They were together several hours. At last York said:
"All right; I'm satisfied."
After that there was no reference to religious objection. From the first he had seen the justice of the war. He now saw the righteousness of it.
York's abilities as a soldier were soon revealed. He quickly qualified as a sharp-shooter, both as skirmisher and from the top of the trench. In battalion contest formation, where the soldiers run and fall and fire, "shooting at moving targets," it was not difficult for him to score eight hits out of ten shots, and, with a rifle that was new to him. This, too, over a range that began at 600 yards and went down to 100 yards, with the targets in the shape of the head and shoulders of a man. In these maneuvers he attracted the attention of his officers.
The impressive figure of the man with its ever present evidence of reserve force, the strength of his personality, uneducated as he was, made him a natural leader of the men around him. Officers of the regiment have said that he would have received a promotion while in the training-camp but for the policy of not placing in command a man who might be a conscientious objector.
The "All America" Division passed through England on its way to France and the first real fighting they had was in the St. Mihiel Salient. From there they went to the Argonne Forest, where the division was on the front line of the battle for twenty-six days and nights without relief.
It was in the St. Mihiel Salient that York was made a Corporal, and when he came out of the Argonne Forest he was a Sergeant. The armistice was signed a fortnight later.
The war made York more deeply religious. The diary he kept passed from simple notations about "places he had been" to a record of his thoughts and feelings. In it are many quotations from the Bible; many texts of sermons he heard while on the battlefields of France. With the texts were brief notes that would recall the sermons to his memory. The book is really "a history" of his religious development.
When he would kneel by a dying soldier he would record in his diary the talk he had with his comrade and would write the passages of Scripture that he or the dying man had spoken. It was upon this his interests centered. To others he left the task of telling of the battle's result.
He wrote in his diary this simple story of his fight with the battalion of German machine guns: