“God would never be cruel enough to create a cyclone as terrible as that Argonne battle. Only man would ever think of doing an awful thing like that. … And I’m telling you the little log cabin in Wolf Valley in old Tennessee seemed a long, long way off.” With those words, Sergeant Alvin C. York recalled the intensity of the October, 1918 battle that defined him for generations of Tennesseans as the most highly decorated American soldier of World War I, earning the Congressional Medal of Honor among numerous other awards. In those moments of battle, York, of Fentress...