The Medal of Honor is the highest honor given to United States military personnel. Earning it requires significant acts of gallantry on the part of the recipient. The activities likely to earn the Medal are generally dangerous and often fatal, resulting in many of them being bestowed posthumously. On the other hand, sometimes it is given to soldiers who accomplish such astonishing feats of combat prowess that the details almost seem like fiction. One such example was Alvin C. York, who distinguished himself on October 8, 1918.
York was born on December 13, 1887, as the third child of what would become a large family with 11 children. He helped put food on the table with agriculture, and more importantly for his military future, hunting for game.
York was drafted into the Army despite indicating he was a conscientious objector. The image of his filed papers clearly shows objection on religious grounds.
Sent to the front anyway, he was one of the last 8 surviving members of his unit on that fateful October day. Left in command he and his men came across a German headquarters and came under fire from machine guns mounted on a hill nearby. York’s men were unable to engage the Germans and York, then a corporal, was caught in the open.
The man who started his military career opposed to violence suddenly became a red, white and blue Terminator.
York knew the German machine gunners could not fire on him if they could not locate him. He applied his rifle to the Germans like a hammer on a Whack-A-Mole machine, taking out every head that popped up from cover to spot him.
In his diary York describes shooting at Germans while lying prone as:
“…jes like we often shoot at the targets in the shooting matches in the mountains of Tennessee; and it was jes about the same distance. But the targets here were bigger.”
The Germans must have gotten tired of seeing every head that popped up to look around never come back attached to its owner due to York’s marksmanship. The German commander decided to take York out of the equation hand-to-hand and dispatched soldiers with fixed bayonets to charge the American shooter.
York saw them, drew his pistol, and killed six of them before they could reach him. He did it by shooting the furthest attacker first, dangerously allowing the nearest German to continue to charge. Why use such a risky tactic? He didn’t want the nearest ones to get away. York wrote:
“I teched off the sixth man first; then the fifth; then the fourth; then the third; and so on. That’s the way we shoot wild turkeys at home. You see we don’t want the front ones to know that we’re getting the back ones, and then they keep on coming until we get them all.”
York gave the Germans the opportunity to surrender, which their Major assured they would do if only York would stop shooting them. About a hundred men came down peacefully.
As if York had not done enough damage to convince them he meant business, one German came out of the trench and threw a grenade at him. This failed to harm York and, as he put it:
“I had to tech him off. The rest surrendered without any more trouble. There were nearly 100 of them.”
York and his remaining squad mates led the group of captured Germans straight back to American lines. Along the way they had to cross another German trench. York used his pistol to motivate the German officer to order the surrender of the soldiers within it. All but one gave up. What was York’s reaction?
“I had to tech him off,” York recorded in his diary.
All told he killed over 20 German soldiers, captured 132 more including several officers, took over 30 machine guns, and coined a phrase that makes bust a cap sound pathetic.
York was awarded the Medal of Honor on December 31, 1919. He died in 1964 after being the subject of several books and a movie.
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Sources
Staff writers, US soldier Alvin York displays heroics at Argonne, history.com
Staff writers, York, Alvin C., CMOHS.org
Various, Alvin C. York, Wikipedia.org
Alvin C. York, The Diary of Alvin York, October 8, 1918, acacia.pair.com
Alvin C. York, Conscientious Objector Claim of Appeal for Alvin Cullum York, Wikipedia.or