Medal of Honor · World War I
Alvin Cullum York
Corporal, U.S. Army
- Date of Action
- October 8, 1918
- Location
- Near Chatel-Chéhéry, France
- Medal Presented
- April 18, 1919
Values Embodied
- Courage
- Integrity
- Patriotism
Official Citation
This citation is paraphrased from public-domain histories and is pending verbatim verification against the Congressional Medal of Honor Society archive.
After his platoon suffered heavy casualties and three other non-commissioned officers had become casualties, Corporal York assumed command. Fearlessly leading seven men, he charged with great daring a machinegun nest which was pouring deadly and incessant fire upon his platoon. In this heroic feat the machinegun nest was taken, together with four officers and 128 men and several guns.
Biography
Before the War
Alvin Cullum York was born December 13, 1887, in a two-room log cabin in Pall Mall, in the hills of Fentress County, Tennessee. His father was a blacksmith and subsistence farmer; the family was poor even by the standards of Appalachian Tennessee. York received the equivalent of a third-grade education. He was a well-known hell-raiser as a young man — drinking, brawling, expert with a rifle — until 1914, when he underwent a religious conversion at a revival meeting and joined the Church of Christ in Christian Union, a pacifist fundamentalist sect.
When his draft notice arrived in 1917, York filed for conscientious objector status. It was denied. He reported to Camp Gordon, Georgia, for training with what became the 328th Infantry Regiment, 82nd Infantry Division. His battalion commander, Major Gonzalo Edward Buxton, was a devout man himself. Over weeks of furlough and conversation, Buxton convinced York that the Bible permitted a just war. York reported for combat.
The Action
On the morning of October 8, 1918, during the Meuse–Argonne Offensive, Corporal York’s battalion was ordered to take a critical ridge near the village of Chatel-Chéhéry. German machine-gun emplacements on the heights above pinned the American advance. Seventeen men from the battalion — including York — were dispatched on a flanking movement through the woods. They surprised and captured a group of German soldiers at a headquarters, but German machine gunners on the ridge opened fire from behind and cut down nine of the Americans, leaving York in effective command.
York took cover, drew his Enfield rifle, and — as he had done hunting turkeys in the Tennessee hills — began shooting the machine gunners one at a time, from the farthest back forward, so the man at the front of the line would not see his comrades falling. He killed every man who stood. When a squad of six German soldiers charged him with fixed bayonets, he drew his .45 caliber pistol and shot them in reverse order, back to front, so the lead man would not know his file was being cut down behind him. The German major commanding the emplacement, having watched his men die, offered to surrender the entire position if the shooting stopped.
York accepted. He marched 132 German prisoners back to American lines, collecting more along the way. When asked by the battalion adjutant how many Germans he had brought, York famously answered, “Honest, Lieutenant, I don’t know.”
After the War
York returned to Pall Mall a national hero and refused most commercial offers. He married his sweetheart Gracie Williams in a ceremony attended by 3,000 people, and used his fame to fund a regional high school — the Alvin C. York Institute — to give Tennessee mountain children the education he never had. He died on September 2, 1964, and is buried in the Wolf River Cemetery in Pall Mall. The 1941 film Sergeant York, which he reluctantly authorized, made Gary Cooper a star.