Alvin Cullum York

Alvin Cullum York 1887-1964, American soldier known as Sergeant York, b. Fentress co., Tenn. He was reared on a back-country farm in Tennessee. A conscientious objector at the beginning of World War I, he later agreed to fight and was credited with killing 25 German soldiers, capturing 132 others, and taking a hill in an engagement (Oct. 8, 1918) in the Argonne Forest. York received the highest decorations of the American and French governments and became a popular hero. He later founded a school in the Tennessee mountains.

Bibliography: See his autobiography (1928); biography by T. J. Skeykill (1930).

York, Alvin Cullum (1887–1964) U.S. soldier, born in Pall Mall, Tennessee. York declared himself a conscientious objector at the beginning of World War I. Despite his deep religious beliefs, his petition for draft exemption was denied twice, and he was inducted into the army and sent to France with the 328th Regiment of the 82nd Division. York won a Congressional Medal of Honor and a Croix de Guerre during the Meuse-Argonne offensive (1918) for one of the most remarkable individual performances of any war. On October 8, 1918, York, then only a private first class, led a seventeen-man patrol in an attack on a German machine gun nest. Before the day was done, he had single-handedly killed twenty-five enemy soldiers and was credited with capturing 132 more. He was promoted to sergeant and became one of the most celebrated heroes of the war, but he preferred to live out the rest of his life quietly on a farm granted to him by a grateful state of Tennessee.