Meet the Tennessee Farmer Who Faced Machine Gun Fire

Look, Alvin York was a farmer and a deeply religious man. He tried to avoid the World War I draft because he felt he couldn’t fight. His commander gave him two weeks to wrestle with his faith. York went home to Pall Mall, Tennessee. He read his Bible hard and came back convinced he could fight. You get the real weight of that choice. I tell it plain: he didn’t flip a coin. He argued with himself, and then he chose duty over staying home. When he hit the front in October 1918, things went bad fast. Most of his squad died. York ended up behind enemy lines. He used the same patience he had at home hunting squirrels. He picked off targets with steady aim and calm nerves. He captured about 130 German soldiers. For that, he got the Congressional Medal of Honor and similar awards from France and others. You hear his humility. When asked about heroics, he said he just did what he needed to do. This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy