Meet the American who inspired the nation in two world wars: Christian soldier Sgt. Alvin York

Tennessee backwoodsman sought exemption from WWI as conscientious objector, battlefield heroics astounded Europe’s toughest soldiers

Sergeant Alvin York was a reluctant Christian soldier.

Yet the battlefield heroics of the born-again backwoodsman and Tennessee sharpshooter astounded even the most hardened soldiers of World War I.

“What you did was the greatest thing accomplished by any private soldier of all the armies of Europe,” he was reportedly told by French military hero Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the commander of Allied forces in the Great War.

York’s actions, for which he earned the Medal of Honor, still astound Americans today.

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Leading seven men behind enemy lines — the remnants of a U.S. Army platoon slaughtered in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive on Oct. 8, 1918 — York killed an estimated 20 Germans, took 132 prisoners and silenced as many 25 machine guns.

He brazenly marched his captors past enemy trenches back to American lines.

Sergeant York earned the acclaim of the nation.

Yet he suffered a personal battle much of his life, fearing condemnation in the eyes of God for taking the lives of other human beings.

Young Alvin York “lived a life of drinking and gambling and smoking,” his grandson, retired U.S. Army Colonel Gerald York, told Fox News Digital.

“His fortunes changed when he gave his life to Christ” around 1915.

Read the entire article on the Fox News web site.

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