commander has reported to me your exceedingly gallant
conduct during the operations of your division in the Meuse-Argonne
Battle. I desire to express to you my pleasure and commendation for the
courage, skill, and gallantry which you displayed on that occasion. It
is an honor to command such soldiers as you. Your conduct reflects great
credit not only upon the American army, but upon the American people.
Your deeds will be recorded in the history of this great war and they
will live as an inspiration not only to your comrades but to the
generations that will come after us."

General John J. Pershing in pinning the Congressional Medal of Honor
upon him--the highest award for valor the United States Government
bestows--called York the greatest civilian soldier of the war.

Marshal Foch, bestowing the Croix de Guerre with Palm upon him, said his
feat was the World War's most remarkable individual achievement.

A deed that is done through the natural use of a great talent seems to
the doer of the deed the natural thing to have done. A sincere response
to appreciation and praise, made by those endowed with real ability,
usually comes cloaked in a genuine modesty.

At his home in the "Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf," after the
war was over, I asked Alvin York how he came to be "Sergeant York."

"Well," he said, as he looked earnestly at me, "you know we were in the
Argonne Forest twenty-eight days, and had some mighty hard fighting in
there. A lot of our boys were killed off. Every company has to have so
many sergeants. They needed a sergeant; and they jes' took me."

In the summer of 1917 when Alvin York was called to war, he was working
on the farm for $25 a month and his midday meal, walking to and from his
work. He was helping to support his widowed mother with her family of
eleven. When he returned to this country to be mustered out of service
he had traveled among the soldiers of France the guest of the American
Expeditionary Force, so the men in the lines could see the man who
single-handed had captured a battalion of machine guns, and he bore the
emblems of the highest military honors conferred for valor by the
governments composing the Allies.

At New York he was taken from the troop-ship when it reached harbor and
the spontaneous welcome given him there and at Washington was not
surpassed by the prearranged demonstrations for the Nation's
distinguished foreign visitors.

The streets of those cities w