Posted on 10/08/2001 12:06:01 PM PDT by the irate magistrate
ALVIN YORK KILLS 25 AND CAPTURES 132:
During World War I, U.S. Corporal Alvin C. York is credited with single-handedly killing 25 German soldiers and capturing 132 in the Argonne Forest of France. The action saved York's small detachment from annihilation by a German machine-gun nest and won the reluctant warrior from backwater Tennessee the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Born in a log cabin in rural Tennessee in 1887, Alvin Cullum York supplemented his family's subsistence farming by hunting and, like his father, was soon an expert marksman. He also earned a reputation as a hell-raiser, and few imagined he would amount to anything but trouble. Around 1915, however, York experienced a religious conversion after a friend was killed in a bar brawl. He joined the fundamentalist Church of Christ in Christian Union and served as song leader and Sunday school teacher at the local church.
Two months after the United States declared war on Germany in 1917, York received his draft notice. Because his church opposed war, he asked for conscientious objector status but was denied at both the state and local level because the small Church of Christ in Christian Union was not recognized as a legitimate Christian sect. Enlisting in the 82nd Infantry Division, he was offered noncombat duty but eventually agreed to fight after being convinced by a superior that America's cause was just.
On October 8, 1918, York and 15 other soldiers under the command of Sergeant Bernard Early were dispatched to seize a German-held rail point during the Allies' Meuse-Argonne Offensive. The Americans lost their way and soon found themselves behind enemy lines. A brief firefight ensued with a superior German force, and in the confusion a group of Germans surrendered. However, German machine-gunners on a hill overlooking the scene soon noticed the small size of Early's patrol. Yelling in German for their comrades to take cover, the machine gunners opened fire on the Americans, cutting down half the detachment, including Sergeant Early.
York immediately returned fire and with his marksman eye began picking off the German gunners. He then fearlessly charged the machine-gun nest. Several of the other surviving Americans followed his lead and probably contributed to the final total of 25 enemy killed. With his automatic pistol, York shot down six German soldiers sent out of the trench to intercept him. The German commander, thinking he had underestimated the size of the American force, surrendered as York reached the machine-gun nest. York and the other seven survivors took custody of some 90 Germans and on the way back to the Allied lines encountered 40 or so other enemy troops, who were coerced to surrender by the German major that the Americans had in their custody. The final tally was 132 prisoners.
York was promoted to the rank of sergeant and hailed as the greatest civilian soldier of the war by several Allied leaders. He was given a hero's welcome upon his return to the United States in 1919 and was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military decoration. In the 1920s, he used his fame to raise funds for the York Industrial Institute (now Alvin C. York Institute), a school for underprivileged children in rural Tennessee. He later opened a Bible school. Sergeant York, the 1941 film starring Gary Cooper, was based on his life. York died in 1964.
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This was in an era that many all rural farm boys had great marksmen skills, that enabled them to preform these extraordinary feats when required while preforming their military duties.
Thanks for the "bump" Will!
Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown
It was not rare that their mothers would also particpate in the hunt at times.
Picture this: thirty two belt fed water cooled machine guns blazing down at you from thirty steps distant, with an occasional head bobbing up behind one gun or the other, a helmet raised perhaps four inches behind or alongside the gun - and killing them all, and forcing the remainder's surrender.
The German's were so desperate to get rid of York that seven of them charged him with bayonets. York shot them all to death with a M1911 .45 caliber pistol, shooting from the furthest to the nearest so that the Germans would not realize their doom until it was too late for them to stop running at York and instead shoot him.
The German's bullets were so thick that the heavy brush in the area was all shot off to the ground in the area York made his stand. When the ground was examined the next day after the German's retreated a German body was found for every cartridge York had fired. He had not missed once.
It is certain that the Lord was with York that day eighty three years ago, and very satisfying that the Lord will aid a good man with a clear conscience firing a good rifle.
Fortunately, Alvin did not have to endure the brain-washing of today's electronic media; and, the big-government school systems' expungement of any sign of male character building.
I wonder if the turkey gobbling trick that Gary Cooper portrayed in the movie was also true?
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