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Second Meuse-Argonne Campaign

Sergeant York In his Academy Award-winning role, Gary Cooper portrays Alvin York, the real-life quiet, pacifistic Tennessee farmer who went on to become the most decorated hero of World War I, single-handedly securing a German position and taking 132 prisoners.

The falure of the First Meuse-Argonne (as it became known) was all the more disturbing because at the start of the campaign the odds were heavily in favour of the Americans and French. News that the AEF had suspended the Offensive deeply angered the French and British. It was time to plan how best to resume the Meuse-Argonne campaign. On the morning of 4 October, the Second Meuse-Argonne (also known as the Champagne offensive) began with a rolling barrage at 5 a.m.

As the legend of the 'Lost Battalion' was being born, another was in the making. To the right of the Argonne forest was the 82nd Division, commanded by the splenetic Major-General George B. Duncan who had earlier been removed from command of the 77th Division when questions were raised over his physical fitness. The 82nd had arrived in France on 21 May 1918. Raised late in the war, it had no special recruiting-ground and settled for calling itself the 'All-American Division'. It was composed largely of backwoodsmen from Tennessee along with a sprinkling of city types, and had acquitted itself well at St-Mihiel. On the morning of 5 October the division moved into the line beyond Apremont, on the Aire river and west of the village of Exermont, replacing the exhausted 28th Division and consolidating the Americans' grip on Hill 223. The 82nd's orders were to cut through the Decauville railway connection, which ran north-south and helped to supply the German units in the Argonne forest. The Germans had drenched the whole area in mustard gas when, on the morning of Friday, 8 October, the leading assault battalion of the 328th Infantry attacked without the support of the promised preliminary barrage. Its mission was to take the railway line which lay two miles ahead of them.

In their midst was Acting Corporal Alvin York, a farmer from the mountains of Tennessee who had a huntsman's skill with a rifle, being able to hit the mid-point of a half-inch cross drawn on a piece of paper nailed to a tree 100 feet away. He kept a diary, which was strictly against army regulations. York had been with Company G, 328th Infantry, since the 82nd Division assembled and trained at Camp Gordon, Georgia, in February1918; he recalled later that his company captain, E. C. B. Danforth, would line up the men and ask if any of them were keeping a diary. York, a sincere Christian convert who had initially considered refusing to serve on the grounds that the Bible said murder was wrong, found it impossible to lie directly to Danforth:

I told him I was not admitting whether I did or didn't, and he told me it would betray a lot of valuable information to the Germans if I was captured. And I told him that I didn't come to the war to be captured, and I wasn't going to be captured, and that if the Germans ever got any information out of me they would have to get it out of my dead body.

In the early hours of 8 October the Tennesseans ascended Hill 223, their jumping-off point. At 6.10 a.m. the battalion, with York's platoon in the second wave, began its charge across a triangular-shaped valley several hundred yards wide. This was almost like a death funnel, as German machine-guns lined the valley's flanks and topped its apex. Inevitably, the rush was stopped dead in its tracks; 'our boys just went down like the long grass before the mowing machine at home,' said York, who calculated they were facing about thirty machine-guns hidden on the ridges 300 yards in front and to their left. Together with Harry Parsons, his platoon sergeant, York's squad and some others - seventeen in all - tried to work their way round the left flank. This was the reality of Pershing's open warfare, as York and the others debated among themselves, on the crest of the ridge, whether to take the machine-gunners in the flank or continue to move further back, to come from behind. They chose the second course:

We opened up in skirmishing order and flitting from brush to brush, quickly crossed over the hill and down into the gully behind. Then we suddenly swung around behind them. The first Germans we saw were two men with Red Cross bands on their arms. They jumped out of the brush in front of us and bolted like two scared rabbits. We called to them to surrender, and one of our boys fired and missed. And they kept on going. We wanted to capture them before they gave the alarm. We were now well behind the German trench and in the rear of the machine guns that were holding up our big advance.

The three doughboy squads, now behind the German machinegunners, alighted upon the HQ of the German unit, where they captured several orderlies, runners, stretcher-bearers and a major without firing a shot. By now some of the German machine-gunners had turned round and were firing on the infiltrators, killing six and wounding three, leaving just eight doughboys to press home their advantages. Their position became much uglier when yet more gunners switched their aim and, from a distance which York estimated was about thirty yards, began killing or scaring into retreat all the non-commissioned officers, leaving York in command:

And those machine guns were spitting fire and cutting down the undergrowth all around me something awful. And the Germans were yelling orders. You never heard such a racket in all of your life. I didn't have time to dodge behind a tree or dive into the brush, I didn't even have time to kneel or lie down [ ... ] As soon as the machine guns opened fire on me, I began to exchange shots with them. There were over thirty of them in continuous action, and all I could do was touch the Germans off just as fast as I could. I was sharpshooting. I don't think I missed a shot. It was no time to miss. In order to sight me or to swing their machine guns on me, the Germans had to show their heads above the trench, and every time I saw a head I just touched it off. All the time I kept yelling at them to come down. I didn't want to kill any more than I had to. But it was they or I. And I was giving them the best I had. (As soon as he was able, York rose from concealment and began shooting rapidly from the standing position. After going through several five shot clips of ammunition, he began to run low. Having only a couple of rounds in his rifle, York drew his Colt Government Model 1911 .45.) Suddenly a German officer and five men jumped out of the trench and charged me with fixed bayonets. I changed to the old automatic and just touched them off too. I touched off the sixth man first, then the fifth, then the fourth, then the third, and so on. I wanted them to keep coming. (Back to front in the manner he hunted ducks back home in Tennessee. In this manner he finished off his assailants, ending up with the officer who was in the lead, and who was probably unaware that he was ultimately attacking the rangy corporal all by himself.) I didn't want the rear ones to see me touching off the front ones, I was afraid they would drop down and pump a volley into me.

When that failed, a German major signaled for a parley and was surprised to find out his attacker was a Yank, thinking at first he was British. The German officer - who later turned out to have lived for several years in Chicago - turned his P.08 Luger over to York and agreed to surrender his men if York would stop shooting. Alvin agreed, covering the prisoner with his M1911 while about 50 men emerged from the emplacement. One German tossed a hand grenade at York's head and, though it missed him, it wounded one of the other prisoners. He shot the grenadier, just to make sure the others would come along with no trouble. York had by this stage killed more than twenty machine-gunners.

Those of his squad who were still alive rose up and helped him disarm about ninety Germans. When the captives were rounded up, York called out to his men to move out. One private expressed his concern that it would be difficult to get the prisoners back to American lines with so few guards. The German officer, overhearing the conversation, asked York just how many men he had, to which the corporal replied, "I got a plenty."

He had the prisoners carry the wounded and pointed his Colt at the major, forcing him to take the head of the column. As they proceeded, two other machine gunners moved into position to fire on the procession. York told the officer to order these men to surrender or he would blow his head off. The prisoners were then marched back through the German front line, York using his Colt .45 against the temple of the German major to persuade him to get others to surrender en route. By the time York and his handful of doughboys reached their own lines he had taken 132 prisoners.

Later, when he reported to the brigade commander, Gen. Julian R. Lindsay, the general commented, "Well, York, I hear you captured the whole damned German army," York corrected him, "Nossir, I only have 132." When he was asked how he accomplished the deed, he replied with characteristic understatement, "I surrounded 'em."

After investigating the action and receiving affidavits from eyewitnesses, a report to General Headquarters stated: "The part which Corporal York individually played in this attack (the capture of the Decauville Railroad) is difficult to estimate. Practically unassisted, he captured 132 Germans (three of whom were officers), took about 35 machine guns, killed no less than 25 of the enemy, later to be found by others on the scene of York's extraordinary exploit and ensured that the 82nd's assault on the railway went through as originally planned. 'The story has been carefully checked in every possible detail from Headquarters of this Division and is entirely substantiated. Altho[ugh] Corporal York's statement tends to underestimate the desperate odds which he overcame, it has been decided to forward to higher authority the account given in his own words. The success of this assault has a far-reaching effect in relieving the enemy pressure against American forces in the Argonne Forest.'"

Awarded the DSC and immediately promoted sergeant, York then personally received his Medal of Honor from Pershing. York was indeed exceptionally courageous but he remained a modest man, later telling Brigadier-General Lindsay: 'Sir, it is not man power. A higher power than man power guided and watched over me and told me what to do.'

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