One Day's Work

In the life of Alvin Cullum York lay all of the authentic folk-hero elements that have since become cliches.

As a strapping (6 ft. 2 in., 200 Ibs.), likker-lovin' youth, York was a Saturday night hell-raiser around Tennessee's tiny Cumberland Mountains towns--and a phenomenal shot with his long-barreled rifle. Yet at the mere sight of a church-going girl, Gracie Williams, whom he wanted to marry, he put away his jug, joined the Possum Trot Church choir, turned piously religious. Above all, he took to heart the Sixth Commandment: THOU SHALT NOT KILL.

In 1917, York twice appealed for exemption from the World War I draft as a conscientious objector. Twice denied, he trained reluctantly in the Army, faced a religious dilemma when ordered overseas for combat duty. With his Bible in hand, he climbed into the Cumberlands on furlough, pondered the problem for two days, came down to announce: "I'm goin'." That decision, as it turned out, led to his becoming the most celebrated G.I. in America's military history. Of such legendary stuff was York made that Gary Cooper easily parlayed an unusually accurate film biography into a 1941 Academy Award-winning role.

York's only complaint about the film was over its portrayal of how he "got religion." According to Hollywood, he was knocked off a mule by a bolt of lightning. But York explained it differently: "That weren't the rightdown facts of it. You see, I had met Miss Gracie. Miss Gracie said that she wouldn't let me come a-courting until I'd quit my mean drinking, fighting and card flipping. So you see I was struck down by the power of love and the Great God Almighty, all together. A bolt of lightning was the nearest to such a thing that Hollywood could think up."

Mud & Blood. Despite all of the hillbilly trappings, the essence of Alvin York's life was compressed into four hours of Oct. 8, 1918 in the mud and blood of the Argonne Forest. In the war's last big push, York was a corporal in Company G of the 82nd Division's 328th Infantry Regiment, perched atop Hill 223 on the front line at Chatel-Chehery. At 6:10 a.m., G Company was ordered to advance two miles and to seize a German-held rail point. Hidden in woods overlooking a valley, a German machine-gun battalion opened up on the company, killed most of its forward ranks.

York was part of a 17-man detail ordered to seek out the machine guns. The detail pursued two Germans into thick underbrush, suddenly burst into an open space--which happened to be occupied as a battalion headquarters of the enemy. Startled while lounging around after their breakfast, most of the Germans started to surrender. Then German machine guns started raking the area from only 30 yds. away. Of the Americans, only York and seven privates survived. While the seven privates scrambled into the brush, York, still surrounded by some prostrate, ready-to-give-up Germans, crouched in the mud, quickly went to work with his Springfield.

"Jes" Teched Him Off." The enemy gunners could not hit York without wounding some of their own soldiers. And no German who peered over his gun to figure out what to do lived long enough to regret it. "Every time one of 'em raised his head, I jes' teched him off," York later explained. He fired 17 times--and 17 enemy soldiers died. Finally, German officers on the hill realized that York was virtually alone, sent eight men charging him with bayonets. York had used up all his rifle bullets, but he took out his pistol and picked all eight off, firing from rear to front--just as he had often potted a flock of wild turkeys back home.

That was too much for a German major lying on the ground near York. He figured York was backed by more Yanks in the brush, said he would order his men to surrender if York would just stop shooting. Ninety Germans promptly lined up by twos for York and his bare band of seven buddies. "How many men have you?" asked the startled major. "I got aplenty," replied York. With himself at the head of the column and his men strung along its sides, York marched off his catch. When more machine-gun crews loomed ahead, York put his pistol to the German major's head, got him to order their surrender. Eventually, York herded 132 prisoners into his American battalion field headquarters.

Army investigators later found 25 German bodies, counted 35 machine guns put out of action by York. General John J. Pershing described York as "the greatest civilian soldier of the war." Marshal Ferdinand Foch told him: "What you did was the greatest thing accomplished by any private soldier of all the armies of Europe." York went back to the U.S. a sergeant with the Medal of Honor, received a wild hero's welcome.

"Not for Sale." For York, everything was anticlimactic after that. He tersely rejected every offer to capitalize on his heroics, declared: "This uniform ain't for sale." He returned to a simple life in the mountains with his wife Gracie, reared seven children. He made several tours in the early '20s to raise money for a grammar and high school at home, only yielded to repeated pleas to permit the movie of his life when convinced that it might inspire patriotism. The movie brought him some $150,000 --plus a yen for philanthropy, countless spongers he was too soft to turn down, and eventually a $172,000 bill in taxes and interest from the Internal Revenue Service, which he never could pay. After ten years of litigation, IRS settled for $25,000, which was paid in a fund drive directed by the late House Speaker Sam Rayburn.

For a long while, it seemed that Alvin York was determined to contribute to another Army legend--that old soldiers never die. He had begun to fade as early as 1949, when he suffered a stroke, was repeatedly hospitalized thereafter, but he clung to life. Only last week did death, of "general debility," finally come in a Nashville Veterans Administration hospital to Alvin York, 76.

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