alvin york

COOKEVILLE, Tenn. �- What does the Argonne Forest region of northern France have in common with Tennessee's Cumberland Plateau?

The two areas are linked by the World War I heroics of Sgt. Alvin C. York, a native of Fentress County's Pall Mall community whose marksmanship helped him and his Company G of the 328th Infantry, 82nd Division, kill 25 German enemy troops and capture 132 more in the 1918 battle of Meuse-Argonne.

Tennessee Tech University historian Michael Birdwell and Middle Tennessee State University geographer Tom Nolan announced last year their finding of what they believe to be the exact location near the French village of Chatel-Chehery where those heroics took place.

And this past Saturday, Tennessee representatives ― including TTU President Bob Bell ― traveled to the region for a ceremony that recognizes Pall Mall and Chatel-Chehery as sister villages linked by that history.

"Both Pall Mall and Chatel-Chehery played crucial roles in forging the character of a hero they can proudly call their own," says a proclamation approved by the Tennessee General Assembly and signed by Gov. Phil Bredesen and presented by Bell at the celebration.

"This was a great opportunity to build new relationships, new alliances and hopefully to cultivate new and continuing friendships," Bell said. "It was also a chance to celebrate our similarities.

"From the perspective of the university, I'm very proud of the research and scholarship of Dr. Birdwell," he continued.

According to an account by Jim Tanner in the Oct. 7 issue of the Chattanooga Times Free Press, many residents of the small village ― whose population numbers fewer than 200 ― turned out for the Saturday morning celebration, which was held on the steps of the town hall, in front of a stone monument and plaque honoring Sgt. York.

The scene was decorated with both French and American flags, and the ceremony included the national anthems of each country, said Tanner's report.

"This is important [for our village] because we have found again the memory of Sgt. York," Chatel-Chehery Mayor Roland Destenay said through an interpreter.

Because the village did not exist at the time of the 1918 battle, it wasn't until about 20 years ago before an awareness of the region's World War I history began to develop, Destenay said.

Following the ceremony, Tanner reports, residents and guests hiked into the forest, to the area where Birdwell and Nolan found evidence linking it to York, and the French villagers then hosted a luncheon for their guests to further celebrate its new sister village in Tennessee.

Until Birdwell and Nolan's discovery, the exact location of the York battlefield site had been in dispute for nearly 90 years ― since shortly after the engagement happened.

Some research groups still today claim different theories about where York actually stood on Oct. 8, 1918 ― but Birdwell said he and Nolan "found some pretty specific artifacts to link York to the site."

Their most conclusive piece of evidence to date, for instance, is a U.S. Army uniform collar disk from the 328 Infantry G, the company to which York belonged.

"The icing on the cake is that collar disk," Birdwell said. "It came, more than likely, from one of the six American soldiers who was killed in that battle, and it makes it very clear that we are in the right location."
More than a million Americans sailed to Europe in 1917 and 1918 to fight in the Great War. Only three of them, all well over 100 years old, are alive today. And of all who fought, just one emerged as the exemplary doughboy―Alvin York. On this date in 1918, York performed a feat of bravery and military skill that would amaze his countrymen, change his life, and etch his place in the history books. When all the participants in the epic conflict are gone, very soon, their stories preserved only in books, handed-down memories, and granite inscriptions, Alvin York's name will live on.

In late September 1918, the Allies had begun a massive offensive intended to end the war before winter. During that campaign, a battalion of about 600 Americans was surrounded near the Argonne Forest in northeastern France. An attempt had to be made to relieve the force, which became known as the Lost Battalion. Corporal York's unit, part of the 82nd Infantry Division, was ordered to push back the Germans and cut a rail line as part of the action. York and his companions had endured the trenches since June, but they had so far seen little action.

The attack began at 6 a.m., and the Americans soon learned what many already knew, that the introduction of the machine gun had swung the advantage in modern warfare strongly to the defender. Offense still relied on men charging into enemy fire.

The assault bogged down as the troops, crossing the 500-yard valley that separated them from the Germans, were raked by fire from the high ground. Sgt. Bernard Early broke off from the main attack and led three squads, including York's, on an attempt to outflank the enemy machine guns.

The 17 men walked a mile and a half through the dense forest before they stumbled onto a rear position of the enemy. The Germans, their morale flagging after four years of war, promptly surrendered. Then chaos broke out. German machine gunners on a nearby hill turned their weapons around and fired down. The prisoners dropped to the ground to avoid the hail of bullets; nine Americans, including Early, were hit.

York, lying between the prisoners and the gunners, began to pick off any man who showed his head above the parapet. His background had something to do with what followed. He had been born in 1887 in a two-room log cabin in the hills of northern Tennessee and was a bona fide backwoodsman. His schooling had not extended past the third grade, but his skills had been honed in the hardscrabble struggle for subsistence. Hunting for food had made him a crack shot, and he had taken numerous prizes at turkey shoots back home.

His marksmanship served him well on the morning of October 8. He managed to kill more than 20 Germans, including five who rushed at him with fixed bayonets. A German lieutenant offered to surrender and blew a whistle to signal his men to lay down their arms.

York found himself behind enemy lines with several dozen prisoners. The lieutenant asked how many of his own men he had with him. "I have got plenty," York answered, training his pistol on the man. In fact, only eight Americans remained.

Accustomed to maneuvering in deep woods, York guided his prisoners back toward American lines. On the way, he picked up additional Germans, who were startled to find the Americans at their backs. By the time he reached the U.S. position, York and his few companions were marshaling a parade of 132 enemy soldiers. His feat knocked the wind out of a planned German counterattack.

He spent several more weeks in combat and came close to being killed by an exploding shell. Having been promoted to sergeant, he was on furlough on November 11 when he heard the news that the war was over.

Rumors of his exploit circulated among the troops and caught the attention of George Pattullo, a correspondent for The Saturday Evening Post, the most influential publication in America. Pattullo's story, "The Second Elder Gives Battle," highlighted another facet of York's civilian life. A hellraiser as a young man, York had converted to a fundamentalist Christian faith in 1914 and had applied for conscientious objector status. When the draft board rejected his claim, he reluctantly agreed to serve, but he insisted that he loathed killing.

Such a stance appealed to Americans, many of whom had themselves been ambivalent about the war. York was both a rustic reminiscent of Davy Crockett and a citizen soldier in the Minuteman tradition. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his deed.

Famous overnight, he was treated to a tickertape parade in New York. He was not smitten by the hoopla. He deliberately turned his back on a fortune in promotional offers―a rifle company offered him $1,000 to fire one shot from its product before a camera―because he didn't feel he should make money off his service. "I didn't go to war to make a heap. . . . I went over there to help make peace." He soon returned to his widowed mother and married the girl he had left behind.

It was 20 years before he allowed his heroic actions that October morning to be rendered on film. Sergeant York, with Gary Cooper intoning York's backwoods dialect, was a huge hit in 1941; the story took on fresh relevance as the nation itself, like York a generation before, pondered whether to go to war.

The movie had a happy ending, but York's experience on returning from the war was, like that of many less celebrated veterans, difficult. The Nashville Rotary gave him a farm, but he had to go into debt to work it. A postwar collapse of agricultural prices made times difficult for all farmers, and he was plagued by financial problems for the rest of his life.

A devout idealist, he worked to improve conditions in his native Fentress County. He campaigned for better roads and particularly for educational opportunities for children. "I ain't had much learning myself," he said, "so I know what an awful handicap that is." When he went on speaking tours to raise money for education, listeners pestered him for details about his war adventure. He answered, "I am trying to forget the war."

Age and obesity kept him out of World War II, but he gave pep talks to troops and sold war bonds. He suffered a debilitating stroke in 1954 and spent 10 years as an invalid before he died. In its obituary, The New York Times called him "the latter-day descendant of the American frontier, a plain-talking, no-nonsense sharpshooter." In the fiercely competitive Wild West, Henry Wells insisted on running his firm like a solid business.

Wells, Fargo & Co., which he founded with William Fargo in 1852, was off to a late start.

Already two other players were carrying letters and packages and providing banking services in California's Gold Rush country. Wells' outfit was running a distant third after two years of operation.

In that time and space, entrepreneurs tended to be cowboys and operated on the ruthless principle of survival of the fittest.

Wells' competitors, Adams & Co. and Page, Bacon & Co., were "paying high prices for gold, lending it freely at high interest rates, and making a large part of their profits on loans," Ralph Moody, author of "Wells Fargo," told IBD.

Wells Fargo could have grown fast by playing the same game, said Moody, but it "held fast to Henry Wells' original principles. No loans were made unless they were well secured, and when losses occurred -- as they often did -- they were made good from the firm's own funds, not from the funds of their depositors."

"Adams and Page Bacon were corrupt, they didn't have accurate accounting and didn't know the gold business," Robert Chandler, author of "Wells Fargo: Images of America," told IBD. "Alvin Adams came out in 1853 and was taken around to parties, but Henry Wells went on an inspection tour of the mining areas and reported back to his board of directors. They were interested in managing this as a business."

Warming To Wells Fargo

The winter of 1853-54 was mild. As the water needed for gold panning dried up, so did the demand for banking services. On Feb. 17, 1855, a steamer arrived in San Francisco with the news that drafts on the St. Louis offices of Page Bacon had been dishonored.

Five days later, the firm folded and Adams followed. Depositors moved to Wells Fargo, now San Francisco's largest private employer.

Wells Fargo WFC had 8,000 workers in Henry Wells' day. Today its 160,000 employees provide banking, insurance, mortgage and consumer finance services at 6,000 branches and through the Internet. It has $540 billion in assets, fifth among U.S. banks, and is the only one with a Standard & Poor's (NYSE:MHP) AAA rating.

In 2006, Wells Fargo's revenue was $47.9 billion and net income was $8.9 billion. Its stock has rocketed 1,300% since 1991.

For Henry Wells, being dependable also meant communicating well with customers, and he stressed courtesy, Chandler says. Although many of the firm's early records disappeared, in 1888 Wells Fargo's instructions to agents were published: "The most polite and gentlemanly treatment of all customers, however insignificant in their business, is insisted upon. Proper respect must be shown to all -- let them be men, women, or children, rich or poor, white or black -- it must not be forgotten that the company is dependent on these same people for its business."

This philosophy was more than a slogan. The company expected everyone to apply it -- from members of the board in New York City to new bank clerks in frontier towns.

Henry Wells (1805-78) learned early that business success took hands-on management, hard work and fulfilling of commitments.

Born in Vermont, he grew up in New York City and soon worked in a few trades. He simply had what it took. He sought entrepreneurial opportunities and "learned to turn lemons into lemonade," Chandler said.

A bad stammerer, the just-married Wells was living in Rochester, N.Y., in 1823 and consulted with a speech therapist. Although he was never entirely cured, he was so impressed with the treatment, says Jane Dieckmann, author of "Wells College: A History," that he opened eight of his own schools for speech defects from New York to Cleveland and managed them for 15 years.

Traveling between them, he paid his way by delivering goods and documents. That trained him for the career that was to make him famous.

In 1841 he was hired as the first agent of the original express package business, which used the railroad to ship between eastern cities. When Wells proposed a year later to expand westward, the owner told him to do it on his own because "I choose to run an express where there is business."

Wells took the challenge. With several partners, he made deliveries between Albany and Buffalo, N.Y.

He went on grueling trips, using horses, stagecoaches, steamers and trains. "In the summer it was endurable, but for the greater part of the year simply horrible," he recalled.

He began making it profitable by picking up other in-demand goods along the way.

In 1842, Wells started carting letters between New York City and Buffalo. The government was charging 25 cents for that route. "Our firm offered to carry letters for 5 cents, and we did carry them," he said. "We created a stamp for ourselves."

The government didn't like the competition and began arresting his messengers, but customers posted their bail. Tollgates were opened for Wells' men, then closed to pursuing government agents. Juries found in favor of Wells Fargo when the government sued. Called "the people's postmaster," Wells offered to run the Post Office. In response, Congress lowered the letter rate to 5 cents to preserve postmaster jobs.

Looking to expand the express business farther west, Wells hired Fargo, once described as ambitious, courageous and an excellent horseman, then working for the railroad. Avoiding the long list of rules Wells had labored under as an agent, he told Fargo: "Young man, my instructions will be very short. You are bound for Cleveland and you are expected to get there. That is all."

Now it was time to cash in on new technology. With the telegraph humming, Wells and his partners in 1846 set up the first commercial line in America, from Utica to Lockport, N.Y., then Albany to New York City.

In 1850, the three leading express companies merged into American Express (NYSE:AXP) , with Wells as president and Fargo as a board member. Two years later, Wells and Fargo formed the subsidiary that would make them banking legends. Their new banks were built to be unusually secure for the firm's express services and other customers. Within three years, when its main competitors had collapsed, Wells Fargo was the leading bank in the West.

The Post Office battle continued in California. Chandler quotes a letter from a man in San Jose in the 1850s to a friend in San Francisco: "Don't send me any more mail through the Post Office, for it takes a week to get here. Give it to Wells Fargo and I'll get it in nine hours."

Wells' Stamp

When the Post Office demanded that letters carry its 3-cent stamp, no matter who delivered them, Henry Wells told his employees to put the stamp on, but not to raise Wells Fargo's 12.5-cent price. The competition followed his example.

Wells Fargo's letter-carrying ended in 1895. As for the express business, the company stayed a leader until all U.S. express firms were nationalized during World War I.

For all his feats, Henry Wells felt his top one was his 1868 founding of Wells College in Aurora, N.Y., one of the first for women. He chipped in $2.9 million in today's money.

Helen Bergamo, archivist for Wells College, told IBD, "He was a great observer of people, and he felt women should have an education that was not inferior to men."