Alvin York: The Draft Objector Who Captured 132 Germans

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On June 5, 1917, a 29-year-old from Fentress County, Tennessee, wrote on his draft card that he claimed exemption because he did not want to fight. Alvin York had grown up in a two-room log cabin with about nine months of schooling, became a hard-drinking saloon brawler, and converted on January 1, 1915, joining the pacifist Church of Christ in Christian Union. The draft board rejected his conscientious objector claim because his small church had no written anti-war doctrine. At Camp Gordon, Georgia, Major G. Edward Buxton and Captain Edward Danforth debated scripture with him and gave him a 10-day pass home to pray, and he returned convinced his service was a divine mission.

On October 8, 1918, in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, York's 328th Infantry detachment of 17 men flanked German machine guns. After six Americans were killed, York picked off gunners with his rifle and Colt .45 until Lieutenant Paul Vollmer surrendered. A 1919 Saturday Evening Post story by George Pattullo made him famous, yet he refused endorsement money, nearly lost a gifted farm to debt, and spent decades building an agricultural school. He later urged intervention against Hitler, allowed the 1941 film Sergeant York starring Gary Cooper, and in the Cold War said he would push the nuclear button himself.

• York stopped a bayonet charge by shooting the men at the back first, a technique from hunting wild turkeys in Tennessee.
• Vollmer emptied his Luger at York from close range and missed every shot before blowing his whistle to surrender.
• Told he had captured the whole German army, York answered that he had only got 132.
• German records from 1929 counted only 79 men lost to capture, and researchers still dispute the exact ravine where the fight happened.
• Survivors such as Bernard Early argued for life that the legend erased the squad that guarded prisoners and returned fire.