![\"Alvin](\"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/\/2013\/06\/york4.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Corporal Alvin C. York silently led his squad of men through the thick underbrush and dense fog of the Argonne Forest early the morning of October 8, 1918. His regiment had been tasked with charging down Hill 223 and making their way across an open plain towards the Decauville Railroad. Their mission was to cut off this supply line in hopes of pressuring the Germans to surrender. But the plain had been surrounded by machine gun nests, and the Americans were besieged as they made their way across, the gunfire felling them in a way that reminded York of how the mowing machines back home sliced through thick grass. York\u2019s regiment had become hopelessly isolated and pinned down. If they couldn\u2019t silence the constant barrage of artillery and advance, other troops would soon easily be overcome by a German pincer attack.<\/p>\n
The commander of York’s Company G, Captain E.C.B. Danforth, ordered 3 of his squads to attempt to slip behind German lines and launch an attack from the rear. Having already lost 7 from their ranks, 17 men \u2013 4 noncommissioned officers, including York, and 13 privates \u2013 made their way into the mist and trees in search of the enemy.<\/p>\n
What they encountered first were two stretcher bearers, who took off at the sight of the Americans. York and the others gave chase, and the fleeing men led them straight to a camp of Germans calmly eating their breakfast. The Americans had found a Prussian encampment \u2013 reinforcements waiting to be called up for battle. Surprised to see the enemy behind the frontlines and caught totally unaware, the Germans dropped their plates, threw up their hands, and surrendered. But as York and the others attempted to round up their new POWs, a German officer yelled to the machine gunners at the front to swivel around and begin firing on the Americans. In moments, 6 were killed and 3 wounded. Included among the casualties were the 3 other noncoms, leaving Corporal York in command.<\/p>\n
While the remaining 7 privates took cover, York alone continued to fire at the enemy, methodically picking off the German machine gunners one by one. As soon a soldier popped his head up over the gun emplacements, York would take him out with a single shot.<\/p>\n
Not that York was eager to kill the men. After each round he yelled: \u201cThat\u2019s enough now! You boys quit and come on down!\u201d None of the Germans took him up on the offer, however, forcing the corporal to continue to quiet one position after another.<\/p>\n
Yet York was not out of danger yet. A line of 6 Germans now came sprinting out of the woods in a bayonet charge. Having exhausted his rifle ammunition, York drew his sidearm, a Colt .45, to mount a defense. Taking a lesson learned from his duck hunting days \u2013 that picking off the one in the rear rather than the leader caught the group by surprise — York took out the last man in the line first, and then made his way to the front, leveling each German in turn with a single bullet. Of course this method allowed the first man in the line to come dangerously close to reaching the corporal, but with only a yard between he and the last German, York dispatched him with his final shot.<\/p>\n
When the corporal turned his attention back to his 7 privates and 20 POWs, he saw that a German commander among the latter had been firing at him the whole time from behind! York disarmed the would-be assassin, and had his men organize the Germans for a march. As the group made their way towards the front lines, York came across a Prussian platoon commander and then a battalion commander as well, both of whom he promptly added to his contingent of prisoners. With the way the thick forest obscured one\u2019s line of sight, the gunfire, and general confusion of the day, these German leaders assumed that York and his privates were merely the advance guard of a much larger force. When the battalion commander asked York how many men he had, York answered confidently: \u201cOh, I got a-plenty!\u201d<\/p>\n
York had the German battalion commander blow his whistle to signal a cease-fire, to keep the Prussians from firing on them as they added more POWs to their entourage and continued to make their way to the front. As York approached the American lines, he had to be sure to call out to let his fellow doughboys know that this large line of Germans was in fact under the control of American soldiers!<\/p>\n
York delivered his prisoners to regimental headquarters. It had been a little over 3 hours since the start of Company G\u2019s mission, and in that time York had nearly single-handedly killed 20 of the enemy, silenced 35 machine guns, captured 3 officers and 129 enlisted men, and broken up a battalion that was about to launch a counterattack against the Americans on Hill 223. When he moved the POWs onto division headquarters, General Julian R. Lindsey remarked, \u201cWell, York, I hear you have captured the whole damn German Army.\u201d \u201cNo, sir,\u201d York, replied. \u201cI only got 132 of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
For York\u2019s battlefield heroism, he was made a sergeant and awarded 40 of the greatest military awards a soldier can garner on either continent, including the Medal of Honor. When General \u201cBlackjack\u201d Pershing pinned upon him the Distinguished Service Cross, he called York the \u201cgreatest civilian-soldier of the war.\u201d<\/p>\n
York\u2019s story of bravery, confidence, and resolve is surely remarkable. But what makes it even more extraordinary is what one would have found by thumbing through his military file — a slip of paper which read: “Desires release as he is a conscientious objector.”<\/p>\n
One of the most decorated American fighters of WWI had initially not wanted to be a fighter at all.<\/p>\n
How Alvin C. York decided between his religious convictions against war and his desire to serve his country can provide every man with a pattern of how to wrestle with the weightiest decisions of our lives.<\/p>\n
Alvin C. York was born December 13, 1887 in Pall Mall — a tiny outpost of civilization tucked away in Tennessee\u2019s beautiful Valley of the Three Forks of the Wolf. Surrounded by hickory and oak-covered mountains, York grew up with ten brothers and sisters in a small two-room cabin. The children\u2019s mother was a sturdy but loving backwoodswoman, their father a kind, hard working, upright farmer and blacksmith who scraped out a meager but sufficient rural living. Young Alvin received only a few months of schooling, and was often by his father\u2019s side as a boy, learning his craft by the forge and accompanying him on nighttime hunting trips with the family\u2019s hounds.<\/p>\n
When York was 24, his father died, and with his two older brothers married and moved away, Alvin became the new head of the household. He embraced his responsibility to care for his mother and eight remaining siblings, and took jobs farming, smithing, and building roads to provide for them. But without his father\u2019s watchful and loving influence, York soon developed some rebellious new habits. He started smoking, gambling, swearing, and drinking \u2013 chugging bottles of moonshine with a new crowd of rough associates. He spent most days of the week visiting ramshackle saloons where he often got into fights with the other patrons. He was hauled into court for shooting a neighbor\u2019s turkeys for sport and selling weapons illegally. He embarrassed his family by shooting up a tree outside the local church while services were being held and stumbling drunk and belligerent through a community picnic. He was rude, disrespectful, and surly, and now 29, still had no prospects for marriage. York\u2019s mother admonished him to change his ways and lay in bed each night waiting for him to come home from another round of cavorting, praying for him to get his life back on track and desperately worried that his next fight might be his last.<\/p>\n
Late one night, as York once again stumbled in drunk through the door of the family cabin, he was surprised to see his mother sitting in a rocking chair by the fire. He hadn\u2019t known she always stayed awake at night waiting for him, and had never seen her up at such an hour. She turned to her son, fixed her gaze upon him, and softly asked: \u201cAlvin, when are you going to be a man like your father and grandfather?\u201d Mother York had pleaded with her wayward son for years to change his ways, but had never been so direct — never before appealed to the examples of his lineage, the men whose blood he shared. York\u2019s father had never drank, swore, or smoked. He had been a pillar in the community, with a sterling reputation among his neighbors for complete honesty and fairness. His grandfather had also been known as a man who always did what was right.<\/p>\n
His mother\u2019s simple but piercing question brought York up short. Thinking of these two upright men and his rich heritage of manhood, and then of his three years of drifting, he was hit with the sudden, deep realization of how selfish and irresponsible he had been, how much money and time and trust he had wasted, how empty he felt, and how far he had departed from the man he wished to be, from the man his father would have been proud of. He fell to his knees, put his head into his mother\u2019s lap, and wept. She too began to cry; it was the first time York had ever seen his mother shed tears.<\/p>\n
\u201cMother,\u201d Alvin began, \u201cI promise you tonight that I will never drink again as long as I live. I will never smoke or chew again. I will never gamble again. I will never cuss or fight again. I will live the life God wants me to live.\u201d It was just past midnight on New Year\u2019s Day, 1915, and Alvin York had begun a brand new chapter in his life.<\/p>\n
Determined to walk the straight and narrow, York confessed his sins and was saved at a revival meeting weeks later. He threw himself into his new Christian faith with a convert\u2019s zeal \u2013 making good on his promise to clean up his life, studying the Bible as often as he could, and admonishing his neighbors to live more piously. He joined a new church \u2013 the Church of Christ in Christian Union — and became the congregation\u2019s elder, song leader, and Sunday school teacher.<\/p>\n
Life was coming together beautifully for Alvin York. His faith gave him purpose, he got engaged to a woman he thought was the prettiest and most chaste in the whole valley, and he supported his family by working hard at farming, blacksmithing, and other jobs. He spent his Saturdays hunting with his hounds and engaging in marksmanship contests with the other men in town, and his Sundays belting out hymns from the pew. He had never felt so hopeful and fulfilled, and he looked forward to a long life of simple peace and purpose amongst his friends and loved ones.<\/p>\n
But on June 5, 1917, the outside world suddenly intruded upon the bucolic peace of the Valley of the Three Forks of the Wolf. York opened his mailbox to find a small, red postcard instructing him to register with his local draft board. The war had come to rural Tennessee and Alvin York had been called upon to serve his country \u201cover there.\u201d<\/p>\n
York immediately felt his heart and mind torn asunder. He considered himself a patriotic American and wanted to do his duty. But his church opposed violence and war. How could he ever hope to reconcile these divergent values?<\/p>\n
York went to talk to his friend and pastor, Rosier Pile. His reluctance to serve wasn\u2019t because he was afraid to fight or to die or even to leave his fianc\u00e9e and the happy life he\u2019d been building in the valley, he explained to his mentor. The core of the issue was simply his faith: \u201cI\u2019ve been converted to the gospel of peace and love and of \u2018Do good for evil.\u2019 Fight! Kill! I never killed nobody, even in my bad days, and I don\u2019t want to begin now. I turned my back on all those rowdy things and found a heap of comfort and happiness in religion. I joined the church and took its creed with no reservation. I believe in the Bible, and the Bible says, \u2018Thou shalt not kill.\u2019 That\u2019s so definite a child could understand it. There\u2019s no way around or out of it.\u201d York had vowed never to fight again \u2013 could he break that promise to his mother, his God, and himself? Was it possible to be a good Christian and a good citizen? He discussed that question with Pile for the next hour, and every day after that. And he pondered it alone, spending hours in the woods, thinking, praying, and studying his scriptures.<\/p>\n
York knew that no matter what he decided, he had to at least fill out and send back the draft card, so he wrote, \u201cI don\u2019t want to fight\u201d across it and mailed it in. Together with Pile, he composed a letter explaining his desire to be exempted from service on religious grounds and sent it to the county draft board. The board denied his petition, saying that the Church of Christ in Christian Union did not have an official doctrine or declaration on non-violence or war, save their interpretation of the Bible. York filed an appeal at the district level, but was once again turned down.<\/p>\n
York could see no way around shipping out \u2013 he wasn\u2019t a man who ran away from his problems and he didn\u2019t want the government to stir up trouble in his town by having to come take him by force. He resigned himself to the idea of becoming a soldier, and when the call to service came, he boarded a train for basic training in Georgia. With seemingly no way out, he was determined to pull his own weight, while still holding onto his values as best he could. He embraced the training with full effort and without complaint, and though his fellow soldiers did a whole lot of drinking, smoking, swearing, and going AWOL, York abstained. He didn\u2019t begrudge them their good time, however, and earned their respect by showcasing the unbelievably sharp marksman skills he had honed growing up in Pall Mall and his adroit knowledge of weaponry learned inside his father\u2019s blacksmith shop.<\/p>\n
Yet while York tried to concentrate on the task at hand, he would soon find that the most gut-wrenching decision of his life was hardly behind him. While he had decided to let the matter drop, back home, Pile and his mother had continued to work to get him an exemption from service. York was mailed papers from the War Department confirming his status as a conscientious objector; all he had to do was sign them and head home.<\/p>\n
But York found that seeing the choice of officially embracing the label of conscientious objector plainly spelled out like that for the first time now filled him with doubt. Was exiting the service really the right decision after all? The rift between York\u2019s commitment to his country, and his commitment to his faith yawned open once again, and he felt completely lost as to what to do.<\/p>\n
York spent the next few weeks thinking and praying through the question to figure out what decision to make, but the answer remained frustratingly elusive. He turned over the options again and again in his mind, but in place of clarity, he just felt more and more tangled up in knots.<\/p>\n
As basic training drew to a close, the pressure to make a final decision became intense and unavoidable. He decided to talk honestly about his inner turmoil with company commander Captain Danforth and his battalion commander, Major Gonzalo Edward Buxton, who also considered himself a devout Christian. Buxton could see York\u2019s sincere desire to make the right choice, and he made a date for the men to get together and try to sort through the issue as best they could.<\/p>\n
A few nights later, York closed his prayer, rose from his knees, and walked from his barracks to the major\u2019s quarters. Inside a sparsely decorated room, York, Buxton, and Danforth sat on camp stools, the Bibles on their laps illuminated by a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Buxton began by saying: \u201cI don\u2019t want to discuss this question as a battalion commander discussing it with an officer and a private. I want to discuss it as three American citizens interested in a common cause. I respect any honest religious conviction and am here to talk through them man to man.\u201d Then began an earnest dialogue where Buxton and York traded questions and quoted Bible verses back and forth:<\/p>\n
![\"Military](\"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2013\/06\/york.jpg\")
<\/p>\n