Posted on 10/27/2006 12:14:15 PM PDT by Borges
PARIS - Nineteen .45-caliber cartridges buried in northeastern France may mark the spot where Sgt. Alvin York became America's most celebrated soldier of World War I, a research team said Thursday.
The Sergeant York Discovery Expedition said that after four years of work, it found the cartridges buried 2 to 4 inches in soil near the village of Chatel-Chehery where York single-handedly took out a nest of German machine guns.
But last March, a group led by academics from York's home state of Tennessee said they were "80 percent sure" they had found the spot where York carried out his heroic deeds — a location different from that announced Thursday.
The most recent group to claim they found the "York spot" said the presence of the cartridges — which the earlier group had not found — was the "final piece of the puzzle" needed to identify the spot with "100 percent certainty," the group said in a statement.
It cited American military documents stating that York had fired at least 21 .45-caliber rounds with an automatic Colt pistol in his Oct. 8, 1918, assault on the German position.
"The battlefield archaeology confirms what we know about the York story," the statement said, adding that it had unearthed the cartridges last weekend.
The group said it also discovered a host of other artifacts, including 250 German machine gun casings, at the site in the Argonne forest near France's border with Belgium.
York, a member of the 82nd Division, was awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism for taking on the nest of 35 machine guns. York — at the time a corporal — captured 132 German soldiers and killed at least 20 others in the battle.
Gary Cooper starred in a 1941 movie about York, who died in 1964.
The research team's leader, Lt. Col. Douglas Mastriano, said the film had inspired him to begin his search. For more than four years, the U.S. Army officer, who is stationed in Heidelberg, Germany, spent his free time trolling through German military archives and made about 40 trips to the battlefield.
"I was shocked to finally find the actual site," Mastriano said, adding that it was "like finding a needle in a haystack."
But Tom Nolan, a geographer at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro who led the team that said they thought they found the site in March, told The Associated Press Thursday that he isn't certain Mastriano's team found the spot.
"We don't have enough evidence to reach any definite conclusion," Nolan said. "I don't see how anyone else could at this point."
Nolan — whose research team is heading back to France for 10 days in early November — said that he would welcome any new findings and that he didn't want the search for the York site to become a contentious issue.
"Our aim is to create some sort of permanent record of what is available and reach the most probable conclusion of where the events took place," he said. "The truth will come out eventually."
from Murphy's Rules of Land Combat: When in doubt, empty the magazine.
Surprised Kerry hadn`t made claim he was their along side York.
The movie "Sgt. York" was great for several reasons, IMHO, because it demonstrated:
1) Heroism
2) Rural Tennessee life at the turn of the century
3) Arguments against pacifism
4) Romantic love
5) Gratitude of the people
6) Sin, Struggle & Redemption
7) Marksmanship
8) Work Ethic
There are not too many movies about which you can say so many good things.
My personal favorite of Murphy's Military Laws:
A sucking chest wound is God's way of telling you to slow down.
When asked how he got all those Germans to surrender, he simply said: "I had em surrounded!"
The Germans were surprised when they found out that he was in fact all alone when they surrendered to him.
What a DUDE!
He will. When he runs in '08.
Give him time to work out a plausible story.
York exhibited so much class. He was just one fella from a huge family that was very American, very unspoiled, and knew marksmanship up one side and down the other before he ever went to the Army.
His part of Tennessee including the towns of Rugby, Oneida, and Jamestown has great forests and wonderful deep limestone creek gourges.
I don't know that I can believe their conclusion when they don't know the difference between cartridges and casings.
Yep, there is too much made of forensic battlefield explorations. For instance on the Custer battlefield there was a nostalgic reunion only ten years after the battle. The reunion included Indians and Reno's survivors. There were plenty of 45-70 rounds fired on those hills after Custer so clusters of discoverd cartridge cases have to be examened carefully to see if they are PROBABLE for authenticity and related to the battle.
IMHO, one of the very best movies ever, along with "The Fountainhead". (This from one who is not a big Gary Cooper fan.)
It was good the film was done before the IRS went to war with Sgt. York.
That would have been a real downer for that film.
(See third paragraph from end)
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1998/vo14no01/vo14no01_york.htm
"Yep, there is too much made of forensic battlefield explorations. For instance on the Custer battlefield there was a nostalgic reunion only ten years after the battle."
Good point. Actually I took a tour of the Custer Battlefield earlier this month and they made a big deal of the forensic methods used to re-create the battle.
There must have been .45 casings scattered all over France. It is hard to imagine being able to associate any of them with a specific incident.
York was a remarkable sharpshooter, but he did not single-handedly capture 132 Germans--he was one of a group of 8 Americans who did so. He never claimed sole credit for the deed. Most of the others were Catholics or Jews and/or immigrants, whereas he was a native-born American Protestant (although from an obscure denomination nobody had ever heard of), so he got all the attention.
In the movie, York used a P08 Luger and a 1903 Springfield. Bother were supposed to be wrong. The 1911 Colt they were supposed to use wasn't able to use blanks so they purposely were wrong when they made the substitution.
Researchers claim York had used a 1917 Enfield. That's the rifle that's used for the statue on the Tennessee Capitol grounds. Unfortunately, the NRA had a talk with York's son and he mentioned even though York's unit was issued the Enfield's, York didn't like the rear sight so he was able to swap for a Springfield.
York was able to get behind the lines and capture the commanding officer. It was York telling the officer he better call off his men and surrender before he lost his head.
Granted, this was late in the war when the Germans were getting tired of fighting. I wonder if such a thing could have happened earlier in the war?
When I was in Nam I first heard a sucking chest wound described with typically sardonic G.I. humor as "natures way of telling you that you've been in a firefight."
One of my favorites.
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