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We want to welcome to Veterans Radio today James Carl Nelson, who's an author and historian,
and we're going to talk about his new book, The York Patrol.
Jim, welcome to Veterans Radio.
Thanks very much for having me.
No, it's great to have you on.
We have a certain saucepot in our heart for Melavon or recipients.
Every now and again, it's good to reach back because there's so many of these.
This is, we're going to talk about the real story of Elvin York and the unsung heroes
who made him World War I's most famous soldier.
This is one of those things that people probably have forgotten over time, but we're going
to mention a few things and they go, oh yeah, I remember that.
It starts with people remembering the movie.
The Sergeant York movie with the Cary Grant.
Walter Mato.
Hollywood names that have now passed on.
But actually it was Gary Cooper.
It was Gary Cooper.
Yeah.
The Academy Award for that.
These are names that people have sort of forgotten and along the way they've forgotten who Elvin
York was.
So let's start with, tell us the background of Elvin York.
Well, he was, you know, really, he was the, I hate to say it, but you know, a backwards
Tennessee hit really and his family had been in Centrist County, Tennessee, in Northeastern
Tennessee for some generations and he had basically, he added all together, he had about
two years of proper schooling.
He was kind of a hellraiser in his early days.
Went out and drank and got in fights and shouted people and then he had to come to Jesus'
moment and found the Lord and with the ages of a local pastor, sort of a fundamentalist
church there.
And he went on the straight and narrow.
And then in 1917, his draft number came up and so he was shipped to Camp Gordon in Georgia.
And he really wrestled with the issue of having, he might have to kill a person, another man.
If he goes in the army and goes to France in fights.
And he really wrestled with it.
He wasn't a real complicated guy, but this is one thing.
I mean, that's like the first commandment, thou shalt not kill.
And so they were really actually pretty nice to him concerning was the army back in 1917.
They let him, they tried to hash it out with them as commanding officers, trading verses
back and forth about why he should pick up a gun and why he shouldn't.
They let him go home for 10 days to think about it and he walked in the mountains.
And finally, you know, he was kind of painted as a conscientious objector, which wasn't
really true, but that's his pastor, Rosie or Pike, tried to have him labeled such or
or named such in some letters that he sent.
York always said he wasn't that he just wanted to know what the fighting was all about.
So he finally got convinced or convinced himself that it would be okay for him to pick up a
weapon and use it against fellow man for a greater good, whatever you want to call it.
And so he went back to camp Gordon and then got shipped overseas with the 82nd Division.
Well, it's an it this early years is sort of interesting because as you say, he was
a backwoods, Tennessee, grew up in the Hala Hick.
But it also meant he had a certain skill set that he developed over time that translated
pretty well to the army, didn't it?
Yeah.
Well, his father was quite a hunter and he always took Alvin out hunting, whatever, birds,
bear, whatever.
So yeah, he was really adept with the rifle, you know, sort of a probably a musket style
rifle.
So he became a good shot, legendarily good shot.
I mean, I know they played that up in the movie big time.
He shoots that head off a turkey, but they did have like turkey shoots and things like
that where you would, you know, win money or win a bird or something if you got the best
shot on it.
So yeah, that was a skill set.
And also just being a Roman the Woods, you know, being at home in the woods, hunting,
trapping, whatever it was, that certainly came into play in France because it went over
some pretty rough ground in that fight, especially when they went into the Argonne Forest where
he performed his famous deed.
And one of the things that again, it's kind of easy to forget about what World War One
was really like.
You know, those aren't the current movies that's not currently in the media.
But these were boys, many of them had not been, you know, 100 miles from their hometown
and they find themselves moving around the United States, being put on a ship and sent
over to England and then over to Europe.
This was a real awakening for these guys, wasn't it?
For the Americans, you know, my grandfather was a Swedish immigrant who got drafted and
went back to France and got shot at Swanson.
So for him, it was like he's going back.
He's a little more worldly, came from Sweden.
But for somebody like, yeah, like Alvin York, he'd never left Tennessee.
And so when he went to Camp Corden, this is the first time he'd ever really been out of
the county.
And so, yeah, to go to France and first to England, take the train, go to Hoboken, see
New York City, go across, you know, then you go across England.
It's not like they sent them anybody right to Paris, but he eventually got to Paris.
And in York's case, it really did open his eyes.
He saw, you know, big cities and he saw different kinds of people and it widened his mind to
a large degree so that when he got back to the States, he resolved to improve the lives
of the people in this backwards community.
He eliminated one of both schools, get the kids educated, you know, just because he had
seen that in France and in England, you know.
And in World War I in particular was a part, you know, as all wars are a brutal war.
Yeah, it was, you know, it was classic, the trenches, sending, you know, battalions on
full frontal charges against machine gun positions.
It was sort of like life was very cheap on all sides.
And you know, the United States didn't get in until April of 1917.
Didn't really get fighting until really, you know, April or May of 1918.
But you know, they lost 53,000 men killed in action or to wounds.
Total 116,000 men died in six months.
If you multiply that times eight, it would have been a pretty staggering number, probably
close to a million casualties.
But yeah, it was a tough war and Germany was, until the end, a tough foe.
And you mentioned it, it was these frontal attacks.
This isn't where, you know, you send in the bombers to soften up the hillside.
This was a different war and that sort of sets up this push through the Argonne forest
in, I guess I'll call it, Northeast France, what the Western front that results in Elvin
York's, you know, Day of Infamy.
He's been in Europe for about, what, four or five months at that point.
They're not really all that battle tested.
Walk us through what happens with York's patrol and how they come to this unique situation.
Yeah, in a larger context, Argonne offensive pushed off on, I think, September 25th, 1918,
and they were jumping off, heading north, nine American divisions against the German
defenders.
And in the sector that York wound up in, it started out with a 35th division and they
made good progress then got stymied at a village called Ebsermott, just south of the Romaine
Hills.
The first division took over, they were able to take Hill 240, keep pushing a little bit
more, but then they got stymied by artillery from across the air river to the northwest
that halted their progress.
So a plan was devised.
It was a pretty risky plan, too, to send another division below the first division west and
above the 28th division that was moving up the west side of the air.
And so they did this maneuver where they just sent them straight west across the air, started
trying to clean out the hills of Corne and Chateau-Shearie, and they made some fairly
decent progress.
The first battalion of the 328th regiment and the 327th to the north, but it was bitter
fighting.
And on the morning of October 8th, they decided to send in the second battalion of the 328th
regiment, and that is Alvin York's battalion, and continued to push west.
They're trying to reach this railroad track called the Dachauville Railroad that supplied
that entire area, the German army in that area.
Another complicating fact, it was further to the west in the 77th division sector, there
was the famous Lost Battalion, who were surrounded by Germans.
They had been cut off from the rest of their men, and they were being attacked with the
flamethrowers and grenades, and they were in terrible straits.
So part of the move was also intended to alleviate the pressure around the Lost Battalion.
So 6 a.m. on October 8th in the morning, the second battalion of 328th picks up the fight
west.
They run into a horrendous machine gun fire coming from the front and from their left.
The platoon that York and his mates were in, its leader, Kirby Stewart, was killed during
the advance.
And finally, Sergeant Harry Parsons takes over, and he gathers Bernard Early, the sergeant
of this squad, what do you want to call it, and he instructs them to go to the left over
a hill and try to reduce the machine guns on the left, it's causing so much damage.
And so there were 17 men, and York was one of them, he was a squad leader, one of four,
and they went up this hill, back down around, they didn't even really know where they were.
Eventually they realized they were behind the German lines, and they encountered a couple
of German medics at a stream.
They fired at them, the medics took off running, and basically led them right to this group
of German soldiers who were lolling about eating breakfast preparation for going into
battle.
This is almost accidental, isn't it?
It is they get behind enemy lines and stumble on this encampment of guys who weren't prepared
to fight, as you say, it was breakfast time.
It was mutual surprise.
I would say, you know, the Americans were surprised, the Germans were surprised, the
Germans actually thought they were British soldiers.
I don't think the Germans really, even at that point, realized the Americans were coming
in full force at them.
But yeah, so they had laid their weapons aside.
To some of the Americans in the patrol, they started firing.
The Germans have no idea how big a force this is, they can follow, they know it's hundreds
of people.
Bernard Early instructs them to surrender, the German commander does, he speaks English
because he's spent some time in the States.
And so the set-tells of men in the patrol to go start taking the weapons from the Germans
and lining them up to get them out of there.
And unknown on a ridge just above them in the woods, the Germans who had been firing
out of open plain on Hill 223 at the advancing Americans, turned the guns around and fired
down, hitting some of the Germans, killing instantly six members of the patrol.
It was kind of a, I mean, they, you know, you could say they should have known better,
they should have reconnoitred better, but I think everything happened really quickly.
Three men were also wounded Bernard Early, Otis Merit, you and Muzzy.
And so, what do the men do?
The Germans hit the ground, the men are still there guarding them basically.
Everybody hits the ground and tries to stay out of sight.
I mean, they're just eating dirt, you know, and New York wound up in a favorable position,
sort of in the center and a little forward and was protected by some brush and trees
and also a gaggle of German soldiers that he had been guarding.
So he used them as cover and he would say that whenever he saw a German machine gunner
or whatever pop up his head up, he just touched him off with his rifle first.
It's said he killed 20, 25, I know some of the other men were also firing Percy Beardsley,
we had this French light machine gun called a Shosho, which is usually handled by three
men.
He also said he fired his pistol.
We still don't know exactly how many, but the newman of the fight, the end of the fight
is when this lieutenant Fritz Endres gathers six of his men and comes streaming down the
hill in a bayonet charge basically, pretty much right for York's position.
And he takes out his pistol and he begins firing and he starts with the guys at the back so
that they fired the guys in the front, they know to hit the ground because they could
see the guys fall, start shooting from left to right at the guys coming down the hill
and he his last shot mortally wounds Fritz Endres, shot in the stomach.
And at that point the German commander, who meanwhile had his own pistol and was trying
to shoot York and missed all six shots, finally says, you know, comes up to York, you know,
if you stop shooting, I'll surrender.
And York says, okay.
And he says, what are you guys English?
He says, no, American.
He goes, oh my God, you know.
And so, you know, his name was a Bulmer and Kurt Bulmer.
He was Kurt Bulmer.
And anyway, he didn't know how many Americans were there.
So he surrendered about 90 of his men.
And once again, they start, you know, taking weapons, lining them up, and then they start
marching them out.
And this is the, you know, this all happens in the matter of, you know, what, 15 minutes
or something.
10, 15, yeah, it's really a quick event, which many firefights are, particularly at that
point in time.
And because Lieutenant Bulmer surrenders, not knowing how big a group of Americans are
surrounding them, you know, 90, 100 people get captured.
And York is now in charge of the platoon and has to march these guys back to the American
side and turn these guys all in.
And one of the things, you know, the book is really well written and easy to read, The
York Patrol, The Real Story of Elvin York, and the Unsung Heroes Who Made Him World War
Once Most Famous Soldier by James Carl Nelson.
And the maps are good to help you kind of understand what's going on.
But from a historian's standpoint, the next part is what's fascinating, I think probably
to the reader and maybe to you, about how this kind of gets the life of its own.
He becomes put up for a distinguished service cross, okay, but then there's the media involvement,
which back in the day people was newspapers and magazines, not the Internet.
Talk us through how this kind of catches on and becomes this promotion of America's hero
of World War One.
Well, you know, work got around within army circles of what had happened when they marched
these Germans back out on the plane to the 328th headquarters.
And slowly we got around more and more when York and the others brought this big group
of Germans and other Germans that had been captured by the rest of the company, G and
Company E, were also added to the total, so it came to about 132 Germans.
Marched them back to the headquarters of the 164th Brigade and its commander says, York,
I heard you capture the whole German army and York says, no, I only got 132.
Anyway, work gets around.
And there was the biggest, the biggest impetus for his becoming a legend was a writer named
George Patelow, who had been in France for about a year and a half and had written different
stories about the First Division and then about Bellow Wood.
He heads to France after the war was over, one more time he had gone to the US briefly
for a visit.
And he gets wind of the story and he basically gets, you know, who doesn't want somebody
to be a hero under their command.
By now, York already had been recommended for a Medal of Honor once they figured out
the magnitude of his feet.
And so he interviews York and other members of the patrol and writes the story for the
Saturday Evening Post called the Second Elder Gives Battle, referring back to his Christian
beliefs, his membership of the church.
And that was a big splash.
And that ran on April 26, 1919, before York even got back to the US.
That got picked up by other newspapers.
He became not just a national celebrity, but an international celebrity.
I mean, he was one of the most famous people in the world at that point.
And thoroughly, much of the rest of his life, he lived to be, I think, was about 76 when
he died in 1964, started waning, slowly waning a little bit more.
But he's always in the news.
I mean, during World War II, somebody ghost-rided to the newspaper column for him.
And then, of course, the movie came along in 1941.
And there's a lot of patriotic stuff going on about the brewing World War II.
But yeah, it really gave itself a life of its own.
And York, though, he was delusional with movie offers, books, offers, all sorts of things.
And for 10 years, he didn't do anything.
He said the uniform's not for sale.
But he wanted, he had this big idea to build schools in Fentress County.
He was trying to raise money for that.
He also had a local rotary club that gave him a farm and paid for only half of it.
So he was left with this mortgage that he was basically going to be foreclosed upon.
And he finally realized that he was terrible at the money, by the way.
And finally realized maybe he should try to capitalize on his fame.
There's nothing else to help his projects, these schools and things like that.
Well, I think that's where, as we come up on time limits here, I want to point out a
couple of things that I got out of reading the book.
And I recommend it to everybody.
You point out that he becomes the hero, and I'm quoting from the book that says, York
happened to ride into a fuller fame than most of his brother, Medal of Honor men, because
an American magazine writer gave the world the story of his deed at the moment when the
public was seeking just such a war idol.
And then I want to spring forward to 1940s, or 41 whatever it is, when the movie comes
out and Sergeant York, the movie comes out.
Again a whole new media buzz, if you will, because America was looking for a new war
hero or refanning the flames as they were looking at going into World War II.
Did you intend to draw that comparison, or am I just over reading it?
No, not at all.
In fact, I mean, when the movie came out, I think it was in over the summer of 41, before
Pearl Harbor.
There were young men go see that movie and go down to the enlistment office in Joanne.
And that was part of the intent of the movie.
That's why there's a lot of newspapers saying this is really great, we need some patriotism
right now.
And you're right.
One of the things was, I noted in the beginning of the book that there were 13 different American
soldiers performed actions on October 8, 1918 and were awarded the Medal of Honor.
Why York?
And I think the answer is, his deed was indeed special.
But because of his backstory, because George Pertello came along and wrote him up, I mentioned
in the book that there's a Sergeant Harry Adams with the 89th Division.
He shot through a door and followed some Germans through, and he walked out with 300 men and
he unloaded weapons.
And 300 Germans surrendered to him.
So it wasn't just sheer numbers.
It was everything combined, the timing, the need for a hero, maybe even the need for someone
to say what this war was really all about.
You know what I mean, because it really didn't resolve anything.
The other thing that you really point out in the book, and I think it's an important
lesson for everybody, is just because you have that one heroic day and you get put up
on the pedestal for it, yeah, he was terrible with money.
He had not only bad luck, but bad decisions on almost everything after the war, because
he wasn't an educated man and he was put in the spot of having to deal with offers and
whatnot and book deals.
It was more than he could handle, and yet we continue to hold those heroes up and sometimes
knock them down when they don't meet our expectations.
Yeah, and I mean, he didn't pay the taxes he owed from the receipts from the movie,
which was a significant amount of money.
You know, he owed the IRS into the 50s, and so finally they settled like he was worth
$25,000 at that point or something, and he gave it all to the government and they said,
okay, we're even now.
When he died, he was living off of $300 stipend from a wealthy businessman.
It was like he didn't make a lot of money off of his deed.
If you get it in my book, I think it's almost kind of like be careful what you wish for,
and I don't think he wished for this anyway.
He was kind of what was thrust out of him.
He had no idea, leaving the forest, that what was going to become of his life.
He couldn't have.
And you, and the whole point of the York patrol is to give some, put out some information
about all the other men who survived or died.
Yeah, he couldn't have done it without him.
If they hadn't been there to help them kill these Germans and also to guard the prisoners
that they were, you know, while they were under fire that could have just rushed them
if they had wanted to, but had just annihilated the whole patrol.
Yeah, so I wanted to, my first book was Remain in the Company D about my grandfather's,
you know, and I just wanted to say who these guys were.
You know, they were like half a dozen immigrants from Poland, Russia, Ireland, a real typical
kind of double-boy kind of squad.
And I want to mention one more thing too.
People don't really get that this action, this capture of these Germans here on the
right flank of the German line, actually was a huge turning point in the Aragon fight
and then in the war, which ended a month later.
They allowed their comrades to keep pushing forward west to the railway line.
They cut that off.
This is an October 8th.
On October 9th, the Germans started pulling out from the Aragon because they moved their
right flank back.
So it was really, it's more important than just the capture of these 90, whatever, Germans.
It had a big impact on the war itself.
Let me finish by reading sort of a last few sentences that really struck me in the book.
Because it is about not just York, it's about the other men too.
Quote, both the quick and the dead should be remembered and honored when talk turns
to acting Corporal Alvin C. York.
Each did their duty and plowed into the deep woods on the left flank of their regiments
advance into the Aragon forest, some paying the ultimate price.
Remember their names and their sacrifice.
But remember Alvin York as well, the man who performed his duty was still a determination
and skill and paid for it one way or another for the rest of his life.
Yeah, I guess that's my point.
I really kind of believe that he might have had a happier life, he had just gone back
to Tennessee, unknown, you know, just lived in anonymity like, you know, so many do-boys
did, so many returning soldiers of all wars, dude, my grandfather did, he was a painting
contract for Chicago.
I mean, you know, yeah, it's a question that occurred me when I was doing the book.
Well I want to thank you for your work.
It's a great read.
It really shines a light on a particular event and a particular Medal of Honor recipient,
and we're glad to bring James Carl Nelson, author and historian, who wrote The York Patrol
to our veteran radio listeners.
Jim, thanks for taking some time with us today.
Thanks so much for the opportunity.
I appreciate it.
And I want to thank everybody for listening to Veterans Radio today.
I am Jim Fawson.
It's been a pleasure to be your host.
I'm a Veterans Disability Lawyer at Legal Help for Veterans, and you can reach us at
800-6934800 or legalhelpforveterans.com on the web.
You can follow Veterans Radio on Facebook and listen to its podcasts and internet radio
shows by going to veteransradio.net.
And until next time, you are dismissed.
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