Sergeant York and The Great War

This was the diary of Sgt. Alvin York, WWI hero, accompanied by pictures. About 50 years ago I saw the movie starring a very young Gary Cooper. I didn't remember a thing! This read not as exciting as I thought it would be! Mr. York's spelling and grammar (which they kept) was so bad it made it a bit difficult to read--not difficult to decipher, but it made the reading so slow! There was a lot of wrestling with "Thou shall not kill" and the situation in which Sgt. York found himself. 225 pages

Gary Cooper, upon receiving the Academy Award for best Actor in the movie Sergeant York, said he just tried to be Seargent York. This may show Cooper's humility, but after reading this autobiography of Sergeant York, it is easliy seen to be the truth. As I read the book, which is unedited from York's dialect, I could hear Cooper's voice as I read, so well did he imitate York's speech, idiom, and attitude.

This edition, an edited version of Sergeant Alvin York's 1930 autobiography, is aimed at young people. The books starts by depicting life in the hills of Tennessee. It is refreshing to read a book that is unaware of political correctness and tells the story with honesty. In describing a turkey shoot, York says, "We pay ten cents a shot show more and get the turkey if we bust its head."

After he give the reader an idea of what life is like in that part of Tennesee, York talks about his life and how he came to be a Christian and a pacifist. He then talks about the army training camps and then about the fighting in the trenches in France. The editor interrupts the narrative from time to time to add helpful details and accounts of the war that York does not give.

Of course, York spends a lot of time talking about his actions in the Argonne Forest which led to his being the most decorated soldier in World War One. Again he writes with refreshing honesty. He writes, "I told the major to blow his whistle or I would take his head off and theirs too. So he blowed his whistle and they all done surrendered. All except one. I made the major order him to surrender twice. But he wouldn't. And I had to tech him off. I hated to do it. I've been doing a tol'able lot of thinking about it since. He was probably a brave soldier boy. But I couldn't afford to take any chance, and so I let him have it."

This story is about another time and another war. And since it is not filtered through modern sensitivity, it leaves the reader with a picture of what life was like at that time. show less

Account of World War I, Sergeant Alvin C. York of the mountains of Tennessee who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for action in the Argonne Forest during which hie and his squad captured 132 German prisoners. When passages in the book are in the spoken words of Sgt. York they are written in his Tennessee mountain dialect making the book somewhat difficult to read. Sgt. York passed away in 1964 at the age of 76.