You Are There… Graphic History Series.
Historical Backdrop
By October 1918, World War I had been grinding on for over four years, and the Allies were pushing hard to break Germany’s last lines. The Meuse-Argonne Offensive, the largest American battle in history at that time, had begun on September 26. American troops were fighting through dense forest, mud, machine guns, and barbed wire to reach the Sedan-Mézières railway, a vital German supply line. Our subject is Corporal Alvin Cullum York, a tall, red-haired Tennessee mountaineer from Pall Mall, a backwoods marksman raised on a hardscrabble farm. He had fought the draft on religious grounds as a member of the Church of Christ in Christian Union, but eventually decided he could serve. On the morning of October 8, 1918, his unit, the 328th Infantry Regiment of the 82nd “All American” Division, was ordered to silence German machine guns blocking the advance near the village of Chatel-Chéhéry.
October 8, 1918 — 4:30 AM — Forward dugout near Hill 223, Argonne Forest, France
You wake in the dark to the smell of wet wool, kerosene, and earth. Cold mud has soaked through your puttees overnight. You pull your small worn New Testament from your tunic pocket and read by the flicker of a candle stub stuck on an ammunition crate. Outside the dugout, men cough and curse softly. Artillery rumbles far off like distant thunder. You whisper a prayer — for your mother back in Pall Mall, for the boys around you, and for the strength to do what the day demands. Your stomach is empty. Your rifle leans against the dirt wall.
October 8, 1918 — 6:00 AM — Behind the line near Hill 223, Argonne Forest
You squat in a circle of grim-faced men as Sergeant Bernard Early sketches the plan in the dirt with a stick. The objective is Hill 223 and the Decauville rail line beyond it. German machine guns on the ridges have been chewing your division apart. Seventeen men, including you, will slip around the left flank and silence them. You chew on a hard piece of bread, listening, nodding. Your hands are steady. The sky is gray and heavy. Somewhere a rooster crows in a ruined French farm.
October 8, 1918 — 6:10 AM — Open ground at the foot of Hill 223
