“If all this had been on top of the earth,” my mountaineer guide declared, “destructuous man would have laid it waste long ago. Look about,” he urged. “There’s every sort of varmint by the Master’s Hand, from a ’possum to an elephant, and even the likeness of the American flag.”
Outside the caves which lie under three states, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, you look down upon the town of Cumberland Gap to the right of which are remains of Civil War trenches.
“There are wonders no end to be seen around this country,” mountain people say, “and things maybe never thought of anywhere else.”
Perhaps that is not an unlikely statement, considering the stirring event a few years ago that took place at Dayton, Tennessee, when Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan argued the question of evolution pro and con. Or when you know that at the little town of Model across the Tennessee River from Calloway County, Kentucky, a quiet minister by the name of James M. Thomas, prints his little paper from his own handmade type on his own handmade press. It is a tiny paper called The Model Star and it reaches the far corners of the earth. Most of its content is of a religious nature, though there are a few advertisements. While it brings the minister little in financial return he finds his recompense in the enthusiasm of readers scattered from Pitcairn Island to Cairo, Bucharest, and Shanghai.
Tennesseans have a way of doing unusual things. And they are a religious people, especially those who have spent their lives in mountain coves. There’s Sergeant York. He admits he sowed his wild oats in his youth. “We drinked and gambled,” he says, “and we cussed and fit.” But when this giant mountaineer’s eyes were opened to the evil of his ways, after the death of his father, Alvin C. York forsook his old habits once and for all. When the World War came he declared himself a conscientious objector. His church—the Church of Christ in Christian Union—held that war was a sin. York had a terrific struggle deciding his duty between God and patriotism. He loved his God. He loved his country. He made every effort to obtain exemption because he firmly believed it a sin to fight and to kill, even for the sake of one’s country. But for all that, he could not gain exemption. Whereupon York went alone into the mountains and fervently prayed for guidance. When the voice of God pointed the way he followed, with the result that all the world knows.
“You might call my escape from death purely a matter of luck, but I know different,” he says. “It was faith in God that kept me safe. I prayed that day alone on the mountain and asked Him to bring me back home alive and well and He did. I knowed He would. That’s what faith in God will do for a man.”
Alvin York is a true mountain man. He seeks neither praise nor self-glory. Upon returning from the World War he spurned a fortune in pictures and vaudeville appearances, refusing steadfastly to commercialize his war record. And with the same determination he declined to sell out to small politicians who tried to use him when he undertook to raise funds to start a school for mountain boys and girls. Knowing the need of the young people of his Tennessee mountains, York has made his life purpose to give them “a heap o’ larnin’.” This he has continued to do year after year through the York Agricultural School near Jamestown, Tennessee. Mountain folk call it Jimtown. Now there’s a highway running through the town called York Highway.
Sergeant York likes to sing. He “takened lessons in Byrdstown,” and being especially fond of singing hymns, he acquired the name of “The Singing Elder.” He teaches a Sunday School class and did even before he went to war. He admits smilingly that his fight with “small politicians” who wanted to use him and his war record was a worse battle than that of the Argonne Forest. Alvin York married his childhood sweetheart, Gracie Williams, upon returning from war, and the Governor of Tennessee performed the ceremony at Pall Mall where the mountain hero was born. He is the father of seven children. For some time he served as project superintendent at a CCC camp in the Tennessee mountains. He is president emeritus of the school he founded and has written his life’s story in a simple, straightforward way, with never the slightest hint of boastfulness.
When it came to putting in parts of official records and commendation of his heroism, Sergeant York did so reluctantly. “But it has to be put in, I reckon.” He finally had to give in.
Sergeant York’s achievement, capturing single-handed 132 Germans, killing 20 others, and destroying 35 machine-gun nests stands unparalleled.