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Alvin York Quotes

1887–1964 United States

Alvin Cullum York (13 December 1887 – 2 September 1964) was an American soldier of the United States Army, famous as a World War I hero. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for leading an attack on a German machine gun nest, taking control of 32 machine guns, killing 28 German soldiers and capturing 132 others.

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Also known as: Alvin C. York

Random Alvin York quote

15 quotes

God would never be cruel enough to create a cyclone as terrible as that Argonne battle. Only man would ever think of doing an awful thing like that.

I noticed the bushes all around where I stood in my fight with the machine guns were all cut down. The bullets went over my head and on either side. But they never touched me.

Sir, it is not man power. A higher power than man power guided and watched over me and told me what to do.

I didn't want the rear ones to see me touching off the front ones. I was afraid they would drop down and pump a volley into me.

I was sharpshooting. I don't think I missed a shot. It was no time to miss.

The rest surrendered without any more trouble. There were nearly 100 of them.

I had orders to report to Brigadier General Lindsey, and he said to me, "Well, York, I hear you have captured the whole damned German army." And I told him I only had 132.

All the time I kept yelling at them to come down. I didn't want to kill any more than I had to. But it was they or I. And I was giving them the best I had.

We were deep in the brush and we couldn't see the Germans and they couldn't see us. But we could hear their machine guns shooting something awful.

The dead were all along the road… And it all made me think of the Bible and the story of the Anti-Christ and Armageddon.

I had killed over twenty before the German major said he would make them give up. I covered him with my automatic and told him if he didn't make them stop firing I would take off his head next. And he knew I meant it.

No other power under heaven could bring a man out of a place like that. Men were killed on both sides of me; and I was the biggest and the most exposed of all. Over thirty machine guns were maintaining rapid fire at me, point-blank from a range of about twenty-five yards.

The major suggested we go down a gully, but I knew that was the wrong way. And I told him we were not going down any gully. We were going straight through the German front line trenches back to the American lines.

There were considerably over 100 prisoners now. It was a problem to get them back safely to our own lines. There were so many of them, there was danger of our own artillery mistaking us for a German counterattack and opening upon us.

On the way back we were constantly under heavy shell fire and I had to double time them to get them through safely.
There was nothing to be gained by having any more of them wounded or killed. They had surrendered to me, and it was up to me to look after them. And so I did.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Alvin York (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.