The York Patrol by James Carl Nelson

Author:James Carl Nelson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: William Morrow
Published: 2020-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

THE ALL-AMERICANS OF the 82nd Division had done their job. They had attacked west into the Argonne Forest and attained the Decauville railway, cleaving the German defense in two and forcing the enemy’s retreat. They had effected the relief as well of the Lost Battalion, and then pushed the German line north of the Aire.

And it would be difficult to argue that any individual soldier among the All-Americans had done more than Acting Cpl. Alvin York and the men with him—Bernard Early, Percy Beardsley, Thomas Johnson, Michael Sacina, Feodor Sok, Mario Muzzi, George Wills, Otis Merrithew, plus the six men who lay in temporary graves in that forest—to break the German line, and ultimately the German will.

On the morning of November 1, 1918, the last phase of the Meuse-Argonne offensive began. Seven American divisions—from left to right the Seventy-Eighth, Seventy-Seventh, Eightieth, Second, Eighty-Ninth, Ninetieth, and Fifth—went over the top, aiming for the Meuse River.

More heights remained to be overrun, and men once more slogged through fog and driving, cold November rains, many chilled and feverish, and most utterly miserable and war-weary.

By then, however, the German will to resist was crumbling. The German military mastermind Erich Ludendorff, himself tired of the war, had resigned on October 26. Turkey left the war on October 31, Austria-Hungary on November 4. Kaiser Wilhelm fled Berlin on October 30, and the Channel ports were in Allied hands.

The end of the war was nigh, and an Armistice was discussed on all sides. Gen. John Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force, instead argued for carrying the war out to its bitter end and forcing Germany to surrender unconditionally. If that couldn’t be obtained, he was agreeable, he wrote, to an Armistice with such harsh terms that Germany would never be able to make war again.

By November 1, the war was also over for Alvin York, Joseph Konotski, Percy Beardsley, and the eight other survivors of the York Patrol, who had certainly done their bit to hasten the demise of the German defenses in the Argonne.

On November 1, they and the rest of the men of the Eighty-Second Division were relieved from their muddy, water-logged funk holes by the Seventy-Seventh and Eightieth Divisions, which would carry the fight north to the Meuse River, fighting alongside the Seventy-Eighth Division and the Second Division, whose marines had gained everlasting glory at Belleau Wood almost five months before.

York, writing in his diary, only nonchalantly marked the end of his part in the war. “Argonne Forest,” Alvin York would write in his diary upon being relieved. “So we came out of the lines to a germans rest camp and there we got something to eat.”

He also got some new stripes—those of a sergeant. A ten-day leave followed, and York and some pals took the train to Aix-les-Bains, far to the south of the Argonne Forest in the foothills of the French Alps. York went to church, and visited baths built by Romans; he also popped over the border into Italy for a look.

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