United States
Alvin York
1887–1964 Corporal, 328th Infantry, 82nd Division; Medal of Honor action, 8 October 1918
Born in 1887 in Pall Mall, Tennessee, one of 11 children in a poor family, York belonged to the Church of Christ in Christian Union and, when drafted in 1917, sought exemption as a conscientious objector. Assigned to Company G, 328th Infantry, 82nd Division, he accepted service after talking through his doubts with his officers. On 8 October 1918, during the Meuse-Argonne offensive, Corporal York was one of 17 men sent behind German lines; machine gun fire killed six and wounded three. His Medal of Honor citation credits him with taking the machine gun nest, with four officers and 128 men. A German archive report of 1929 disputed the scale of his feat. York refused commercial offers, helped found a rural school, and died in 1964.