Sergeant Alvin C. York

The photographs on this page, brought to life.

Sergeant Alvin C. York, photographed for the Bain News Service about 1919. George Grantham Bain Collection. Library of Congress.

He tried not to go. Alvin Cullum York was from Pall Mall, Tennessee, in the Cumberland foothills — a place with more hollows than roads. He had gotten religion in his late twenties, after a rough young manhood, and the church he joined held that killing was forbidden without qualification. When the draft came in 1917 he filed as a conscientious objector. His claim was denied. He appealed. It was denied again. So he went, and he argued about it the whole way — with his company commander, with his battalion commander, on leave at home, walking the ridge above his mother's house trying to reconcile the two things. Whatever he settled, he settled it privately, and then he did what he did. October 8, 1918, in the Argonne. The Medal of Honor citation is a government document and it is short: "After his platoon suffered heavy casualties and 3 other noncommissioned officers had become casualties, Cpl. York assumed command. Fearlessly leading 7 men, he charged with great daring a machinegun nest which was pouring deadly and incessant fire upon his platoon. In this heroic feat the machinegun nest was taken, together with 4 officers and 128 men and several guns." One hundred and thirty-two prisoners. Seven men and himself. He came home to a country that wanted to sell him things. He turned down most of it. What he wanted was a road into his part of Fentress County and a school for the children in it, and he spent decades and most of his own money chasing both. The Alvin C. York Agricultural Institute is still operating. He is buried in the Wolf River Cemetery at Pall Mall, a few miles from where he was born, in ground he never really left. If your family is from Fentress County, or served in the 82nd, or has a York story that was told at a kitchen table and never written down — this page is open. Citation: Medal of Honor, United States Army. Photographs: Bain News Service, National Photo Company, and Harris & Ewing collections, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Public domain.