Alvin York: The Dark Side of a War Hero

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Pushkin

At 3 in the morning, in the pitch dark and drizzling rain, the men were told that it was time to march.

It was October 8th, 1918.

Company G of the 328th Infantry of the U.S.

Army had been in France for almost five months, sleeping in wet and dirty trenches, enduring German bombardments that rattled their bones and made their ears ring, strapping on masks to save themselves from the suffocating and burning and blinding mustard gas, watching as their comrades got picked off by sniper fire.

And now, in the blackest part of the night, Company G was on the move.

They marched past bombed-out towns and trees that had been burned to stubs.

The road was a maze of trucks and horses, slippery and almost impossible to navigate.

Their wet boots hit the puddled roads in a kind of drumbeat.

The clump of horseshoes keeping time.

The boom and flash of German artillery shells serving as terrifying punctuation.

Deep in the mass of men was Private Alvin York.

He had come to France from a tiny rural town in Tennessee, leaving the county of his birth for the very first time at the age of 29.

Now he was here, wrestling with the fact that he was being sent into a terrible battle.

one that would see certain death for some, if not most, of his company.

He was wrestling with something else as well.

He was a man of intense faith.

He had committed himself to the service of God and the Bible.

He believed wholeheartedly in one of the main tenets of Christianity, thou shalt not kill.

Sniper bullets zip past the muddy and exhausted men as they finally reached their destination, a hill near the French town of Châtel-Jahari.

On the far side of the hill, an entrenched German force waited with machine guns pointed at the fields below.

When they reached the top of the hill, the men of Company G were told, at 6.10 a.m.

zero hour, you'll go over the top, down to those fields, into the sights of those waiting German guns.

At zero hour, the men fixed their their bayonets and they went over the hill into the shooting.

I'm J.R.

Martinez and this is Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage.

The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States, awarded for gallantry and bravery in combat at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty.

Each candidate must be approved all the way up the chain of command, from the supervisory supervisory officer in the field to the White House.

This show is about those heroes, what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice.

What happened on that October day in that valley, that death trap, would give America the hero that they needed at a moment when thousands of their brothers, sons, and fathers were coming home in coffins.

That hero would be Alvin York.

And in the weeks, and months, and years that followed, his story would be polished and shined up till it became a myth.

For Alvin York, that myth would become a way to do good in the world.

It would also be a terrible burden.

It's not your creed or your height, nor the color of your eyes that makes an American.

It's our freedom and equality over the Constitution and our Bill of Rights that makes an American an almighty fighter.

That's Alvin York, you're hearing, a descendant from a long line of fighters.

Both his grandfathers had served the Union in the Civil War.

Keeping the country free ran ran in the family.

Once a man has tasted that freedom, he'd rather die fighting than to do without it for himself and his children.

Alvin grew up in Paul Mall, a tiny mountain hamlet right around where the famous Davy Crockett supposedly wrestled a bear.

Many, many miles from what anyone would consider an actual town.

Alvin's father was a blacksmith, and his mom raised 11 kids.

They all lived in a little cabin that once had been a corn crib.

School was only open a couple of months a year and young Alvin got the equivalent of a second grade education.

When Alvin was in his early 20s, his father died, which meant Alvin was the head of the family.

He didn't take it well, according to his granddaughter, Deborah York.

He became kind of the breadwinner.

He often said the pressures of that led him to drink and become kind of a Hellion.

He drank.

He gambled.

He fought anyone and everyone he could find.

He went, as he put it, hog wild.

As he later said, quote, I kind of thought I could whip the world and more than once set out to do it.

He entered moonshine drinking contests.

He got in a knife fight over a girl.

He shot at things for no good reason.

When he got home from partying, his mother Mary would be sitting up waiting for him, praying for his soul.

She pleaded with him to get right with the Lord.

And on January 1, 1915, he did.

He thought about all the sacrifices she had made for him.

And then, as he put it, quote, I gave up smoking, drinking, cussing, and brawling completely.

and forever.

By all accounts, Albin's salvation was a good thing.

His timing, however, was terrible.

Because at that very moment, Europe was gripped with what would become known as World War I.

In Paul Maul, as in much of rural America, people didn't pay a lot of attention to conflict overseas.

So when Alvin was drafted in 1917, he was horrified.

He later said, quote, I never had killed nobody.

Even in my bad days, I didn't want to begin now.

Yet he was also deeply patriotic.

He was in conflict with himself.

And he often said it wasn't that he was afraid to die for his country.

He didn't want to kill for his country.

That was what he was grappling with.

Alvin wrote to the draft board asking for release from service as a conscientious objector.

His request was rejected once, then twice, and then a third.

and final time.

His church that he belonged to was too small of a sect to be recognized recognized by the government, so they denied his conscientious objector status.

So in November of 1917, Alvin York reported for duty.

He was six feet tall, tightly muscled from his years blacksmithing, hunting and fighting.

In pictures from this time, he has a full mustache and looks uncannily like the actor Benedict Cumberbatch.

Handsome, if a little intense around the eyes.

Alvin joined the 328th Infantry, 82nd Division, the U.S.

Army.

They were known as the All-American Division for good reason, at least to hear Alvin tell it.

The All-American Division was made up of boys from all over the country.

There were boys from the mountains like me and boys from the small towns and cities.

There were Southerners, New Yorkers, Middle Westerners.

as well as boys from the cow country and the Pacific coast.

And there were men whose folks had been Greek, Italian, Jewish, German, Polish, Swedish, and Irish.

Three men stood out to Alvin from the company.

There was Bernard Early, an Irishman and bartender who liked to drink and fight in equal measure.

There was Otis Merithew, 21 years old and an orphan, who had gone under an assumed name to enlist.

Alvin later described those two as, quote, just about the hard, boiledest soldiers I ever knew.

There was Murray Savage, another religious man who became Alvin's closest friend.

Friendship, though, was pretty hard for Alvin to come by.

The guys in Company G knew Alvin had tried and failed to be a conscientious objector, and he was the subject of endless mockery.

It made them doubt whether he'd even be any use to his country on the battlefield.

How could they rely on him to have their backs if he didn't even want to shoot the enemy?

As Merithew put it years later, quote, would he run and leave us exposed?

Would he fight?

I didn't know, and not knowing bothered me.

It was clear that some of the men really didn't like this Bible-thumping, slow-talking rube from nowhere, Tennessee.

The jeering and skepticism surely got to Alvin.

But his days of brawling and fighting were over, at least where his fellow soldiers were concerned.

The Germans would be another thing entirely.

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Bombs fell constantly as the men of the 328th marched towards the Argonne Forest in the northeast of France.

The weather was rainy and miserable, but it was the noise that got to Alvin most.

The airplanes buzzing like hornets overhead, the thunder of artillery.

The roads were blocked by the corpses of horses and men.

It looked like a cyclone had ripped through the woods.

Alvin thought, this must be what Armageddon is like.

By this point in early October 1918, Alvin had been in the Army for 11 months and in France for almost five.

Two important things happened in the meantime.

First, Alvin had his dark night of the soul.

Before his company left for Europe, He had been granted a 10-day furlough to go home and make peace with his role in the conflict to come.

He went into the woods and prayed.

He believed that, quote, no matter what a man is forced to do, so long as he is right in his own soul, he remains a righteous man.

Ultimately, Alvin convinced himself that he wasn't going to France to take lives.

They were there to make peace.

And that was something he could live with.

He returned to the army.

When he did, the second important thing happened.

Alvin's commanding officers discovered that he was an incredibly good shot.

He'd been hunting his whole life.

And back home, bullets were expensive.

So if you were going to use one, it had to hit its mark.

For him, shooting was survival.

You didn't eat if you didn't kill game and put food on the table.

By June, he was put in charge of an automatic rifle squad, and by September, he was promoted to acting corporal.

For a man who believed in that commandment, thou shalt not kill, it was a tense situation.

Even though he'd made his peace, he had a job to do.

Now he and the rest of his division were on their way to what they hoped would be the decisive battle of the war, part of the coordinated drive by the Allies stretching for hundreds of miles.

The Americans were attacking between the Argonne Forest and the Meuse River.

It was insanely difficult terrain, filled with high hills and deep ravines.

The Germans had been entrenched there for four years, stringing barbed wire and building concrete machine gun nests.

The area was important because it held key supply lines, in particular, the Decoville Railway.

As one of the American commanders put it, quote, who wins the railway wins the war.

And that's how, In the wee hours of the morning of October 8th, Alvin found himself marching through wet and mucky roads towards the village of Chatel-Sheheri and a hill they referred to as number 223,

setting out to attack heavily defended territory that none of these Americans had ever seen before.

Their commanders knew the casualty rate would be painfully high.

The climb up Hill 223 was slippery and treacherous.

And even in the pitch dark, the Germans saw them and began firing.

The underbrush of the forest was filled with dead and dying Americans who had tried and failed to advance over the previous days.

Alvin passed them as he crested the hill.

The moment dawn arrived, the men of Company G would race down the forest slope into the fields below.

The Germans had all of the high ground.

The Americans would be out in the open.

No trenches to protect them.

Enemy snipers and machine guns ringing them on three sides.

There were more gunners hidden in the knee-high grass, a killing floor.

There was meant to be a heavy barrage in advance of the men to protect them.

But at zero hour, the barrage didn't come.

The men would have to go forward without it.

They went over the top of Hill 223.

What awaited them, Alvin would later say was, quote, a death trap.

A rain of bullets bullets sliced through the first wave of Americans and then the second lieutenant who was leading Alvin's company was shot in the leg he went down but just for a moment he stood again and led the men forward then he was shot in the head dead

as Alvin put it quote we were cut down like the long grass before the mowing machine at home The men pressed themselves to the ground, hiding in shell holes, trying to regroup and survive.

Sergeant Harry Parsons assumed command.

He called over at Bernard Early, and above the deafening noise of the guns, he laid out a plan.

Frankly, it sounded more like a suicide mission.

Early would take 17 men and divide them into three groups.

One led by Alvin's friend Murray Savage, one by Otis Merrithew, and one by Alvin.

The idea was that each group would creep up the hill to their left and come behind the machine guns, catching them by surprise.

That is, of course, if the Americans weren't caught first.

Early led the men forward.

The trees and brush on the hill provided a screen from the snipers' bullets.

The 17 men went silently, single file, and soon enough, they were behind the German line.

The sounds of screaming men in the fields started to recede.

They moved cautiously, following a footpath in the woods.

Then they started to hear the drum of machine gun fire on the ridge above them.

Suddenly, one of the men called out, Germans!

Two enemy soldiers darted from a hiding place in the brush.

The Americans shouted at them to surrender, and instead, they ran.

The men took off after them.

They chased them until, after a moment, The woods opened up into a clearing.

A clearing filled with German soldiers.

It was between 80 and 90 Germans, and they were eating breakfast.

Alvin later remembered loaves of bread and steaks and jellies laid across the table.

They hadn't seen the Americans.

The German men were hanging out, smoking, preparing, but not yet ready for a day of battle.

Fortunately for the Americans, they weren't close to their guns.

Early told his men to hide in the brush, and then he gave gave the order to fire.

The small group of Americans caught the Germans totally by surprise and now the enemy was falling where they stood.

Some of the Germans surrendered immediately.

They assumed they were surrounded by a far superior force.

Others took off running.

Early told his men to hold fire and approach the officer to the group.

Fortunately, the Germans spoke enough English to follow Early's order.

Line up.

You're being taken prisoner.

Early and Merithew organized the Germans into lines and confiscated whatever weapons they had.

But the Germans saw something the Americans missed.

A signal from the machine gunners on top of the ridge.

Suddenly, all the Germans hit the ground diving for cover.

And a spray of machine gun fire ripped through the Americans.

Early was hit in the arm and sighed at least four times.

He was down for the count, but conscious.

Merithew was shot multiple times in the left arm.

In total, three of the 17 Americans were wounded and six were dead, including Alvin's dear friend, Murray Savage.

He was shot nine times, his uniform cut to shreds.

As Alvin remembered it, quote, thousands of bullets kicked up the dust all around us.

The air was just plum full of death.

Some of the American survivors shot back at the machine guns on the ridge.

Others clustered around the prisoners, training their guns on them.

For one thing, it gave them a measure of safety.

And for the other, if those German prisoners decided to fight back, the Americans would be utterly outnumbered.

And they knew it.

Alvin was slightly ahead of the group of Americans and prisoners.

And when the machine gunners mowed down his friends, he dropped to the ground.

He wasn't focused on what the rest of the men were doing.

All he cared about was clearing those machine gunners off of that ridge.

He never wanted to kill.

But it was a stark choice now.

If he didn't shoot the enemy, all of his friends would die.

He moved into a better firing position.

He waited patiently for the enemy shooters on the ridge to poke their heads up.

They had to raise up to see their targets.

Each time one did, Alvin shot him with dead aim, or as he later put it, touched them off.

He used to tell the story to his son.

And he said, they were spitting bullets all around me.

And he said, I'll touch them off.

When they stick their head up, he'd touch them off one at a time.

Alvin remembered it this way.

quote, that's the way we shoot wild turkeys at home.

You see, we don't want the front ones to know we're getting the back ones.

And then they keep on coming until we get them all.

Alvin remembers that as he shot, he was shouting for the Germans to surrender.

He was, he said, unwilling to kill any more than he had to.

Finally, the English-speaking German officer blew his whistle, a signal for the troops to stop fighting.

Not a hair on Alvin's head was harmed.

He saw it as a sign that God was protecting him.

What remained of the group from Company G gathered the Germans up into two lines, with Alvin at the lead.

They marched back to camp.

Alvin kept his pistol trained on the officer.

As they went back to regimental headquarters, they ran into more Germans, and they were added to the line of prisoners too.

The wounded Americans were taken off to the hospital.

Alvin kept the Germans marching.

As he entered a divisional prisoner camp, he was reportedly stopped by the Brigadier General Julian Lindsay, who said to him, quote, well, York, I hear you captured the whole damn German army.

To which Alvin responded, only 132.

All told, the action had lasted half an hour at most.

That half hour would define the rest of Alvin's life.

For his part in it, Alvin York would be awarded the Medal of Honor.

But he got something else as well.

A myth that he would have to live up to.

Alvin York continued fighting with his regiment in the weeks that followed.

He even got blown into the air by a mortar shell just a few days later.

By the end of the month, nearly 30% of the 328th Infantry were casualties.

But the Meuse Argonne Offensive was as successful as the Allies had hoped.

And on November 11th, the armistice was signed.

By then, Alvin had been promoted to sergeant, and on November 30th, he received his Distinguished Service Cross, the Army's second highest award for valor.

In those days and weeks after the armistice, Alvin was asked to tell the story of the heroic actions of October 8th to rapt audiences of other soldiers.

It was the chaplain of the 82nd Division, who no doubt liked the religious angle, who first asked Alvin to talk about capturing all those Germans.

The men needed something to inspire them in the aftermath of so much cardinage.

It's unclear when the story became entirely focused on what Alvin did that October morning.

Obviously, the other men from Company G were there too.

Early led the ambush and surrender of the bulk of the Germans.

After Early was shot, Merithew insisted that he had taken command and fired at the Germans despite his wounded arm.

The other survivors had kept the prisoners under guard and fired back at the machine guns too.

Alvin later stated, quote, I hadn't time or a chance to look around for the other boys.

I didn't know what they were doing.

But as the story was told, and retold, the actions of that day went from being an extraordinary group effort to an almost miraculous tale of a single soldier.

The hero of this story, of course, was Alvin, a man devoted to peace and kindness, but whose shooting skills were undeniable.

And then, on one incredible morning, the story went, he jumped into action while his fellow soldiers were wounded, unable to shoot or hiding from the enemy gunfire.

He mercilessly picked off each of the German machine gunners one by one, silencing more than 30 guns all on his own.

He was a one-man army.

It was less like a war story and more like a legend.

A lot like the one the USA liked to tell about its own involvement in the war.

Reluctant, peace-loving, ruthless, and ultimately triumphant.

The commanding general of the 82nd Division, George Duncan, started telling everyone the Alvin-only version of the story.

It was picked up by a reporter from the Saturday Evening Post, a magazine with more than 2 million readers back home.

Soon enough, Duncan and another general in the division, perhaps interested in a little reflected glory for themselves, started pushing for Alvin to receive the Medal of Honor.

It was investigated and approved quickly.

On April 11, 1919, Alvin was awarded the medal, and the Alvin-centric version of events was cemented in military history.

Did Alvin believe this version of the story?

Maybe.

After all, it reflected his experience of a moment filled with panic and trauma.

Did Alvin go along with the one-man army story because he wanted to give his commanding officers what they were clearly looking for?

Maybe?

Alvin wasn't stupid, but he wasn't sophisticated either, with a second-grade education and little experience of the wider world.

And this official story had to be fact-checked and researched in order for him to receive the Medal of Honor, right?

Other members of his company had signed official statements supporting this narrative.

Who was he to argue against that?

Plus, The accolades kept rolling in.

He went to Paris for the founding of the American Legion.

It was, safe to say, a far cry from Pall Mall, Tennessee.

He saw electricity, he saw indoor plumbing, he went to all of the major attractions in Paris, the museums, the cathedrals, and universities.

He just tried to process what he had been through, but also to realize how he wanted life to be different when he came home.

By the time Alvin was due to return to the U.S.

in May of that year, Americans had already heard every detail of his story from the Saturday Evening Post and countless newspaper articles that followed.

Alvin sailed for New York on the SS Ohioan.

It pulled into dock, but from the ship, Alvin can see a huge throng of people waiting on shore.

It was daunting, and he couldn't figure out why they were there.

Here's Alvin's grandson, Gerald York.

When he came back, one of the guys asked him, are you not going to get off the ship?

And he said, well, I'm waiting for the crowd to die down.

And they said, well, the crowd's here for you.

We've seen this before with veterans returning from World War I.

Remember Henry Johnson from last season?

News of his exploits also arrived in America before he did.

So not only did he have to grapple with what actually happened in the war, he had to deal with this newfound and not very welcome fame.

Whether he wanted to or not, he had to go to work keeping his legend alive the second he set foot on home soil.

As Alvin made his way down the gangplank, he was greeted by dignitaries from his home state of Tennessee.

There were reporters and cameramen.

There was a ticker-tape parade through the streets of New York City.

Lavish dinners at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.

A visit to the Stock Exchange.

Alvin went from there to Washington, where he got a standing ovation in Congress.

He was offered money to tell his story.

My grandfather, when he came back, was offered about $250,000 in 1919 money to endorse various things.

And he said, I did what I had to do to save my comrades.

And so, no, the uniform's not for sale.

Making money off of killing people felt wrong to Alvin.

And he didn't want a life on the road.

He wanted to go home.

But the newsreels followed him there too.

The second elder in this church, Sergeant York was a conscientious objector during the early stages of World War I.

But when he got into action, he killed 25 Germans single-handed and captured 132, including a major and three lieutenants, and is credited with putting 35 enemy machine guns out of action.

There's that legend of the one-man army again.

Nothing backwards about this backwards boy, America's number one World War I hero.

This is Sergeant York.

Alvin was offered a 400-acre farm, with the Nashville Rotary Club covering the down payment.

It was meant to be a gift from the grateful state of Tennessee, though Alvin would end up on the hook for most of it.

He married his sweetheart, Gracie, in front of thousands of well-wishers presided over by the governor of Tennessee.

But once the crowd of gawkers and fans disappeared, Alvin saw his beloved hometown through changed eyes.

It was being left behind by the world.

So he used his influence to get the state highway department to build an actual road through the hills.

They did.

Today, it's still called the Alvin C.

York Highway.

And most of all, he pushed to educate the local children.

He went around giving speeches to say, look, these mountain children deserve a chance, and they are economically disadvantaged, geographically isolated, and they need opportunities like all Americans have.

He built the York Institute.

By 1928, it was serving more than 700 students.

And it was actually a full-time school before education was mandatory in the state.

And it's still run to this day.

Alvin's fame on the battlefield had allowed him to do good.

It also caused resentment among some of the men who had been there that famous October morning.

Around the 10-year anniversary, a few of the other members of Company G, most notably Bernard Early and Otis Merrithew, began speaking to the press, telling a fuller version of the story.

asking why Alvin hogged the glory for himself.

Alvin's answer was what it had always been.

He loved and respected the men of his company.

Both Early and Merithew were undeniably brave, and he still had no idea what anyone other than him had done that day.

As he wrote, quote, there were others in that fight besides me.

I'm telling you that they're entitled to a whole heap of credit.

It isn't for me, of course, to decide how much credit they should get.

But just the same, those boys were heroes.

In fact, five of the surviving members of Company G had already received silver stars for their bravery shortly after the war ended.

But Bernard Early, who led the charge until he was shot, was not one of them.

Finally, in 1929, after some undeniable foot-dragging from the military, Early received a Distinguished Service Cross.

more than a decade after the action in the Argonne Forest.

By that time, the weight of the one-man army legend had caught up to Alvin.

He was overextended and chronically plagued by debt.

He owed thousands of dollars on the farm he'd been gifted.

He wasn't good with finances, and anyway, his church preached against material goods.

He mortgaged the farm to help pay for a fleet of school buses.

He faced foreclosure, then bankruptcy.

He kept slipping further underwater financially.

His fame had allowed him to give back,

but giving back was taking almost everything he had.

In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal.

T-Mobile knows all about that.

They're now the best network, according to the experts at an OOCLA speed test, and they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage.

With Super Mobile, your performance, security, and coverage are supercharged.

With a network that adapts in real time, your business stays operating at peak capacity even in times of high demand.

With built-in security on the first nationwide 5G advanced network, you keep private data private for you, your team, your clients.

And with seamless coverage from the world's largest satellite-to-mobile constellation, your whole team can text and stay updated even when they're off the grid.

That's your business, supercharged.

Learn more at supermobile.com.

Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the U.S.

where you can see the sky.

Best network based on analysis by OOCLA of Speed Test Intelligence Data 1H 2025.

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United Healthcare nurse Crystal checked in on a patient.

We do a routine call after surgery and I could tell in her voice that she was struggling.

Crystal knew she needed help.

And I knew that this is very serious.

This is like septic.

This is life-threatening.

And she knew just what to do.

And I called the hospital and said she's coming in.

Here are her labs.

And got her the help she needed.

I see my role at United Healthcare as a life-saving role.

Hear more stories like crystals at uhc.com.

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In 1940, Alvin was approached with an offer to cash in on his waning celebrity by selling the movie rights to his story.

The timing was perfect.

Not only was he broke, but he was desperate to achieve one of his dreams, building a Bible school in his community.

He also, at that point, had seven kids, most of whom had sort of hilariously patriotic names.

Betsy Ross York, Woodrow Wilson York.

You get the idea.

Here's his son, Andrew Jackson York.

He decided to want to build a Bible school, which is about a half a mile from here, building it on his old home place where he's born.

And the movie came, he finally agreed to let them do it if they would agree to his terms.

The movie would be called Sergeant York, and it was produced by Warner Brothers, the film studio run by Polish-born brothers Jack and Harry Warner.

The Warners were Jewish and horrified by the rise of the Nazis in Germany.

They saw the movie as a way to remind Americans of the importance of fighting for freedom everywhere.

And that's when some of the controversy around Alvin's legend was stirred up once again.

Otis Merathue wrote to the studio, promising bad publicity if his heroism wasn't portrayed as equal to Alvin's.

But the film went on as planned.

After all, the movie wasn't really Alvin's story.

It was Hollywood's, with invented scenes and composite characters, and Alvin played by Gary Cooper in a performance that would win him an Oscar.

You see, I believe in the Bible, and I'm believing that

this here life we're living is something the Lord done give us, and we got to be a living it the best we can.

And

I'm figuring that the killing other folks ain't no part of what he was intending for us to be a doing here.

The film was a blockbuster hit when it was released in the fall of 1941.

It worked just as planned.

A heartwarming piece of propaganda for a country that would soon find itself at war.

It even helped fuel enlistments.

But once again, it all came at a big cost to Alvin.

He was in the news again.

In one radio interview, he said, quote, although I was credited with wiping out the whole battalion of 35 machine guns, I was only one of 17 who did the job.

I want the whole world to know that without their cool courage, none of us would be alive today.

But let's be honest, people don't love a complicated story.

They prefer a legend.

He couldn't stop it any more than he could have stood in that clearing in the forest and refused to return fire.

Alvin believed that the U.S.

was right to fight against fascism.

In fact, he tried to enlist.

He was too fat and too old, too out of shape, but they made him an honorary colonel and let him go across the country selling war bonds and actually giving speeches to increase morale for the troops going back across.

He traveled the country supporting the war effort and raising money for the Red Cross.

He didn't ask for or receive any payment.

And for the second time in his life, he tried to reconcile his love of the Bible with his patriotism.

It's not an easy thing for a man to make up his mind to go to war.

This is really him, not Gary Cooper playing him.

The man,

not the myth.

I well remember the doubt and confusion I felt about going to the last one.

For war means more than uniforms, marching, and band music.

It means facing death and suffering.

And what's almost worse, it means carrying death and suffering to others.

Thou shalt not kill is written in the Bible.

Here in America, we've always tried to follow that commandment.

Our enemies have denied us the right to follow it.

His financial situation was in shambles, but his North Star remained steady, focused on serving the people of his little mountain community.

He was asked later in life, what do you want to be remembered for?

Your actions in France, being awarded the Medal of Honor, meeting the president.

And he said, I want my legacy to be that I brought education to rural Tennessee.

How do you live with an idealized version of yourself that you didn't have a hand in creating?

Perhaps Alvin understood his myth for what it was.

Something that didn't belong to him.

Really, something bigger.

more abstract, created for public consumption.

There were good things about it.

Just go to Pall Mall, Tennessee for proof of that.

It inspired countless Americans to go back to Europe, this time to fight the Nazis.

It gave comfort to grieving families in the wake of World War I.

A shining example of the fact that our men did great things on the battlefield.

It was a life's work to sustain a myth, and it had its cost.

But just like with his military service, Alvin was clear-eyed about the trade-offs and willing to make them.

Alvin passed away in 1964 at the age of 76 after a long illness.

Otis Merrithew finally received a Silver Star in 1965, a year after Alvin's death.

At his ceremony, he admitted that Alvin was, quote, a hero.

What precisely happened on that battlefield in 1918 is something we'll never know for sure.

One thing is certain.

Alvin York fought valiantly for his country.

He fought for the people of his community.

He fought in the way his faith had taught him to.

For peace.

Someday peace will return to the world.

But before peace is won, all of us must work and fight to our last ounce of strength.

Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage is written by Meredith Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins, Jess Shane, and Suzanne Gabber.

Our editor is Ben Nadav Hoffrey.

Sound design and additional music by Jake Gorski.

Our executive producer is Constanza Gallardo.

Fact-checking by Arthur Gompertz.

Original music by Eric Phillips.

Special thanks to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, Tennessee State Parks, Thomas Wilmer, host of the radio show Journeys of Discovery with Tom Wilmer.

and KCBX, the public radio station servicing San Luis Obispo, California.

If you want to learn more about this story, take a look at our show notes where we have some of the resources we use to put together this episode.

We also want to hear from you, so send us your personal story of courage or highlight someone else's bravery.

Email us at medalofhonor at pushkin.fm.

I'm your host, J.R.

Martinez.

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