Sept. 2, 1964 - Sergeant Alvin C. York (pictured in 1918), the reluctant World War I infantryman who became an American legend, died this morning at Veterans Administration Hospital in Nashville, Tenn., after a long illness. He was 76 years old.
On Oct. 8, 1918, during the final offensive of the war, the Tennessee mountaineer whose religious convictions at first kept him from fighting, single-handedly captured or killed an entire German machine-gun battalion.
Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the commander of Allied forces in World War I, called York’s exploit in the Argonne Forest “the greatest thing accomplished by any private soldier of all the armies of Europe.” General John J. Pershing called him “the greatest civilian soldier of the war.”
The red-haired, freckle-faced York would merely blush and say it was “nothin’.”
“I wanted to do the best I could,” was his usual explanation.
Thereafter his life became a tangle of parades, political appearances, and unpaid taxes. But the sergeant’s modesty and devotion to his people in the steep Cumberland hills kept him clear of the hero’s life and added to the legend.
The old soldier, winner of the Medal of Honor and nearly 50 other decorations, was brought to the hospital on Saturday from his home in Pall Mall, 120 miles northeast of Nashville. His illness, the 11th in the last two years, was described as an acute internal infection. He had been in a coma since Sunday.
This afternoon, an American Legion Guard of Honor stood by as the doughboy’s body was taken to a hearse for the trip back to Jamestown, the seat of his home county. Mrs. Gracie York, the girl he married when he came back a hero from the war, accompanied the body.
Sergeant York’s death followed by one day the death of another hero of the Argonne Forest, Colonel Sterling L. Morelock, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for wiping out a series of German machine-gun nests.
In Washington, President Johnson issued a statement saluting the sergeant:
“Sgt. Alvin Cullum York has stood as a symbol of American courage and sacrifice for almost half a century. His valor above and beyond the call of duty, in World War I, was recognized with the nation’s highest award, the Medal of Honor. As the citizen-soldier hero of the American Expeditionary Forces, he epitomized the gallantry of American fighting men and their sacrifices in behalf of freedom.
“As Commander in Chief, I know that I express the deep and heartfelt sympathy of the American people to his wife and family.”
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