The impressive figure of the man with its ever present evidence of reserve force, the strength of his personality, uneducated as he was, made him a natural leader of the men around him. Officers of the regiment have said that he would have received a promotion while in the training-camp but for the policy of not placing in command a man who might be a conscientious objector.

The "All America" Division passed through England on its way to France and the first real fighting they had was in the St. Mihiel Salient. From there they went to the Argonne Forest, where the division was on the front line of the battle for twenty-six days and nights without relief.

It was in the St. Mihiel Salient that York was made a Corporal, and when he came out of the Argonne Forest he was a Sergeant. The armistice was signed a fortnight later.

The war made York more deeply religious. The diary he kept passed from simple notations about "places he had been" to a record of his thoughts and feelings. In it are many quotations from the Bible; many texts of sermons he heard while on the battlefields of France. With the texts were brief notes that would recall the sermons to his memory. The book is really "a history" of his religious development.

When he would kneel by a dying soldier he would record in his diary the talk he had with his comrade and would write the passages of Scripture that he or the dying man had spoken. It was upon this his interests centered. To others he left the task of telling of the battle's result.

He wrote in his diary this simple story of his fight with the battalion of German machine guns:

"On the 7th day of October we lay in some little holes on the roadside all day. That night we went out and stayed a little while and came back to our holes, the shells bursting all around us. I saw men just blown up by the big German shells which were bursting all around us.

"So the order came for us to take Hill 223 and 240 the 8th.

"So the morning of the 8th just before daylight, we started for the hill at Chatel Chehery. Before we got there it got light and the Germans sent over a heavy barrage and also gas and we put on our gas-masks and just pressed right on through those shells and got to the top of Hill 223 to where we were to start over at 6:10 A.M.

"They were to give us a barrage. The time came and no barrage, and we had to go without one. So we started over the top at 6:10 A.M. and the Germans were putting their machine guns to working all over the hill in front of us and on our left and right. I was in support and I could see my pals getting picked off until it almost looked like there was none left.

"So 17 of us boys went around on the left flank to see if we couldn't put those guns out of action.

"So when we went around and fell in behind those guns we first saw two Germans with Red Cross band on their arms.

"Some one of the boys shot at them and they ran back to our right.

"So we all ran after them, and when we jumped across a little stream of water that was there, there was about 15 or 20 Germans jumped up and threw up their hands and said, 'Comrade.' The one in charge of us boys told us not to shoot, they were going to give up anyway.

"By this time the Germans from on the hill was shooting at me. Well I was giving them the best I had.

"The Germans had got their machine guns turned around.

"They killed 6 and wounded 3. That just left 8 and then we got into it right. So we had a hard battle for a little while.

"I got hold of a German major and he told me if I wouldn't kill any more of them he would make them quit firing.

"So I told him all right. If he would do it now.

"So he blew a little whistle and they quit shooting and came down and gave up. I had about 80 or 90 Germans there.

"They disarmed and we had another line of Germans to go through to get out. So I called for my men and one answered me from behind a big oak tree and the other men were on my right in the brush.

"So I said, 'Let's get these Germans out of here.' One of my men said, 'It's impossible.' So I said, 'No, let's get them out of here.'

"When my men said that this German major said, 'How many have you got?'

"And I said, 'I got a plenty,' and pointed my pistol at him all the time.

"In this battle I was using a rifle or a 45 Colt automatic pistol.

"So I lined the Germans up in a line of twos and I got between the ones in front and I had the German major before me. So I marched them right straight into those other machine guns, and I got them. When I got back to my Major's P. C. I had 132 prisoners.

"So you can see here in this case of mine where God helped me out. I had been living for God and working in church work sometime before I came to the army. I am a witness to the fact that God did help me out of that hard battle for the bushes were shot off all around me and I never got a scrach.

"So you can see that God will be with you if you will only trust Him, and I say He did save me."

"By this time," he wrote; "the Germans from on the hill was shooting at me. 'Well, I was giving them the best I had."

That best was the courage to stand his ground and fight it out with them, regardless of their number, for they were the defilers of civilization, murderers of men, the enemies of fair play who had shown no quarter to his pals who were slain unwarned while in the act of granting mercy to men in their power.

That best was the morale of the soldier who believes that justice is on his side and that the justness of God will shield him from harm.

And in physical qualities, it included a heart that was stout and a brain that was clear—a mind that did not weaken when all the hilltop above flashed in a hostile blaze, when the hillside rattled with the death drum-beat of machine gun-fire and while the very air around him was filled with darting lead. As he fought, his mind visualized the tactics of the enemy in the moves they made, and whether the attack upon him was with rifle or machine gun, hand-grenade or bayonet, he met it with an unfailing marksmanship that equalized the disparity in numbers.

Another passage in his direct and simple story shows the character of this man who came from a distant recess of the mountains with no code of ethics except a confidence in his fellow man.

Those of the Americans who were not killed or wounded in the first machine gun-fire had saved themselves as York had done. They had dived into the brush and lay flat upon the ground, behind trees, among the prisoners, protected by any obstruction they could find, and the stream of bullets passed over them.

York was at the left, beyond the edge of the thicket. The others were shut off by the underbrush from a view of the German machine guns that were firing on them. York had the open of the slope of the hill, and it fell to him to fight the fight. He wrote in his diary when he could find time, and the story was written in "fox-holes" in the Forest of Argonne, in the evenings after the American soldiers had dug in. Tho his records were for no one but himself, he had no thought that raised his performance of duty above that of his comrades:

"They killed 6 and wounded 3. That just left 8 and we got into it right. So we had a hard battle for a little while."

Yet, in the height of the fight, not a shot was fired but by York.

In their admiration for him and his remarkable achievement, so that the honor should rest where it belonged, the members of the American patrol who were the survivors of the fight made affidavits that accounted for all of them who were not killed or wounded, and showed the part each took. These affidavits are among the records of Lieut. Col. G. Edward Buxton, Jr., Official Historian of the Eighty-Second Division. At the time of the fight Sergeant York was still a Corporal.

From the affidavit by Private Patrick Donohue:

"During the shooting, I was guarding the mass of Germans taken prisoners and devoted my attention to watching them. When we first came in on the Germans, I fired a shot at them before they surrendered. Afterwards I was busy guarding the prisoners and did not shoot. I could only see Privates Wills, Sacina and Sok. They were also guarding prisoners as I was doing."

From the affidavit by Private Michael A. Sacina:

"I was guarding the prisoners with my rifle and bayonet on the right flank of the group of prisoners. I was so close to these prisoners that the machine gunners could not shoot at me without hitting their own men. This I think saved me from being hit. During the firing, I remained on guard watching these prisoners and unable to turn around and fire myself for this reason. I could not see any of the other men in my detachment. From this point I saw the German captain and had aimed my rifle at him when he blew his whistle for the Germans to stop firing. I saw Corporal York, who called out to us, and when we all joined him, I saw seven Americans beside myself. These were Corp. York, Privates Beardsley, Donohue, Wills, Sok, Johnson and Konatski."

From the affidavit by Private Percy Beardsley:

"I was at first near Corp. York, but soon after thought it would be better to take to cover behind a large tree about fifteen paces in rear of Corp. York. Privates Dymowski and Waring were on each side of me and both were killed by machine gun-fire. I saw Corp. York fire his pistol repeatedly in front of me. I saw Germans who had been hit fall down. I saw the German prisoners who were still in a bunch together waving their hands at the machine gunners on the hill as if motioning for them to go back. Finally the fire stopped and Corp. York told me to have the prisoners fall in columns of two's and take my place in the rear."

From the affidavit by Private George W. Wills:

"When the heavy firing from the machine guns commenced, I was guarding some of the German prisoners. During this time I saw only Privates Donohue, Sacina, Beardsley and Muzzi. Private Swanson was right near me when he was shot. I closed up very close to the Germans with my bayonet on my rifle and prevented some of them who tried to leave the bunch and get into the bushes from leaving. I knew my only chance was to keep them together and also keep them between me and the Germans who were shooting. I heard Corp. York several times shouting to the machine gunners on the hill to come down and surrender, but from where I stood I could not see Corp. York. I saw him, however, when the firing stopped and he told us to get along sides of the column. I formed those near me in columns of two's."

The report which the officers of the Eighty-Second Division made to General Headquarters contained these statements:

"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 and killed no less than 25 of the enemy, later found by others on the scene of York's extraordinary exploit.

"The story has been carefully checked in every possible detail from Headquarters of this Division and is entirely substantiated.

"Altho 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 had a far-reaching effect in relieving the enemy pressure against American forces in the heart of the Argonne Forest."

In decorating Sergeant York with the Croix de Guerre with Palm, Marshal Foch said to him:

"What you did was the greatest thing accomplished by any private soldier of all of the armies of Europe."

When the officers of York's regiment were securing the facts for their report to General Headquarters and were recording the stories of the survivors, York was questioned on his efforts to escape the onslaught of the machine guns:

"By this time, those of my men who were left had gotten behind trees, and the men sniped at the Boche. But there wasn't any tree for me, so I just sat in the mud and used my rifle, shooting at the machine gunners."

The officers recall his quaint and memorable answer to the inquiry on the tactics he used to defend himself against the Boche who were in the gun-pits, shooting at him from behind trees and crawling for him through the brush. His method was simple and effective:

"When I seed a German, I jes' tetched him off."

In the afternoon of October 8—York had brought in his prisoners by 10 o'clock in the morning—in the seventeenth hour of that day, the Eighty-Second Division cut the Decauville Railroad and drove the Germans from it. The pressure against the American forces in the heart of the Argonne Forest was not only relieved, but the advance of the division had aided in the relief of the "Lost Battalion" under the command of the late Col. Whittlesey, which had made its stand in another hollow of those hills only a short distance from the hillside where Sergeant York made his fight.

As the Eighty-Second Division swept up the three hills across the valley from Hill No. 223, the hill on the left—York's Hill—was found cleared of the enemy and there was only the wreckage of the battle that had been fought there.

York's fight occurred on the eighth day of the twenty-eight day and night battle of the Eighty-Second Division in the Argonne. They were in the forest fighting on, when the story went over the world that an American soldier had fought and captured a battalion of German machine gunners.

Even military men doubted its possibility, until the "All America" Division came out of the forest with the records they had made upon the scene, and with the clear exposition of the tactics and the remarkable bravery and generalship that made Sergeant York's achievement possible.

Alvin York faced a new experience. He found himself famous.



VII Two More Deeds of Distinction

Alvin was not prepared for the ovations that awaited him. The world gives generously to those who succeed in an extraordinary endeavor where the resource and ability of men are in competition. For intellectual achievement there is deference and wonder, for moral accomplishment there is approbation and love, but for physical courage there are all of these and an added admiration that bursts in such fervor of approval that men shout and toss their caps in air. It has been true, since the world began.

The first honors came to him from his soldier associates. Then the men of other regiments, and the regiments of other nations, wanted to see the American who single-handed had fought and forced a battalion of machine gunners to come to him. The people of France, too, were calling for him.

It was with a military yardstick the soldiers measured the deed, for they knew the fighting competency of a single machine gun and had seen the destructive power of the scythe-like sweep of a battalion of them. The civilian, in doubt and wonder, realized the magnitude of the achievement in visualizing the number of prisoners that had surrendered to one man.

The only contact Alvin York had had to the role of a man of prominence was to stand in line, at attention, as persons of importance passed before him. But when his regiment came out of the Argonne Forest, where its almost unbroken battle had lasted twenty-eight days, he was taken from the line and passed in review before the soldiers of other regiments. Under orders from headquarters of the American Expeditionary Force he traveled through the war zone. As a guest of honor he was sent to cities in southern France. In Paris he was received with impressive ceremonies by President Poincare and the government officials, It was during this period that many of the military awards were made to him, and brigade reviews were selected as the occasions for his decoration.

Against this background of enthusiasm, the tall, reserved, silent mountaineer, in natural repose, moved through the varying programs of a day. As all was new to him, he complied with almost childlike docility to the demands upon him, but he was ever watchful that his conduct should conform to that of those around him. If called upon to speak, he responded; and he stood before the cheering crowds in noticeable mental control. The few words he used did not misfire nor jam. They ended in a smile of real fellowship that beamed from a rugged face that was furrowed and tanned, and always with the quaint mountain phrase of appreciation, "I thank ye!" In the months he remained with the army in France he grew in personal popularity from his unaffected bearing.

The letters written home to his mother during this period show him basically unchanged.

These letters, usually two a week, were the same as those he had been writing all the while. In them were but few references to himself. Even in the privacy of his correspondence with his home, there was not a boastful thought over a thing that he had done, and only the vaguest reference to the homage paid to him, as tho it were all a part of a soldier's life. It was only through others that the mother learned of the honors given to her son in France.

At the beginning of each letter he quieted his mother's forebodings for him, and he turned to inquiries about home. Out of his pay of $30 a month as a private soldier he had assigned $25 of it to his mother. He wanted to know that the remittances had reached her. Two brothers had married and moved away. Henry, the eldest, was living in Idaho, and Albert in Kentucky. He wanted news of them. Two other married brothers, Joe and Sam, while still living in the valley, were not at the old home. He wanted every detail about their crops that told of their welfare.

His most valuable personal possession was two mules. Were George and Jim and Robert, the younger brothers, keeping those mules fat? How much of the farm were they preparing to "put in corn"? Corn was sure to be scarce and would be worth $2.50 by harvest time! Was Mrs. Embry Wright, his only married sister, staying with his mother to comfort her? Were Lilly and Lucy, his little sisters, still helping her with the hard work—of course they were! And in every letter there was an inquiry about the sweetheart he had left behind.

The mother, when each letter had been read, placed it upright on the board shelf which was the mantel of the family fireplace. When a new letter came she took down the old one and put it carefully away. So there was always "some news from Alvin" which was accessible to all the neighbors.

"Will" Wright, president of the Bank of Jamestown, received the first printed story that gave any description of the fight Alvin had "put up" in the Forest of Argonne, and Mr. Wright hurried to Mrs. York with it. With the family gathered around her in that hut in the mountains, and with tears running down her expectant face, she learned for the first time what her boy had done. She made Mr. Wright read the story—not once, but seven times.

America was ready for Sergeant York when among the returning soldiers his troop-ship touched port—the harbor of New York in May, 1919. The story of the man had run ahead—his fight in the forest, that had added to the cubic stature of the American soldier; the artlessness of his life and the genuineness of his character, which as yet showed no alloy; the modest, becoming acceptance of illustrious honors paid to him in France. The people saw in this simple, earnest mountaineer the type of American that had made America. They thought of him as coming from that stratum of clay that could be molded into a rail-splitter and, when the need arose, remodeled into the nation's leader. And quickly and unexpectedly, Sergeant York was destined to show by two other deeds, prompted by an inborn eminence, that the esteem was not misplaced.

In New York and Washington there were receptions and banquets in his honor, and around him gathered high officials of the army and navy and the Government, and men who were leaders in civilian life. It was with impetuous enthusiasm that the people crowded the sidewalks to greet him as he passed along the streets—the worn service uniform, the color of his hair, the calm face that showed exposure to stress and hardships, set in the luxurious leathers of an automobile, surrounded by men so different in personal attire and appearance, marked him as the man they sought. There is something in the man that creates the desire in others to express outwardly their approval of him. At the New York Stock Exchange business was suspended as the members rode him upon their shoulders over the floor of the Exchange where visitors are not allowed. In Washington the House of Representatives stopped debate and the members arose and cheered him when he appeared in the gallery.

There were ovations for him at the railroad stations along his way to Fort Oglethorpe, near Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he was mustered out of service.

And in the midst of all of these mental-distracting demonstrations Alvin York was put to the test. He was offered a contract that guaranteed him $75,000 to appear in a moving picture play that would be staged in the Argonne in France and would tell the story of his mountain life. There was another proposition of $50,000. There were offers of vaudeville and theatrical engagements that ranged up to $1,000 a week, and totaled many thousands. On these his decision was reached on the instant they were offered. The theater was condemned by the tenets of his church, and all through his youth the ministers of the gospel, whom he had heard, preached against it. The theater in any form was, as he saw it, against the principles of religion to which he had made avowal.

Then up to the surface among those who were crowding around him there wormed men who saw in Sergeant York's popularity the opportunity for them to make money for themselves. Some of the propositions that were made to him were sound, some whimsical, others strangely balanced upon a business idea—but back of all of them ran the same motive. The past in Sergeant York's life had been filled with hard work and hardships, the present was new, the future uncharted, but to him there was something in the voices of the people who were acclaiming him that was not for sale.

When he left Fort Oglethorpe for his home, the people of his mountain country, in automobiles, on horseback, upon mules, whole families riding in chairs in the beds of farm wagons, met him along the roadway as he traveled the forty-eight miles over the mountains from the railroad station to Pall Mall, and they formed a procession as they wound their way toward the valley.

Only a few months before, when Alvin had returned home on a furlough which he secured while in training at Camp Gordon, he had "picked up" a wagon ride over the thirty-six miles from the railroad station to Jamestown, and had walked the twelve miles from "Jimtown" to Pall Mall, carrying his grip.

His mother was among those who met him at Jamestown. They rode together, and the last of the long shadows had faded from the "Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf" when they reached their cabin home.

The next morning, while it was not yet noon, the Sergeant and Miss Gracie Williams met on "the big road" near the Rains' store. Those sitting on the store porch—and there was to be but little work done on the farms that day—saw the two meet, bow and pass on. Pall Mall is but little given to gossip. Yet there was a strange story to be carried back to the woman-folk in the homes in the valley and on the mountainsides.

Only the foxhound, that moved slowly behind his newly returned master, knew of an earlier meeting that day between Sergeant York and his sweetheart, and of a walk down a tree-shaded path that had given the hound time to explore every fence-rail corner and verify his belief that nothing worth while had been along that road for days.

But a quiet, uneventful life in the valley was not to return to Sergeant York.

The Sunday following was Tennessee's Decoration Day. From the mountains for miles around the people came to Pall Mall. During the ceremonies, while the flowers were being placed upon the graves in the little cemetery, they wanted Alvin to talk to them. He and Gracie were seated in the empty bed of an unhitched wagon down at the edge of the grove of forest trees that surrounds the church. He came to the cemetery, and his talk was the untrammelled outpouring of his heart for all that had been done for him. The spirit of the day, with his own people around him, his experiences and the changes that had come into his life since the last decoration services he had attended there, seemed to move him deeply, and here was first displayed a power of oratory which he was so rapidly to develop.

The people of Tennessee began to gather gifts for him before he left France, and the Tennessee Society of New York City entertained him when he left his troop-ship. The people of the South had always remembered with added reverence that Robert E. Lee had declined to commercialize his military fame, while some of the other generals of the Confederacy had sacrificed their reputations upon the altar of expediency. So when it became known that Sergeant York, with no knowledge of history to guide him, but acting from principle, had refused to capitalize the record of the few brief months he had spent in the service of his country, there was nothing within the gift of the people he could not have had.

His welcome home by the State of Tennessee was to be held at the capital on June 9th. But Sergeant York, before he went to war, had given an option—one over which he was showing deep concern. His mountain sweetheart was to "have him for the taking when he got back." So it was mutually—amicably—arranged that the foreclosure proceedings should take place in Pall Mall on June 7th, and their bridal tour would be to Nashville.

It was an out-of-door wedding so that all of the guests in Pall Mall for that day could be present, and they came not only from all parts of Tennessee but from neighboring States. The altar was the rock ledge on the mountainside, above the spring, under the beech trees that arched their boughs into a verdant cathedral dome. It had been their meeting-place when he was an unknown mountain boy and she a golden-haired school-girl. As the sunlight flickered on the trunks of those trees it showed scars of knife carvings that carried the dates of other meetings there.

The swaying boughs were draped with flags and flowers. The ceremony was performed by Governor Roberts of Tennessee, assisted by Rev. Rosier Pile, the pastor of the church in the valley, and Rev. W. T. Haggard, chaplain-general of the Governor's staff. The bridesmaids were Miss Ida Wright, Miss Maud Brier and Miss Adelia Darwin, and Sergeant York's best man was Sergeant Clay Brier, of Jamestown. Their friendship had been proved upon the fields of France. The wedding march was the wind among the laurels and the pines.

The "Welcome Home" for him, at Nashville, by the people of Tennessee, will long be remembered among the public demonstrations of the State. Tennessee has always been proud of the fact that the conduct of her sons in those times when the nation went to war had entitled her to the name of "The Volunteer State." That one of her sons should come back from the World War, having done, in the sum of its accomplishment, that which the Commander of the Armies of the Allies called the greatest feat of valor, while fighting solely on his own resources, of any soldier of all of the armies of Europe, made the welcome one that sprang joyously from the hearts of the people. And that this soldier, while poor and still facing the possibility of a life filled with the deprivation of poverty, with no assurance but the continued labor of his hands, should turn down the offers of fortunes because, to him, they were prompted by a motive that was unworthy—opened the very inner sanctuary of their hearts and the people came with gifts, that he should sustain no loss of opportunity and should never be in need. The offerings were not in money. They were presents from the people. There were fertile acres that he could till, as that was his selection of the life he wished to follow. There was a model, modern house in which he could live, and furnishings for it. There were blooded fowls and stock and farming implements, down to the files for his scythe. The donors were individuals, organizations and communities. Waiting for him was the state's medal which bears the device "Service Above Self." He was appointed a member of the Governor's staff and upon him was conferred the rank of Colonel. This was the wedding trip of Sergeant York and his bride.

To Nashville, in the bridal party, to see and hear the honors to be paid her son went Mrs. York, the mother. It was the first time she had ever seen a railroad-train. And, now, it was Mrs. York's turn. She, too, faced a battalion. Wearing her calico sunbonnet she came suddenly upon the gorgeous social battalion—so fully equipped with the bayonets of class and the machine guns of curiosity. And she captured it! As her son had never seen the man or crowd of men of whom he was afraid, she, with her philosophy of life, looked upon everyone as worthy of friendship and the meeting with them a pleasure and not an occasion for disconcertment. If they approached her with a greeting of wit, her answer was quick and gentle, and as playful as a mountain stream. If their mood was serious, she immediately impressed them with her frankness and her common sense. She went everywhere the program provided, and enjoyed every moment of it. As she was preparing to return home her appreciation was expressed in her declaration that she "intended to come again, when she could go quietly about and really see things—when policemen would not have to make way for her."

Alvin was beginning life anew, decorated with the Distinguished Service Cross and the rare Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest award of his country to a soldier; the Medaille Militaire and the Croix de Guerre with Palm, of France; the Croca di Guerra, of Italy; the War Medal of Montenegro; the Legion of Honor; medals for gallantry from Tennessee and the Methodist Centenary, and the Commonwealth of Rhode Island was beckoning to him, to decorate him with the medal the State's legislature had voted. There were the gifts the people of Tennessee had given him, and others that began to come from all sections of the Union. The mountaineers of the State of Georgia clubbed together and sent a remembrance—and presents came from the far West.

Several cities offered him a home if he would come to live among their people. Communities, wanting him, selected their most desirable farming sites and tendered them. But the "Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf" was home to him, and while in France he had said he wished to live "nowhere but at Pall Mall." So the Rotary Clubs, headed by the Nashville organization, raised the fund for the "York Home" through public subscription, and there has been given to him four hundred acres of the "bottom land" of the Valley of the Wolf and one of the timbered mountainsides—land that had been homesteaded and first brought into cultivation by "Old Coonrod" Pile, his pioneer ancestor—land that had remained in the possession of his family until lost in the vicissitudes of the days following the Civil War.

As his residence on his new farm was yet to be built for him, he carried his bride back to the valley and to the little two-room cabin that had been his mother's and his home.

It was impossible for Sergeant York to accept all of the invitations he received to visit cities and address conventions, and he had often to disappoint delegations who traveled the long, rough mountain road to urge in person his acceptance. And he could not, with a slow-moving pen upon a table of pine, answer all the communications that came. Before the war two letters for him in half a year was an occasion worthy of comment. Now each day, over the mountains upon a pacing roan, the postman came, and the mail-pouches, swung as saddle-bags, swayed in unison with the horse's step. Most of the letters were for the York home.

The public mind pays tribute to its heroes in ways that are odd. In the growing mass of mail that was kept in a wide wooden box under the bed—letters that in number "had got away" from the Sergeant's ability to answer—there were displayed many mental idiosyncrasies and an abundance of advice, and there were many strange requests. Some of them were pathetic begging letters, as tho the Sergeant were a rich man; some came from prison-cells, asking his influence to secure a pardon; some from those still desirous of securing a business partnership with him. Among them were even belated matrimonial proposals, describing the writers' attractive qualities. These the big Sergeant teasingly turned over to the golden-haired girl who, herself, had come but recently into that home, and they may safely be classed among those letters the Sergeant could never answer.

While he was at home, which was now only for brief intervals between trips in answer to the invitations he had accepted, it was noted that he was unusually quiet. Often he would sit for an hour or more upon the door-step, looking out past the arbor of honeysuckle, over the acres of land that had been given him, gazing on to the mountains. But he kept his own counsel. Some of those who lived in the valley, who saw him sitting, thinking, wondered if there had come a longing into Alvin's heart to be out in the world again.

But his problem was far from that. He had asked himself two questions: "What was the great need of the people who live far back in the mountains?" "What—since the world had been so generous to him, and lifted from his shoulders the trials of living—could he do for his people?" He was trying to answer them. Subconsciously, a great and a genuine appreciation of all that had been done for him was pushing him onward.

Unaided, he had solved the first. It was education. How keenly, within the few months that had passed, had he realized his own need!

But at that time he did not appreciate how rapidly he was building for himself a bridge over that shortcoming.

The second problem he found more difficult. He recognized he could do a greater good and his efforts would be more lasting and far-reaching if he proved to be an aid to the younger generation. In his effort to reach a practical plan he went as far as he could, with his limited knowledge of organization, before he sought counsel.

Then he asked that no other gifts be made to him, but instead the money be contributed to a fund to build simple, primary schools throughout the mountain districts where there were no state or county tax appropriations available for the purpose. Of the fund, not a dollar was to be for his personal use, nor for any effort he might put forth in its behalf.

So again the form of Sergeant York rose out of the valley, above the mountains, and the sunlight of the nation's approval fell upon it. Men of prominence volunteered to aid him in his efforts for the children of the mountains, and the result was the incorporation of the York Foundation, a non-profit-sharing organization, that is to build schoolhouses and operate schools. Among the trustees are an ex-Secretary of the United States Treasury, bishops of the churches, a state governor, a congressman, bankers, lawyers and business men.

[Footnote: The Trustees of the York Foundation are: Bishop James Atkins, Methodist Episcopal Church, South; W. B. Beauchamp, Director-General of the Methodist Centenary, Nashville, Tenn.; George E. Bennie, President, Alexander Bennie Co., Nashville, Tenn; C. H. Brandon, President, Brandon Printing Co., Nashville, Tenn.; P. H. Cain, Cain-Sloan Co., Nashville, Tenn.; Joel O. Cheek, President, Cheek-Neal Coffee Co., Nashville, Tenn.; James N. Cox, Gainesboro Telephone Co., Cookeville, Tenn.; Dr. G. W. Dyer, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn.; Judge F. T. Fancher, Sparta, Tenn.; Edgar M. Foster, Business Manager, "Nashville Banner," Nashville, Tenn.; Judge Joseph Gardenhire, Carthage, Tenn.; T. Graham Hall, Business Man, Nashville, Tenn.; Hon. Cordell Hull, Chairman of Democratic National Committee and former Congressman from York's district; Lee J. Loventhal, Business Man, Nashville, Tenn.; Hon. William G. McAdoo, former secretary of the United States Treasury, New York City; Hon. Hill McAllister, State Treasurer, Nashville, Tenn.; J. S. McHenry, Vice-President, Fourth & First National Bank, Nashville, Tenn.; Dr. Bruce R. Payne, President, George Peabody College for Teachers, Nashville, Tenn.; Rev. R. C. Pile, Pall Mall, Tenn.; T. R. Preston, President, Hamilton National Bank, Chattanooga, Tenn.; Hon. A. H. Roberts, former Governor of Tennessee, Nashville, Tenn.; Bolton Smith, Lawyer, Memphis, Tenn.; Judge C. E. Snodgrass, Crossville, Tenn.; Dr. James I. Vance, First Presbyterian Church, Nashville, Tenn.; Hon. George N. Welch, former State Commissioner of Public Utilities, Nashville, Tenn.; F. A. Williams, Farmer, Pall Mall, Tenn.; S. R. Williams, Farmer, Pall Mall, Tenn.; W. L. Wright, President, Bank of Jamestown, Pall Mall, Tenn., and Sergeant Alvin C. York.]

The fund is already a substantial one, steadily growing, and success is assured.

In connection with each school is to be land to be tilled by the students as a farm, and besides providing instruction in agriculture, the farm is to aid in the support of the school, and no child of the community is to miss the opportunity to attend through inability to pay the tuition charge. As each unit becomes self-supporting, another school is to be established in a new district.

In this new endeavor, Alvin wished to do what he could to shield the boys now at play among the red brush upon the mountainsides from being compelled to say, after they had grown to young manhood, what he himself had been forced to confess: "I'm just an ignorant mountain boy."

And he is making rapid strides of progress for himself. I saw him enter the great banquet room of a leading hotel in one of the country's largest cities. The hall was filled with men and women of refinement and culture. As Sergeant York and his young wife entered, the banqueters arose and cheered them. This demonstration was a welcome to "Sergeant York, the soldier."

He paused, with a smile of appreciation as he looked over the vast assemblage, and he bowed with a grace and dignity far beyond that which was expected of him from what his audience had read and heard. Then without turning his head, he reached for the hand of his bride and led her to the speakers' table upon a raised platform. And he was again to bring that assemblage to its feet and fill that hall with its cheers. This time it was for Alvin York, the man—as he talked to them about the boys of the mountains.

Three days afterward, he entered the store of John Marion Rains at Pall Mall. As all the chairs and kegs of horseshoes were occupied, he put his hands behind him, swung himself to a place of comfort upon the counter, and took his part in the battle of wit as the firing flashed amid the tobacco smoke. Pall Mall was home, and there he permitted no distinction between individuals.

This has wandered far afield as a biography of Sergeant York. It is but a story of the strength and the simplicity of a man—a young man—whom the nation has honored for what he has done, with something in it of those who went before and left him as a legacy the qualities of mind and heart that enabled him to fight his fight in the Forest of Argonne. The biography no doubt will be written later. He has not planned for the long years that lie ahead, but is following after a principle with a force that can not be deflected or checked. The future alone will tell where this is to lead him. This is really a story of but two years of his life—the period of time that has elapsed since Alvin York first found himself—a period in which he has done three things, and anyone of them would have marked him for distinction. He fought a great fight, declined to barter the honors that came to him, and using his new-found strength he has reached a helping hand to the children of the mountains who needed him.

PALMAM QUI MERUIT FERAT! [Let him bear the palm who has deserved it!]

THE END