Sergeant York and His People

Sergeant York And His People, by Sam Cowan

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Title: Sergeant York And His People
Author: Sam Cowan
Release Date: August 25, 2006 [EBook #19117]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SERGEANT YORK AND HIS PEOPLE ***

Produced by Don Kostuch

[Transcribers's Notes]
This book complements "History of The World War" (Gutenberg 18993)--a broad view of many events and persons--with a personal and dramatic view of an Ideal American Soldier: thoughtful, brave, modest, charitable, loyal.
A photograph from the national archives accompanies this file.
www.archives.gov/southeast/exhibit/popups.php?p=4.1.11
photo-4-1-11.jpg

Here are some unfamiliar (to me) words.
badinage Light, playful banter.
Chapultepec Hill south of Mexico City, Mexico; site of an American victory on September 13, 1847 in the Mexican War.
condoling Express sympathy or sorrow.
currycomb Square comb with rows of small teeth used to groom (curry) horses.
enured Made tough by habitual exposure.
fastness Strongly fortified defensive structure; stronghold.
kamerad Comrade [German].
lagnappe Trifling present given to customers; a gratuity.
levee Formal reception, as at a royal court.
predial Relating to, containing, or possessing land; attached to, bound to, or arising from the land.
puncheon Short wooden upright used in structural framing; Piece of broad, heavy, roughly dressed timber with one face finished flat.
scantlings Small timber used in construction.
tho Though
[End Transcribers's Notes]

SERGEANT YORK AND HIS PEOPLE
BY SAM K. COWAN

GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS NEW YORK By Arrangement with Funk & Wagnalls Company

[Stamped: 1610 Capital Heights Jr. High School Library Montgomery, Alabama]
Copyright, 1922, By FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY [Printed in the United States of America] Copyright Under the Articles of the Copyright Convention of the Pan-American Republics and the United States August 11, 1910.
To FLOY PASCAL COWAN THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED, WITH A LOVE THAT WANES NOT, BUT GROWS AS THE YEARS ROLL ON

CONTENTS I. A FIGHT IN THE FOREST OF THE ARGONNE II. A "LONG HUNTER" COMES TO THE VALLEY III. THE PEOPLE OF THE MOUNTAINS IV. THE MOLDING OF A MAN V. THE PEOPLE OF PALL MALL VI. SERGEANT YORK'S OWN STORY VII. TWO MORE DEEDS OF DISTINCTION

SERGEANT ALVIN C. YORK
From a cabin back in the mountains of Tennessee, forty-eight miles from the railroad, a young man went to the World War. He was untutored in the ways of the world.
Caught by the enemy in the cove of a hill in the Forest of Argonne, he did not run; but sank into the bushes and single-handed fought a battalion of German machine gunners until he made them come down that hill to him with their hands in air. There were one hundred and thirty-two of them left, and he marched them, prisoners, into the American line.
Marshal Foch, in decorating him, said, "What you did was the greatest thing accomplished by any private soldier of all of the armies of Europe."
His ancestors were cane-cutters and Indian fighters. Their lives were rich in the romance of adventure. They were men of strong hate and gentle love. His people have lived in the simplicity of the pioneer.
This is not a war-story, but the tale of the making of a man. His ancestors were able to leave him but one legacy--an idea of American manhood.
In the period that has elapsed since he came down from the mountains he has done three things--and any one of them would have marked him for distinction.
SAM K. COWAN.

I A FIGHT IN THE FOREST OF THE ARGONNE
Just to the north of Chatel Chehery, in the Argonne Forest in France, is a hill which was known to the American soldiers as "Hill No. 223." Fronting its high wooded knoll, on the way to Germany, are three more hills. The one in the center is rugged. Those to the right and left are more sloping, and the one to the left--which the people of France have named "York's Hill"--turns a shoulder toward Hill No. 223. The valley which they form is only from two to three hundred yards wide.
Early in the morning of the eighth of October, 1918, as a floating gray mist relaxed its last hold on the tops of the trees on the sides of those hills, the "All America" Division--the Eighty-Second--poured over the crest of No. 223. Prussian Guards were on the ridge-tops across the valley, and behind the Germans ran the Decauville Railroad--the artery for supplies to a salient still further to the north which the Germans were striving desperately to hold. The second phase of the Battle of the Meuse-Argonne was on.
As the fog rose the American "jumped off" down the wooded slope and the Germans opened fire from three directions. With artillery they pounded the hillside. Machine guns savagely