Updated on November 6, 2025: This book has been sold.
Full title: Sergeant York: Last of the Long Hunters by Tom Skeyhill, Official biographer of Sergeant Alvin C. York. Published in Philadelphia by The John C. Winston Company in 1930.
Also pictured: The commemorative marker in front of the National Museum of the United States Army.
Historical background
From Tara Ross's blog on Substack
When he received his summons, York was very troubled. He tried and failed to get a “conscientious objector” exemption, and he spent hours talking to one of his commanders about his concerns. In the end, York took leave to ponder the matter. . . .
“I was bothered a plenty as to whether it was right or wrong,” he later said. “I knew that if it was right, everything would be all right. . . . And I prayed and prayed. I prayed two whole days and a night out on the mountainside. And I received my assurance that it was all right, that I should go, and that I would come back without a scratch.”
York was deployed to Western Europe. On October 8, 1918, he found himself with a small contingent of men who were trying to destroy a particularly problematic machine gun nest. The American group worked their way behind enemy lines, taking prisoners as they went. They made it most of the way before the Germans saw them and opened fire. Six Americans were killed immediately. Three were wounded.
Command of the remaining seven men now fell to York. His Medal of Honor citation reports that York responded by charging “with great daring a machinegun nest which was pouring deadly and incessant fire upon his platoon.”
And now his hunting skills would come in handy.
“At first I was shooting from a prone position,” he later wrote, “that is lying down; jes like we often shoot at the targets in the shooting matches in the mountains of Tennessee; and it was jes about the same distance. But the targets here were bigger. I jes couldn’t miss a German’s head or body at that distance. And I didn’t. Besides, it weren’t no time to miss nohow.”
York began to snipe at the Germans, taking them out one by one. “I teched off the sixth man first; then the fifth; then the fourth; then the third; and so on,” he later reported. “That’s the way we shoot wild turkeys at home. You see we don’t want the front ones to know that we’re getting the back ones, and then they keep on coming until we get them all. . . . I knowed, too, that if the front ones wavered, or if I stopped them the rear ones would drop down and pump a volley into me and get me.”
York's Medal Of Honor Citation
U.S. ARMY COMPANY G, 2D BATTALION, 328TH INFANTRY 82D DIVISION
OCTOBER 8, 1918, NEAR CHATEL-CHEHERY, FRANCE
"After his platoon had suffered heavy casualties and three other noncommissioned officers had become casualties, Cpl. York assumed command. Fearlessly leading seven men, he charged with great daring a machine-gun nest which was pouring deadly and incessant fire upon his platoon. In his heroic feat the machine-gun nest was taken, together with four officers and 128 men and several guns."
