the second important thing happened. Alvin's commanding officers
discovered that he was an incredibly good shot. He'd been
(12:34):
hunting his whole life, and back home. Bullets were expensive,
so if you were going to use one, it had
to hit its mark.
Speaker 5 (12:44):
For him, shooting with survival, you didn't eat if you
didn't kill game and put food on the table.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
By June he was put in charge of an automatic
rifle squad, and by September he was promoted to acting corporal.
For a man who believed in that commandment, thal shall
not kill, it was a tense situation. Even though he'd
made his peace, he had a job to do.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Now.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
He and the rest of his division were on their
way to what they hoped would be the decisive battle
of the war. Part of the coordinated drive by the Allies.
Stretching for hundreds of miles, the Americans were attacking between
the Argonne Forest and the Meuse River. It was insanely
difficult terrain, filled with high hills and deep ravines. The
(13:33):
Germans had been entrenched there for four years, stringing barbed
wire and building concrete machine gun nests. The area was
important because it held key supply lines, in particular the
Dcoville Railway. As one of the American commanders put it, quote,
who wins the railway wins the war, and that's how
(13:53):
in the wee hours of the morning of October eighth,
Alvin found himself marching through wet and mucky roads towards
the village of Chatel Shahari and a hill they referred
to as Number two twenty three, setting out to attack
heavily defended territory that none of these Americans had ever
seen before. Their commanders knew the casualty rate would be
(14:15):
painfully high. The climb up Hill two twenty three was
slippery and treacherous, and even in the pitch dark, the
Germans saw them and began firing. The underbrush of the
forest was filled with dead and dying Americans who had
tried and failed to advance over the previous days. Alvin
(14:36):
passed them as he crested the hill. The moment dawn arrived,
the men of Company G would race down the far
slope into the fields below. The Germans had all of
the high ground. The Americans would be out in the open,
no trenches to protect them, enemy snipers and machine guns
ringing them on three sides. There were more gunners hiding
(15:00):
in the knee high grass, a killing floor. There was
meant to be a heavy barrage in advance of the
men to protect them, but at zero hour the barrage
didn't come. The men would have to go forward without it.
They went over the top of Hill two twenty three.
(15:21):
What awaited them, Alvin would later say, was quote a
death trap. A rain of bullets sliced through the first
wave of Americans, and then the second lieutenant, who was
leading Alvin's company, was shot in the leg. He went down,
but just for a moment he stood again and led
the men forward. Then he was shot in the head dead.
(15:46):
As Alvin put it, quote, we were cut down like
the long grass before the mowing machine at home. The
men pressed themselves to the ground, hiding in shell holes,
trying to regroup and survive. Sergeant Harry Parsons assumed command.
He called over at Bernard Early, and above the deafening
noise of the guns, he laid out a plan. Frankly,
(16:10):
it sounded more like a suicide mission. Early would take
seventeen men and divide them into three groups, one led
by Alvin's friend Murray Savage, one by Otis Merrithew, and
one by Alvin. The idea was that each group would
creep up the hill to their left and come behind
the machine guns, catching them by surprise, that is, of course,
(16:33):
if the Americans weren't caught first. Early led the men forward.
The trees and brush on the hill provided a screen
from the sniper's bullets. The seventeen men went silently, single file,
and soon enough they were behind the German line. The
sounds of screaming men in the field started to recede.
(16:55):
They moved cautiously, following a footpath in the woods. Then
they started to hear the drum of machine gun fire
on the ridge above them. Suddenly one of the men
called out Germans. Two enemy soldiers darted from a hiding
place in the brush. The Americans shouted at them to surrender,
and instead they ran. The men took off after them.
(17:19):
They chased them until after a moment the woods opened
up into a clearing, a clearing filled with German soldiers.
It was between eighty and ninety Germans, and they were
eating breakfast. Alvin later remembered loaves of bread and steaks
and jellies laid across the table. They hadn't seen the Americans.
(17:43):
The German men were hanging out smoking, preparing but not
yet ready for a day of battle. Fortunately for the Americans,
they weren't close to their guns. Early told his men
to hide in the brush, and then he gave the
order to fire. The small group of Americans caught the
Germans totally by surprise, and now the enemy was falling
(18:06):
where they stood. Some of the Germans surrendered immediately they
assumed they were surrounded by a far superior force. Others
took off running. Early told his men to hold fire
and approached the officer to the group. Fortunately, the Germans
spoke enough English to follow Early's order. Line up, you're
(18:29):
being taken prisoner. Early and Marrithew organized the Germans into
lines and confiscated whatever weapons they had, But the Germans
saw something the Americans missed a signal from the machine
gunners on top of the ridge. Suddenly, all the Germans
hit the ground, diving for cover, and a spray of
(18:51):
machine gun fire ripped through the Americans. Early was hitting
the arm and sighed at least four times. He was
down for the count but conscious. Marrithew was shot multiple
times in the left arm. In total, three of the
seventeen Americans were wounded and six were dead, including Alvin's
(19:13):
dear friend Murray Savage. He was shot nine times. His
uniform cut to shreds. As Alvin remembered it, quote, thousands
of bullets kicked up the dust all around us. The
air was just plumb full of death. Some of the
American survivors shot back at the machine guns on the ridge.
(19:36):
Others clustered around the prisoners, training their guns on them.
For one thing, it gave them a measure of safety,
and for the other, if those German prisoners decided to
fight back, the Americans would be utterly outnumbered, and they
knew it. Alvin was slightly ahead of the group of
Americans and prisoners, and when the machine gunners mowed down
(19:59):
his friends to the ground, he wasn't focused on what
the rest of the men were doing. All he cared
about was clearing those machine gunners off of that ridge.
He never wanted to kill, but it was a stark choice. Now.
If he didn't shoot the enemy, all of his friends
would die. He moved into a better firing position. He
(20:22):
waited patiently for the enemy shooters on the ridge to
poke their heads up. They had to raise up to
see their targets. Each time one did, Alvin shot him
with dead aid, or, as he later put it, touched
them off He used to tell the story to his.
Speaker 6 (20:40):
Son and said they were spitting bullets all around me,
and said, I'll touch them off. When they stick their
hand up, he'd touch them all one in time.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Alvin remembered it this way quote. That's the way we
shoot wild turkeys at home, you see. We don't want
the front ones to know we're getting the back ones,
and then they keep on coming until we get them all.
Alvin remembers that as he shot, he was shouting for
the Germans to surrender. He was, he said, unwilling to
(21:14):
kill any more than he had to. Finally, the English
speaking German officer blew his whistle, a signal for the
troops to stop fighting. Not a hair on Alvin's head
was harmed. He saw it as a sign that God
was protecting him. What remained of the group from Company
(21:34):
G gathered the Germans up into two lines, with Alvin
at the lead. They marched back to camp. Alvin kept
his pistol trained on the officer. As they went back
to regimental headquarters, they ran into more Germans and they
were added to the line of prisoners too. The wounded
Americans were taken off to the hospital. Alvin kept the
(21:56):
Germans marching. As he entered a divisional prisoner camp, he
was reportedly stopped by the Brigadier General Julian Lindsay, who
said to him, quote, well, Yorke, I hear you captured
the whole damn German Army, to which Alvin responded only
one hundred and thirty two All told, the action had
(22:19):
lasted half an hour at most. That half hour would
define the rest of Alvin's life. For his part in it,
alvign Yorke would be awarded the Medal of Honor, but
he got something else as well, a myth that he
would have to live up to. Alvin York continued fighting
(22:42):
with his regiment in the weeks that followed. He even
got blown into the air by a mortarshell just a
few days later. By the end of the month, nearly
thirty percent of the three to twenty eighth infantry were casualties.
But the mews Argun offensive was as successful as the
Allies had hoped, and on November eleventh, the armistice was signed.
(23:05):
By then, Alvin had been promoted to sergeant, and on
November thirtieth, he received his Distinguished Service Cross, the army's
second highest award for valor. In those days and weeks
after the armistice, Alvin was asked to tell the story
of the heroic actions of October eighth to wrap audiences
of other soldiers. It was the chaplain of the eighty
(23:28):
second Division, who no doubt liked the religious angle, who
first asked Alvin to talk about capturing all those Germans.
The men needed something to inspire them in the aftermath
of so much cartnage. It's unclear when the story became
entirely focused on what Alvin did that October morning. Obviously
(23:49):
the other men from Company G were there too. Early
led the ambush and surrender of the bulk of the Germans.
After Early was shot, Merrithew insisted that he had taken
command and fired at the Germans despite his wounded arm.
The other survivors had kept the prisoners under guard and
fired back at the machine guns two Alvin later stated quote,
(24:13):
I hadn't time or a chance to look around for
the other boys. I didn't know what they were doing.
But as the story was told and retold, the actions
of that day went from being an extraordinary group effort
to an almost miraculous tale of a single soldier The
hero of this story, of course, was Alvin, a man
(24:37):
devoted to peace and kindness, but whose shooting skills were undeniable.
And then, on one incredible morning, the story went, he
jumped into action. While his fellow soldiers were wounded, unable
to shoot, or hiding from the enemy gunfire, he mercilessly
picked off each of the German machine gunners one by one,
(25:00):
silencing more than thirty guns all on his own. He
was a one man army. It was less like a
war story and more like a legend, a lot like
the one the USA liked to tell about its own
involvement in the war. Reluctant, pea sloven, ruthless, and ultimately triumphant,
(25:22):
the commanding general of the eighty second Division, George Duncan,
started telling everyone that alvin only version of the story.
It was picked up by a reporter from the Saturday
Evening Post, a magazine with more than two million readers
back home. Soon enough, Duncan and another general in the division,
(25:43):
perhaps interested in a little reflected glory for themselves, started
pushing for Alvin to receive the Medal of Honor. It
was investigated and approved quickly. On April eleventh, nineteen nineteen,
Alvin was awarded the medal, and the alvin centric version
of events was cemented in military history. Did Alvin believe
(26:08):
this version of the story. Maybe, after all, it reflected
his experience of a moment filled with panic and trauma.
Did Alvin go along with the one man army story
because he wanted to give his commanding officers what they
were clearly looking for? Maybe Alvin wasn't stupid, but he
(26:30):
wasn't sophisticated either, with the second grade education and little
experience of the wider world. And this official story had
to be fact checked and research in order for him
to receive the Medal of honor. Right other members of
his company had signed official statement supporting this narrative. Who
was he to argue against that? Plus the accolades kept
(26:53):
rolling in. He went to Paris for the founding of
the American Legion. It was safe to say, say a
far cry from Paul mal Tennessee.
Speaker 5 (27:04):
He saw electricity, he saw indoor plumbing. He went to
all of the major attractions in Paris, the museums, the cathedrals,
and universities. He just tried to process what he had
been through, but also to realize how he wanted life
to be different when he came home.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
By the time Alvin was due to return to the
US in May of that year, Americans had already heard
every detail of his story from the Saturday Evening Post
and countless newspaper articles that followed. Alvin sailed for New
York on the SS Ohioan. It pulled into doc but
from the ship, Alvin can see a huge throng of
(27:43):
people waiting on shore. It was daunting and he couldn't
figure out why they were there. Here's Alvin's grandson, Gerald Yorke.
Speaker 7 (27:53):
When he came back, one of the guys asking or
You're not going to get off the ship, and he said, well,
I'm waiting for the to die down, and they said, well,
the crowd's here for you.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
We've seen this before with veterans returning from World War One.
Remember Henry Johnson from last season. News of his exploits
also arrived in America before he did, so. Not only
did he have to grapple with what actually happened in
the war, he had to deal with this new found
and not very welcome fame, whether he wanted to or not.
(28:27):
He had to go to work keeping his legend alive
the second he set foot on home soil. As Alvin
made his way down the gang plank, he was greeted
by dignitaries from his home state of Tennessee. There were
reporters and cameramen. There was a ticker tape parade through
the streets of New York City, lavish dinners at the
(28:47):
Waldorf Astoria Hotel, at visit to the Stock Exchange. Alvin
went from there to Washington, where he got a standing
ovation and congress. He was offered money to tell his
story my grandfather.
Speaker 7 (29:02):
When he came back, was offered about two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars in nineteen nineteen, money to endorse various things,
and he said, I did what I had to do
to save my comrade, and so no, the uniform's not
for sake.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Making money off of killing people felt wrong to Alvin,
and he didn't want a life on the road. He
wanted to go home, but the newsreels followed him there too.
Speaker 4 (29:33):
The second elder in this church, Sergeant York, was a
conscientious objector during the early stages of World War One,
but when he got into action, he killed twenty five
German single handed and captured one hundred and thirty two
including a major in three lieutenants, and is credited with
putting thirty five enemy machine guns out of action.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
There's that legend of the one man Army again.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
Nothing backwoods about this backwoods boy, America's number one World
War One hero mess and Sargeant.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
York Alvin was offered a four hundred acre farm, with
the Nashville Rotary Club covering the down payment. It was
meant to be a gift from the grateful state of Tennessee,
though Alvin would end up on the hook for most
of it. He married his sweetheart Gracie in front of
(30:25):
thousands of well wishers, presided over by the Governor of Tennessee.
But once the crowd of gawkers and fans disappeared, Alvin
saw his beloved hometown through changed eyes. It was being
left behind by the world. So we used his influence
to get the State Highway Department to build an actual
road through the hills. They did. Today it's still called
(30:50):
the Alvin c. York Highway. And most of all, he
pushed to educate the local children.
Speaker 5 (30:57):
He went around giving speeches to say, look these mountain
children deserve a chance, and they are economically disadvantaged, geographically isolated,
and they need opportunities like.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
All Americans have. He built the York Institute. By nineteen
twenty eight, it was serving more than seven hundred students, and.
Speaker 5 (31:18):
It was actually a full time school before education was
mandatory in the state, and it still run to this day.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Alvin's fame on the battlefield had allowed him to do good,
It also caused resentment among some of the men who
had been there that famous October morning. Around the ten
year anniversary, a few of the other members of Company
G most notably Bernard Early and Otis Merrithew, began speaking
(31:47):
to the press telling a fuller version of the story,
asking why Alvin hogged the glory for himself. Alvin's answer
was what it had always been. He loved and received
affected the men of his company, both Early and Merrithew
were undeniably brave, and he still had no idea what
(32:08):
anyone other than him had done that day. As he wrote, quote,
there were others in that fight besides me. I'm telling
you that they're entitled to a whole heap of credit.
It isn't for me, of course, to decide how much
credit they should get, but just the same those boys
were heroes. In fact, five of the surviving members of
(32:31):
Company G had already received Silver Stars for their bravery
shortly after the war ended, but Bernard Early, who led
the charge until he was shot, was not one of them. Finally,
in nineteen twenty nine, after some undeniable foot dragging from
the military, Early received a Distinguished Service Cross, more than
(32:54):
a decade after the action and the Argon Forest. By
that time, the weight of the one man Army legend
had caught up to Alvin. He was overextended and chronically
plagued by debt. He owed thousands of dollars on the
farm he'd been gifted. He wasn't good with finances, and anyway,
(33:16):
his church preached against material goods. He mortgaged the farm
to help pay for a fleet of school buses. He
faced foreclosure than bankruptcy. He kept slipping further underwater financially.
His fame had allowed him to give back, but giving
back was taking almost everything he had. In nineteen forty,
(33:56):
Alvin was approached with an offer to cash in on
his Wanings celebrity by selling the movie rights to his story.
The timing was perfect Not only was he broke, but
he was desperate to achieve one of his dreams, building
a Bible school in his community. He also, at that
point had seven kids, most of whom had sort of
(34:19):
hilariously patriotic names. Betsy Ross York, Woodrow Wilson, York. You
get the idea. Here's his son Andrew Jackson, York.
Speaker 6 (34:31):
He decided to want to build a Bible school, which
is about a high a mile from here, build it
on his ow home place where he's born, and the
movie came. He finally graded to let him do it
if they would agree to his terms.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
The movie would be called Sergeant York and it was
produced by Warner Brothers, the film studio run by Polish
born brothers Jack and Harry Warner. The Warners were Jewish
and horrified by the rise of the Nazis in Germany.
I saw the movie as a way to remind Americans
of the importance of fighting for freedom everywhere. And that's
(35:07):
when some of the controversy around Alvin's legend was stirred
up once again. Otis Merrithew wrote to the studio, promising
bad publicity if his heroism wasn't portrayed as equal to Alvin's,
but the film went on as planned. After all, the
movie wasn't really Alvin's story, it was Hollywood's, with invented
(35:29):
scenes and composite characters, and Alvin played by Gary Cooper
in a performance that would win him an Oscar.
Speaker 8 (35:37):
You see, I believe in the Bible, and I'm believing
that this year life we're living, there's something the Lord
does give us, and we got to be a living
that the best we can. And I'm figuring that killing
other folks ain't no part of what he was intending
for us to be a doing here.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
The film was a blockbuster head when it was released
in the fall of nineteen forty one. It worked just
as planned, a heartwarming piece of propaganda for a country
that would soon find itself at war. It even helped
fuel enlistments. But once again, it all came at a
big cost to Alvin. He was in the news again.
(36:24):
In one radio interview, he said, quote, although I was
credited with wiping out the whole battalion of thirty five
machine guns, I was only one of seventeen who did
the job. I want the whole world to know that
without their cool courage, none of US would be alive today.
But let's be honest. People don't love a complicated story.
(36:48):
They prefer a legend. He couldn't stop it any more
than he could have stood in that clearing in the
forest and refused to return fire. Elvin believed that the
US was right to fight against fascism. In fact, he
tried to enlist.
Speaker 5 (37:05):
I was too fat and too old, too out of shape.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
But they made him an honorary.
Speaker 5 (37:09):
Colonel and let him go across the country selling war
bonds and actually giving speeches to increase morale for the troops.
Going back across.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
He traveled the country, supporting the war effort and raising
money for the Red Cross. He didn't ask for or
receive any payment, and for the second time in his life,
he tried to reconcile his love of the Bible with
his patriotism.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
It's not an easy thing for a man to make
up his mind to go to war.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
This is really him, not Gary Cooper playing him the man,
not the myth.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
I well remember the doubt and confusion I felt about
going to the last one. War means more than uniforms,
marching and band music. It means facing death and what's
almost worse, it means carrying death and suffering to other us.
(38:06):
Thou shalt not kill is written in the Bible. Here
in America, we've always tried to follow that commandment. Our
enemies have denied us the right to follow it.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
His financial situation was in shambles, but his north star
remained steady, focused on serving the people of his little
mountain community.
Speaker 7 (38:30):
He was asked later in life, what do you want
to be remembered for your actions? In France being awarded
the Medal of Honor, meeting the President, and he said,
I want my legacy to be that I brought education
to rural Tennessee.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
How do you live with an idealized version of yourself
that you didn't have a hand in creating. Perhaps Alvin
understood has myth for what it was, something that didn't
belong to him, Really, something bigger, more abstract, created for
public consumption. There were good things about it. Just go
(39:12):
to Paul Mall, Tennessee for proof of that. It inspired
countless Americans to go back to Europe, this time to
fight the Nazis. It gave comfort to grieving families in
the wake of World War One, A shining example of
the fact that our men did great things on the battlefield.
It was a life's work to sustain a myth, and
(39:35):
it had its cost. But just like with his military service,
Alvin was clear eyed about the trade offs and willing
to make them. Alvin passed away in nineteen sixty four
at the age of seventy six after a long illness.
Otis Merrithew finally received a Silver Star in nineteen sixty five,
(39:59):
a year after Alvin's death. At his ceremony, he admitted
that Alvin was quote a hero. What precisely happened on
that battlefield in nineteen eighteen is something we'll never know
for sure. One thing is certain. Alvin Yorke fought valiantly
for his country. He fought for the people of his community.
(40:23):
He fought in the way his faith had taught him
to for peace.
Speaker 3 (40:30):
Someday peace will return to the world. But before peace
is won, all of us must work, confined to our
last downce of.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
Strength, Medal of Honor.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Stories of Courage is written by Meredith Rollins and produced
by Meredith Rollins, Jess Shane, and Suzanne Gabber. Our editor
is Ben Nadav Hoffrey. Sound design and additional music by
Jake Gorsky. Our executive producer is Constanza Gallardo. Fact checking
by Arthur Gomperts. Original music by Eric Phillips. Special thanks
(41:26):
to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, Tennessee State Parks.
Thomas Wilmer, host of the radio show Journeys of Discovery
with Tom Wilmer and CASEYBX, the public radio station servicing
sunduy Sobispo, California. If you want to learn more about
this story, take a look at our show notes, where
we have some of the resources we use to put
(41:47):
together this episode. We also want to hear from you,
so send us your personal story of courage or highlight
someone else's bravery. Email us at Medal of Honor at
Pushkin dot f M. I'm your host, j R. Martinez
Hey everyone, We've put together a survey for listeners of
Medal of Honor and we want to hear from you.
Tell us what you love about the show, what we
can improve on, or stories you think we've missed. We're
committed to making this show even better and you can
help to take the survey. Visit bit dot lee slash
MH survey. That's bit dot l y slash MH survey.
(00:27):
The link is also in our show notes below.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Pushkin.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
At three in the morning and the pitch dark and
drizzling rain, the men were told that it was time
to march. It was October eighth, nineteen eighteen. Company G
of the three to twenty eighth Infantry of the US
Army had been in France for almost five months, sleeping
in wet and dirty trenches, enduring German bombardments that rattled
(01:09):
their bones and made their ears ring, strapping on masks
to save themselves from the suffocating and burning and blinding
mustard gas, watching as their comrades got picked off by
sniper fire, and now in the blackest part of the night,
Company G was on the move. They marched past bombed
out towns and trees that had been burned to stubbs.
(01:32):
The road was a maze of trucks and horses, slippery
and almost impossible to navigate. Their wet boots hit the
puddled roads, and a kind of drum beat, the clump
of horseshoes keeping time, the boom and flash of German
artillery shells serving as terrifying punctuation. Deep in the mass
(01:54):
of men was Private Alvin York. He had come to
France from a time rural town in Tennessee, leaving the
county of his birth for the very first time at
the age of twenty nine. Now he was here wrestling
with the fact that he was being sent into a
terrible battle, one that would see certain death for some,
(02:17):
if not most, of his company. He was wrestling with
something else as well. He was a man of intense faith.
He had committed himself to the service of God and
the Bible. He believed wholeheartedly and one of the main
tenants of Christianity thou shalt not kill. Sniper bullets zip
(02:40):
past the muddy and exhausted men as they finally reached
their destination, a hill near the French town of Chatel Jahari.
On the far side of the hill, an entrenched German
force weighted with machine guns pointed at the fields below.
When they reached the top of the hill, the men
of company were told at six ten a m. Zero hour,
(03:03):
you'll go over the top down to those fields into
the sights of those waiting German guns. At zero hour,
the men fixed their bayonets and they went over the
hill into the shooting. I'm Jr. Martinez and this is
(03:24):
Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage. The Medal of Honor
is the highest military decoration in the United States, awarded
for gallantry and bravery and combat at the risk of life,
above and beyond the call of duty. Each candidate must
be approved all the way up the chain of command,
from the supervisory officer in the field to the White House.
(03:48):
This show is about those heroes, what they did, what
it meant, and what their stories tell us about the
nature of courage and sacrifice. Happened on that October day,
in that valley, that death trap would give America the
hero that they needed at a moment when thousands of
their brothers, sons, and fathers were coming home in coffins.
(04:14):
That hero would be Alvin York And in the weeks
and months and years that followed, his story would be
polished and shined up till it became a myth for
Alvin York. That myth would become a way to do
good in the world, it would also be a terrible burden.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
It's not your creed or your high, not the color
of your eyes that makes an Americans. It's our freedom, man,
equality over the Constitution, and our scale of rights that
makes in the medical in an almighty fighter.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
That's Alvin York you're hearing. And descended from a long
line of fighters. Both his grandfathers had served the Union
in the Civil War. Keeping the country free ran in
the family.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
Once the man.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Asked tasted that freedom, he'd rather die fighting than to
do without it for himself and his children.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Alvin grew up in Paul Mall, a tiny mountain hamlet
right around where the famous Davy Crockett supposedly wrestled a bear,
many many miles from what anyone would consider an actual town.
Alvin's father was a blacksmith, and his mom raised eleven kids.
(05:47):
They all lived in a little cabin that once had
been a corncrib. School was only open a couple of
months a year, and young Alvin got the equivalent of
a second grade education. When Alvin was in his early twenties,
his father died, which meant Alvin was the head of
the family. He didn't take it well. According to his granddaughter,
(06:08):
Deborah York.
Speaker 5 (06:09):
He became kind of the bread winner, he often said.
The pressures of that led him to drink and become
kind of a hellion.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
He drank, he gambled, He thought anyone and everyone he
could find. He went, as he put it, hogwild. As
he later said, quote I kind of thought I could
whip the world, and more than once set out to
do it. He entered moonshine, drinking contests, He got in
(06:37):
a knife fight over a girl. He shot at things
for no good reason. When he got home from partying,
his mother, Mary would be sitting up waiting for him,
praying for his soul. She pleaded with him to get
right with the Lord, and on January one, nineteen fifteen,
he did. He thought about all the sacrifice, says she
(07:00):
had made for him, and then, as he put it, quote,
I gave up smoking, drinking, cussing, and brawling completely and forever.
By all accounts, Alvin, salvation was a good thing. His timing, however,
was terrible because at that very moment, Europe was gripped
with what would become known as World War One and
(07:23):
Paul mall As In much of Rule America, people didn't
pay a lot of attention to conflict overseas, so when
Alvin was drafted in nineteen seventeen, he was horrified. He
later said, quote, I never had killed nobody, even in
my bad days. I didn't want to begin now. Yet
he was also deeply patriotic. He was in conflict with himself, and.
Speaker 5 (07:48):
He often said it wasn't that he was afraid to
die for his country. He didn't want to kill for
his country. That was what he was grappling with.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Alvin wrote to the draft board asking for really from
service as a conscientious objector. His request was rejected once,
then twice, and then the third and final time.
Speaker 5 (08:10):
His church that he belonged to was too small of
a sect to be recognized by the government, so they
denied as conscientious objector status.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
So in November nineteen seventeen, Alvin Yorke reported for duty.
He was six feet tall, tightly muscled from his years blacksmithing, hunting,
and fighting, and pictures from this time, he has a
full mustache and looks uncannily like the actor Benedict Cumberbatch. Handsome,
if a little intense around the eyes. Alvin joined the
(08:42):
three twenty eighth Infantry, eighty second Division the US Army.
They were known as the All American Division for good reason.
At least to hear Alvin tell it.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
The All American Division was made up of voys from
all over the country. There were boys from the mountains
like me, and boys from the small towns and cities.
There were Southerners, New Yorkers, Middlewesterners, as well as boys
from the cow country in the Pacific coast.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
And there were a.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Man whose folks had been Greek, Italian, Jewish, German, Polish, Swedish,
and I.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Three men stood out to Alvin from the company. There
was Bernard Early, an irishman and bartender who liked to
drink and fight in equal measure. There was Otis Merrithew
twenty one years old, and an orphan who had gone
under an assumed name to enlist. Alvin later described those
two as quote just about the hard boiledest soldiers I
(09:45):
ever knew. There was Murray Savage, another religious man who
became Alvin's closest friend. Friendship, though, was pretty hard for
Alvin to come by. The guys in company g knew
Alvin had tried and fell to be a conscientious objector,
and he was the subject of endless mockery. It made
(10:05):
them doubt whether he'd even be any use to his
country on the battlefield. How could they rely on him
to have their backs if he didn't even want to
shoot the enemy? As Merrithew put it years later, quote
would he run and leave us exposed? Would he fight?
I didn't know, and not knowing bothered me. It was
(10:26):
clear that some of the men really didn't like this
Bible thumping, slow talking rube from Nowhere, Tennessee. The jeering
and skepticism surely got to Alvin, but his days of
brawling and fighting were over, at least where his fellow
soldiers were concerned. The Germans would be another thing entirely.
(11:03):
Bombs fell constantly as the men of the three twenty
eighth marched towards the Argonne Forest in the northeast of France.
The weather was rainy and miserable, but it was the
noise that got to Alvin. Most the airplanes buzzing like
hornets overhead the thunder of artillery. The roads were blocked
by the corpses of horses and men. It looked like
(11:26):
a cyclone had ripped through the woods. Alvin thought this
must be what armageddon is like. By this point, in
early October nineteen eighteen, Alvin had been in the army
for eleven months and in France for almost five. Two
important things happened in the meantime. First, Alvin had his
(11:48):
dark night of the soul. Before his company left for Europe.
He had been granted a ten day furlough to go
home and make peace with his role in the conflict
to come. He went into the woods and prayed. He
believed that quote, no matter what a man is forced
to do, so long as he is right in his
own soul, he remains a righteous man. Ultimately, Alvin convinced
(12:12):
himself that he wasn't going to France to take lives.
They were there to make peace, and that was something
he could live with. He returned to the army. When
he did, the second important thing happened. Alvin's commanding officers
discovered that he was an incredibly good shot. He'd been
(12:34):
hunting his whole life, and back home. Bullets were expensive,
so if you were going to use one, it had
to hit its mark.
Speaker 5 (12:44):
For him, shooting with survival, you didn't eat if you
didn't kill game and put food on the table.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
By June he was put in charge of an automatic
rifle squad, and by September he was promoted to acting corporal.
For a man who believed in that commandment, thal shall
not kill, it was a tense situation. Even though he'd
made his peace, he had a job to do.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Now.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
He and the rest of his division were on their
way to what they hoped would be the decisive battle
of the war. Part of the coordinated drive by the Allies.
Stretching for hundreds of miles, the Americans were attacking between
the Argonne Forest and the Meuse River. It was insanely
difficult terrain, filled with high hills and deep ravines. The
(13:33):
Germans had been entrenched there for four years, stringing barbed
wire and building concrete machine gun nests. The area was
important because it held key supply lines, in particular the
Dcoville Railway. As one of the American commanders put it, quote,
who wins the railway wins the war, and that's how
(13:53):
in the wee hours of the morning of October eighth,
Alvin found himself marching through wet and mucky roads towards
the village of Chatel Shahari and a hill they referred
to as Number two twenty three, setting out to attack
heavily defended territory that none of these Americans had ever
seen before. Their commanders knew the casualty rate would be
(14:15):
painfully high. The climb up Hill two twenty three was
slippery and treacherous, and even in the pitch dark, the
Germans saw them and began firing. The underbrush of the
forest was filled with dead and dying Americans who had
tried and failed to advance over the previous days. Alvin
(14:36):
passed them as he crested the hill. The moment dawn arrived,
the men of Company G would race down the far
slope into the fields below. The Germans had all of
the high ground. The Americans would be out in the open,
no trenches to protect them, enemy snipers and machine guns
ringing them on three sides. There were more gunners hiding
(15:00):
in the knee high grass, a killing floor. There was
meant to be a heavy barrage in advance of the
men to protect them, but at zero hour the barrage
didn't come. The men would have to go forward without it.
They went over the top of Hill two twenty three.
(15:21):
What awaited them, Alvin would later say, was quote a
death trap. A rain of bullets sliced through the first
wave of Americans, and then the second lieutenant, who was
leading Alvin's company, was shot in the leg. He went down,
but just for a moment he stood again and led
the men forward. Then he was shot in the head dead.
(15:46):
As Alvin put it, quote, we were cut down like
the long grass before the mowing machine at home. The
men pressed themselves to the ground, hiding in shell holes,
trying to regroup and survive. Sergeant Harry Parsons assumed command.
He called over at Bernard Early, and above the deafening
noise of the guns, he laid out a plan. Frankly,
(16:10):
it sounded more like a suicide mission. Early would take
seventeen men and divide them into three groups, one led
by Alvin's friend Murray Savage, one by Otis Merrithew, and
one by Alvin. The idea was that each group would
creep up the hill to their left and come behind
the machine guns, catching them by surprise, that is, of course,
(16:33):
if the Americans weren't caught first. Early led the men forward.
The trees and brush on the hill provided a screen
from the sniper's bullets. The seventeen men went silently, single file,
and soon enough they were behind the German line. The
sounds of screaming men in the field started to recede.
(16:55):
They moved cautiously, following a footpath in the woods. Then
they started to hear the drum of machine gun fire
on the ridge above them. Suddenly one of the men
called out Germans. Two enemy soldiers darted from a hiding
place in the brush. The Americans shouted at them to surrender,
and instead they ran. The men took off after them.
(17:19):
They chased them until after a moment the woods opened
up into a clearing, a clearing filled with German soldiers.
It was between eighty and ninety Germans, and they were
eating breakfast. Alvin later remembered loaves of bread and steaks
and jellies laid across the table. They hadn't seen the Americans.
(17:43):
The German men were hanging out smoking, preparing but not
yet ready for a day of battle. Fortunately for the Americans,
they weren't close to their guns. Early told his men
to hide in the brush, and then he gave the
order to fire. The small group of Americans caught the
Germans totally by surprise, and now the enemy was falling
(18:06):
where they stood. Some of the Germans surrendered immediately they
assumed they were surrounded by a far superior force. Others
took off running. Early told his men to hold fire
and approached the officer to the group. Fortunately, the Germans
spoke enough English to follow Early's order. Line up, you're
(18:29):
being taken prisoner. Early and Marrithew organized the Germans into
lines and confiscated whatever weapons they had, But the Germans
saw something the Americans missed a signal from the machine
gunners on top of the ridge. Suddenly, all the Germans
hit the ground, diving for cover, and a spray of
(18:51):
machine gun fire ripped through the Americans. Early was hitting
the arm and sighed at least four times. He was
down for the count but conscious. Marrithew was shot multiple
times in the left arm. In total, three of the
seventeen Americans were wounded and six were dead, including Alvin's
(19:13):
dear friend Murray Savage. He was shot nine times. His
uniform cut to shreds. As Alvin remembered it, quote, thousands
of bullets kicked up the dust all around us. The
air was just plumb full of death. Some of the
American survivors shot back at the machine guns on the ridge.
(19:36):
Others clustered around the prisoners, training their guns on them.
For one thing, it gave them a measure of safety,
and for the other, if those German prisoners decided to
fight back, the Americans would be utterly outnumbered, and they
knew it. Alvin was slightly ahead of the group of
Americans and prisoners, and when the machine gunners mowed down
(19:59):
his friends to the ground, he wasn't focused on what
the rest of the men were doing. All he cared
about was clearing those machine gunners off of that ridge.
He never wanted to kill, but it was a stark choice. Now.
If he didn't shoot the enemy, all of his friends
would die. He moved into a better firing position. He
(20:22):
waited patiently for the enemy shooters on the ridge to
poke their heads up. They had to raise up to
see their targets. Each time one did, Alvin shot him
with dead aid, or, as he later put it, touched
them off He used to tell the story to his.
Speaker 6 (20:40):
Son and said they were spitting bullets all around me,
and said, I'll touch them off. When they stick their
hand up, he'd touch them all one in time.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Alvin remembered it this way quote. That's the way we
shoot wild turkeys at home, you see. We don't want
the front ones to know we're getting the back ones,
and then they keep on coming until we get them all.
Alvin remembers that as he shot, he was shouting for
the Germans to surrender. He was, he said, unwilling to
(21:14):
kill any more than he had to. Finally, the English
speaking German officer blew his whistle, a signal for the
troops to stop fighting. Not a hair on Alvin's head
was harmed. He saw it as a sign that God
was protecting him. What remained of the group from Company
(21:34):
G gathered the Germans up into two lines, with Alvin
at the lead. They marched back to camp. Alvin kept
his pistol trained on the officer. As they went back
to regimental headquarters, they ran into more Germans and they
were added to the line of prisoners too. The wounded
Americans were taken off to the hospital. Alvin kept the
(21:56):
Germans marching. As he entered a divisional prisoner camp, he
was reportedly stopped by the Brigadier General Julian Lindsay, who
said to him, quote, well, Yorke, I hear you captured
the whole damn German Army, to which Alvin responded only
one hundred and thirty two All told, the action had
(22:19):
lasted half an hour at most. That half hour would
define the rest of Alvin's life. For his part in it,
alvign Yorke would be awarded the Medal of Honor, but
he got something else as well, a myth that he
would have to live up to. Alvin York continued fighting
(22:42):
with his regiment in the weeks that followed. He even
got blown into the air by a mortarshell just a
few days later. By the end of the month, nearly
thirty percent of the three to twenty eighth infantry were casualties.
But the mews Argun offensive was as successful as the
Allies had hoped, and on November eleventh, the armistice was signed.
(23:05):
By then, Alvin had been promoted to sergeant, and on
November thirtieth, he received his Distinguished Service Cross, the army's
second highest award for valor. In those days and weeks
after the armistice, Alvin was asked to tell the story
of the heroic actions of October eighth to wrap audiences
of other soldiers. It was the chaplain of the eighty
(23:28):
second Division, who no doubt liked the religious angle, who
first asked Alvin to talk about capturing all those Germans.
The men needed something to inspire them in the aftermath
of so much cartnage. It's unclear when the story became
entirely focused on what Alvin did that October morning. Obviously
(23:49):
the other men from Company G were there too. Early
led the ambush and surrender of the bulk of the Germans.
After Early was shot, Merrithew insisted that he had taken
command and fired at the Germans despite his wounded arm.
The other survivors had kept the prisoners under guard and
fired back at the machine guns two Alvin later stated quote,
(24:13):
I hadn't time or a chance to look around for
the other boys. I didn't know what they were doing.
But as the story was told and retold, the actions
of that day went from being an extraordinary group effort
to an almost miraculous tale of a single soldier The
hero of this story, of course, was Alvin, a man
(24:37):
devoted to peace and kindness, but whose shooting skills were undeniable.
And then, on one incredible morning, the story went, he
jumped into action. While his fellow soldiers were wounded, unable
to shoot, or hiding from the enemy gunfire, he mercilessly
picked off each of the German machine gunners one by one,
(25:00):
silencing more than thirty guns all on his own. He
was a one man army. It was less like a
war story and more like a legend, a lot like
the one the USA liked to tell about its own
involvement in the war. Reluctant, pea sloven, ruthless, and ultimately triumphant,
(25:22):
the commanding general of the eighty second Division, George Duncan,
started telling everyone that alvin only version of the story.
It was picked up by a reporter from the Saturday
Evening Post, a magazine with more than two million readers
back home. Soon enough, Duncan and another general in the division,
(25:43):
perhaps interested in a little reflected glory for themselves, started
pushing for Alvin to receive the Medal of Honor. It
was investigated and approved quickly. On April eleventh, nineteen nineteen,
Alvin was awarded the medal, and the alvin centric version
of events was cemented in military history. Did Alvin believe
(26:08):
this version of the story. Maybe, after all, it reflected
his experience of a moment filled with panic and trauma.
Did Alvin go along with the one man army story
because he wanted to give his commanding officers what they
were clearly looking for? Maybe Alvin wasn't stupid, but he
(26:30):
wasn't sophisticated either, with the second grade education and little
experience of the wider world. And this official story had
to be fact checked and research in order for him
to receive the Medal of honor. Right other members of
his company had signed official statement supporting this narrative. Who
was he to argue against that? Plus the accolades kept
(26:53):
rolling in. He went to Paris for the founding of
the American Legion. It was safe to say, say a
far cry from Paul mal Tennessee.
Speaker 5 (27:04):
He saw electricity, he saw indoor plumbing. He went to
all of the major attractions in Paris, the museums, the cathedrals,
and universities. He just tried to process what he had
been through, but also to realize how he wanted life
to be different when he came home.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
By the time Alvin was due to return to the
US in May of that year, Americans had already heard
every detail of his story from the Saturday Evening Post
and countless newspaper articles that followed. Alvin sailed for New
York on the SS Ohioan. It pulled into doc but
from the ship, Alvin can see a huge throng of
(27:43):
people waiting on shore. It was daunting and he couldn't
figure out why they were there. Here's Alvin's grandson, Gerald Yorke.
Speaker 7 (27:53):
When he came back, one of the guys asking or
You're not going to get off the ship, and he said, well,
I'm waiting for the to die down, and they said, well,
the crowd's here for you.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
We've seen this before with veterans returning from World War One.
Remember Henry Johnson from last season. News of his exploits
also arrived in America before he did, so. Not only
did he have to grapple with what actually happened in
the war, he had to deal with this new found
and not very welcome fame, whether he wanted to or not.
(28:27):
He had to go to work keeping his legend alive
the second he set foot on home soil. As Alvin
made his way down the gang plank, he was greeted
by dignitaries from his home state of Tennessee. There were
reporters and cameramen. There was a ticker tape parade through
the streets of New York City, lavish dinners at the
(28:47):
Waldorf Astoria Hotel, at visit to the Stock Exchange. Alvin
went from there to Washington, where he got a standing
ovation and congress. He was offered money to tell his
story my grandfather.
Speaker 7 (29:02):
When he came back, was offered about two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars in nineteen nineteen, money to endorse various things,
and he said, I did what I had to do
to save my comrade, and so no, the uniform's not
for sake.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Making money off of killing people felt wrong to Alvin,
and he didn't want a life on the road. He
wanted to go home, but the newsreels followed him there too.
Speaker 4 (29:33):
The second elder in this church, Sergeant York, was a
conscientious objector during the early stages of World War One,
but when he got into action, he killed twenty five
German single handed and captured one hundred and thirty two
including a major in three lieutenants, and is credited with
putting thirty five enemy machine guns out of action.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
There's that legend of the one man Army again.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
Nothing backwoods about this backwoods boy, America's number one World
War One hero mess and Sargeant.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
York Alvin was offered a four hundred acre farm, with
the Nashville Rotary Club covering the down payment. It was
meant to be a gift from the grateful state of Tennessee,
though Alvin would end up on the hook for most
of it. He married his sweetheart Gracie in front of
(30:25):
thousands of well wishers, presided over by the Governor of Tennessee.
But once the crowd of gawkers and fans disappeared, Alvin
saw his beloved hometown through changed eyes. It was being
left behind by the world. So we used his influence
to get the State Highway Department to build an actual
road through the hills. They did. Today it's still called
(30:50):
the Alvin c. York Highway. And most of all, he
pushed to educate the local children.
Speaker 5 (30:57):
He went around giving speeches to say, look these mountain
children deserve a chance, and they are economically disadvantaged, geographically isolated,
and they need opportunities like.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
All Americans have. He built the York Institute. By nineteen
twenty eight, it was serving more than seven hundred students, and.
Speaker 5 (31:18):
It was actually a full time school before education was
mandatory in the state, and it still run to this day.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Alvin's fame on the battlefield had allowed him to do good,
It also caused resentment among some of the men who
had been there that famous October morning. Around the ten
year anniversary, a few of the other members of Company
G most notably Bernard Early and Otis Merrithew, began speaking
(31:47):
to the press telling a fuller version of the story,
asking why Alvin hogged the glory for himself. Alvin's answer
was what it had always been. He loved and received
affected the men of his company, both Early and Merrithew
were undeniably brave, and he still had no idea what
(32:08):
anyone other than him had done that day. As he wrote, quote,
there were others in that fight besides me. I'm telling
you that they're entitled to a whole heap of credit.
It isn't for me, of course, to decide how much
credit they should get, but just the same those boys
were heroes. In fact, five of the surviving members of
(32:31):
Company G had already received Silver Stars for their bravery
shortly after the war ended, but Bernard Early, who led
the charge until he was shot, was not one of them. Finally,
in nineteen twenty nine, after some undeniable foot dragging from
the military, Early received a Distinguished Service Cross, more than
(32:54):
a decade after the action and the Argon Forest. By
that time, the weight of the one man Army legend
had caught up to Alvin. He was overextended and chronically
plagued by debt. He owed thousands of dollars on the
farm he'd been gifted. He wasn't good with finances, and anyway,
(33:16):
his church preached against material goods. He mortgaged the farm
to help pay for a fleet of school buses. He
faced foreclosure than bankruptcy. He kept slipping further underwater financially.
His fame had allowed him to give back, but giving
back was taking almost everything he had. In nineteen forty,
(33:56):
Alvin was approached with an offer to cash in on
his Wanings celebrity by selling the movie rights to his story.
The timing was perfect Not only was he broke, but
he was desperate to achieve one of his dreams, building
a Bible school in his community. He also, at that
point had seven kids, most of whom had sort of
(34:19):
hilariously patriotic names. Betsy Ross York, Woodrow Wilson, York. You
get the idea. Here's his son Andrew Jackson, York.
Speaker 6 (34:31):
He decided to want to build a Bible school, which
is about a high a mile from here, build it
on his ow home place where he's born, and the
movie came. He finally graded to let him do it
if they would agree to his terms.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
The movie would be called Sergeant York and it was
produced by Warner Brothers, the film studio run by Polish
born brothers Jack and Harry Warner. The Warners were Jewish
and horrified by the rise of the Nazis in Germany.
I saw the movie as a way to remind Americans
of the importance of fighting for freedom everywhere. And that's
(35:07):
when some of the controversy around Alvin's legend was stirred
up once again. Otis Merrithew wrote to the studio, promising
bad publicity if his heroism wasn't portrayed as equal to Alvin's,
but the film went on as planned. After all, the
movie wasn't really Alvin's story, it was Hollywood's, with invented
(35:29):
scenes and composite characters, and Alvin played by Gary Cooper
in a performance that would win him an Oscar.
Speaker 8 (35:37):
You see, I believe in the Bible, and I'm believing
that this year life we're living, there's something the Lord
does give us, and we got to be a living
that the best we can. And I'm figuring that killing
other folks ain't no part of what he was intending
for us to be a doing here.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
The film was a blockbuster head when it was released
in the fall of nineteen forty one. It worked just
as planned, a heartwarming piece of propaganda for a country
that would soon find itself at war. It even helped
fuel enlistments. But once again, it all came at a
big cost to Alvin. He was in the news again.
(36:24):
In one radio interview, he said, quote, although I was
credited with wiping out the whole battalion of thirty five
machine guns, I was only one of seventeen who did
the job. I want the whole world to know that
without their cool courage, none of US would be alive today.
But let's be honest. People don't love a complicated story.
(36:48):
They prefer a legend. He couldn't stop it any more
than he could have stood in that clearing in the
forest and refused to return fire. Elvin believed that the
US was right to fight against fascism. In fact, he
tried to enlist.
Speaker 5 (37:05):
I was too fat and too old, too out of shape.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
But they made him an honorary.
Speaker 5 (37:09):
Colonel and let him go across the country selling war
bonds and actually giving speeches to increase morale for the troops.
Going back across.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
He traveled the country, supporting the war effort and raising
money for the Red Cross. He didn't ask for or
receive any payment, and for the second time in his life,
he tried to reconcile his love of the Bible with
his patriotism.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
It's not an easy thing for a man to make
up his mind to go to war.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
This is really him, not Gary Cooper playing him the man,
not the myth.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
I well remember the doubt and confusion I felt about
going to the last one. War means more than uniforms,
marching and band music. It means facing death and what's
almost worse, it means carrying death and suffering to other us.
(38:06):
Thou shalt not kill is written in the Bible. Here
in America, we've always tried to follow that commandment. Our
enemies have denied us the right to follow it.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
His financial situation was in shambles, but his north star
remained steady, focused on serving the people of his little
mountain community.
Speaker 7 (38:30):
He was asked later in life, what do you want
to be remembered for your actions? In France being awarded
the Medal of Honor, meeting the President, and he said,
I want my legacy to be that I brought education
to rural Tennessee.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
How do you live with an idealized version of yourself
that you didn't have a hand in creating. Perhaps Alvin
understood has myth for what it was, something that didn't
belong to him, Really, something bigger, more abstract, created for
public consumption. There were good things about it. Just go
(39:12):
to Paul Mall, Tennessee for proof of that. It inspired
countless Americans to go back to Europe, this time to
fight the Nazis. It gave comfort to grieving families in
the wake of World War One, A shining example of
the fact that our men did great things on the battlefield.
It was a life's work to sustain a myth, and
(39:35):
it had its cost. But just like with his military service,
Alvin was clear eyed about the trade offs and willing
to make them. Alvin passed away in nineteen sixty four
at the age of seventy six after a long illness.
Otis Merrithew finally received a Silver Star in nineteen sixty five,
(39:59):
a year after Alvin's death. At his ceremony, he admitted
that Alvin was quote a hero. What precisely happened on
that battlefield in nineteen eighteen is something we'll never know
for sure. One thing is certain. Alvin Yorke fought valiantly
for his country. He fought for the people of his community.
(40:23):
He fought in the way his faith had taught him
to for peace.
Speaker 3 (40:30):
Someday peace will return to the world. But before peace
is won, all of us must work, confined to our
last downce of.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
Strength, Medal of Honor.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Stories of Courage is written by Meredith Rollins and produced
by Meredith Rollins, Jess Shane, and Suzanne Gabber. Our editor
is Ben Nadav Hoffrey. Sound design and additional music by
Jake Gorsky. Our executive producer is Constanza Gallardo. Fact checking
by Arthur Gomperts. Original music by Eric Phillips. Special thanks
(41:26):
to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, Tennessee State Parks.
Thomas Wilmer, host of the radio show Journeys of Discovery
with Tom Wilmer and CASEYBX, the public radio station servicing
sunduy Sobispo, California. If you want to learn more about
this story, take a look at our show notes, where
we have some of the resources we use to put
(41:47):
together this episode. We also want to hear from you,
so send us your personal story of courage or highlight
someone else's bravery. Email us at Medal of Honor at
Pushkin dot f M. I'm your host, j R. Martinez
Host
Malcolm Gladwell
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