Outgunned and outnumbered, the Americans of the 82nd Division were being slaughtered. It was Oct. 8, 1918 and German Lt. Paul Vollmer was defending his position in the Argonne Forest of France. They held a slight advantage and the attacking Americans were walking into a death trap. Alvin York and just a handful of men from his platoon survived the German defense, taking cover as best they could. The Germans still picked them off from trenches and machine gun nests. Surely, it was just a matter of time until they would all be dead or captured.
In the thick of battle, Alvin York remembered the art of hunting wild game with a long rifle: “I (shot) the sixth man first; then the fifth; then the fourth; then the third; and so on. That’s the way we shoot wild turkeys at home. You see we don’t want the front ones to know that we’re getting the back ones, and then they keep on coming until we get them all.” Shooting a long rifle, you don’t have the luxury of getting off another shot right away. You have to reload. He hated to keep shooting men dead, so he tried to get the Germans to surrender.
Finally, after he had shot 20 German soldiers, he convinced their major to surrender. Alvin and the eight men remaining captured 132 German soldiers that day. That part of York’s story is accurately portrayed in the 1941 biographical film “Sergeant York,” starring Gary Cooper. It is also detailed in his war diary and in the official account of his commanding officers. York slightly understates it, but the official report tells an amazing, almost unbelievable account of the actual event. German accounts of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive concur. Hollywood did not embellish that one bit.
In the Valley of the Wolf River
Finding the Tennessee countryside where this brave soldier lived is an adventure. Driving through the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area, the road you travel winds through rugged hollows dark with rhododendron. This is mountain country. Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone spent time here in the Cumberland Mountains. York writes that he remembers a beech tree inscribed “D Boon CillED A. Bar in the YEAR 1760.” A wild and rough country, it called for men and women to match it.
York was a wild and rough man, the third of 11 children, who grew up in a one-room cabin. He was a hard-drinking, hardworking fellow. Then, he had his conversion experience.
He wasn’t struck by lightning riding his mule, as the movie portrays, but his coming to faith was every bit as powerful, evident in his changed life. He became a lay leader and Sunday school teacher, quite intent on mentoring the youth.
York’s daughter Betsy Ross York-Lowery didn’t know about her father’s heroism until she watched Gary Cooper portray him. “Daddy never talked about the war or what he did. We didn’t know all that until we saw the movie.”
The film ends with York returning home and walking across a bridge with his beloved Gracie, to their new home in Pall Mall, Tennessee, where the two had grown up in the valley of the Wolf River. Mrs. York states, as the movie ends, that the beautiful home and farm are his, given to him by the people of Tennessee.
One might think that the state government funded the homestead, but, in truth, it was the Nashville Rotary Club that raised the money initially to buy the 400-acre bottomland farm that had been his dream. No government monies were involved. Fellow Tennessean Davy Crockett would have approved this, for it is reported that he didn’t think the government should be providing money or special favors to people. The Yorks lived in his mother’s small cabin when they were first married.
York’s Legacy
York continued to work for the good of his community. Recognizing that his own education was limited, he worked to improve educational opportunities for the children of his native Fentress County and rural Tennessee. He founded the Alvin C. York Agricultural Institute, a private agricultural school, in 1926. He gave the deed to the state of Tennessee in 1937, and it continues to operate today as a comprehensive secondary school in Jamestown, Tennessee. Its mission statement states “The vision of the Alvin C. York Institute is to serve as a model rural school of excellence where all stakeholders prepare and excel for the challenges and opportunities of the future.”The York Historic Site says “Everybody was always welcome at the York House. York never met a stranger, and he treated everyone the same no matter who they were.” Like President Thomas Jefferson, whom York named a son after, he was always entertaining visitors. Mrs. York and the girls—the Yorks had 10 children, of whom eight survived to adulthood—would prepare meals for them, and they might stay overnight in the upstairs bedrooms. (All of the children slept in the upstairs bedrooms, while their parents slept in an alcove off of the living room.) Sometimes they prepared meals for as many as 50 people. The large dining room, where they would often dine together with guests, still contains the York’s actual furniture and décor.
In 1948, York suffered the first in a series of debilitating strokes, and in 1954 he was confined to bed. His special bed, on a rotating frame, occupies his side of the sleeping alcove today. Mrs. York’s bed sits on the other side. On it is lain the dress she wore to her husband’s funeral in 1964. She continued to live on their beloved homestead until her death 20 years later.
Today, the house is lovingly maintained by the state of Tennessee, along with the grist mill that York eventually acquired and ran. History seekers can still wander through the house and savor its story. In it a great man lived out his later years in quiet service to the country and community he loved. “People have not forgotten Daddy. They still come to see him and the place he loved so much,” Mrs. York-Lowery said.
