by Taffy Thomas
There are many who have claimed that this is the ghost of the German ace pilot Oswald Boelcke (an ‘ace’ pilot being one who shot down five or more enemy planes), dubbed the ‘Father of the German fighter air force’. Although only twenty-five years old in 1916, Boelcke had already been awarded the highest military honour and there is no doubt that he was in charge of the air attack at Verdun for part of the battle. Yet it was not an enemy pilot who ended Boelcke’s life, nor did he die over Verdun. Rather, on 28 October 1916, during a dogfight with British planes over Douai in Northern France, his plane’s upper wing was clipped by a friendly aircraft. Not wearing a helmet, and not strapped into his seat properly, Boelcke had no chance of surviving the crash landing. His life was snuffed out in an instant.
Even if it is not the ghost of Boelcke who still haunts the hills near Verdun, if the sightings are to be believed then there is certainly at least one mysterious, unidentified, German First World War pilot who has never given up the fight for those two haunting hills.
UNSUNG HEROES
The First World War has left us with some truly memorable tales of great deeds, extraordinary bravery and amazing courage. A small selection of these have been retold on the following pages, but in writing them we were mindful that every man and woman who served his or her country in 1914–18 was, in some way, extraordinary. Every day they were facing tough and challenging conditions, far from home and their loved ones, and yet many of their experiences and personal acts of courage are either long-forgotten or recorded only in personal diaries, postcards and letters home. As a result, we felt it appropriate to preface this chapter with a couple of examples.
The first is an extract from the diary of Edward Victor French (1887–1965). A miller and farmer from Merriott in Somerset, Edward was also Taffy Thomas’ grandfather, and fought on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey in 1915.
1915
Went in first line of trenches on the 15th October for 24 hours. On Sunday the 17th, the Turks bombarded us all morning. Major Greg and Pte Blackmore were killed. Went in the trenches on the 19th again.
October 27th: Had a narrow escape. A shrapnel shell burst over me coming back from base. Bullets came all around me.
28th October: The Turks gave us about a dozen shrapnel shells. I was in my dug-out; one bullet came and just touched my foot. Two shells pitched in our dug-out killing and wounding. About 7 p.m. we were relieved by the Notts & Derby.
On the Sunday we had to pack up again and march about 6.5 miles across the salt lake. Then we had to go in the reserve trenches. Our kit bags were taken away so we had to carry all our kit in our packs.
We took over the line of trenches from the Scotch horse on the 18th November at Sedd el Bahr. We stayed there for 5 days then the Devons relieved us and we went back to reserve. We stayed there for 2 days and on the Friday night, the 26th, the rain came down in streams and before we could get out of our dug-out, the water was up to our knees. We had to stay out all night. The trenches were nearly full of water and we lost nearly everything we had. We had to settle in until the Sunday when we went back to some more trenches.
On the Saturday it snowed and then we had a sharp frost. My toes were frost bitten. On the Sunday when we came back to the other trenches it was too cold to sleep so we walked about all night.
Next day we left, relieved by the Welsh. We marched to Lala Baba near the sea. We had bread today, the first for a fortnight.
Helen Watts’ great-grandfather, Archibald ‘Archie’ Oldham, was born in Rochdale in 1888. He served as a private in the 1st Manchester Regiment throughout the Great War and, in March 1918, travelled with his division to Egypt and then on to Palestine. While fighting in Palestine, he was shot in the neck and subsequently brought home to the UK, to be treated in a military hospital. During his years overseas, he sent many postcards home, including this one, to his four-year-old daughter (Helen’s grandmother), Sarah.
Dear little girl,
I send this card to you so you will know that your loving Dad has not forgotten you and never will do. You must be a good girl, love, for your Mamma and do not give her any trouble because she is good to you and to me as your Dad. Try to cheer Mamma up and write me a letter yourself so that I can show these boys here that you can write.
Good night. God bless. Dad
FROM BATTLEFIELD TO MOVIE SCREEN: THE STORY OF SERGEANT YORK
This is the story of a real First World War hero who became a Hollywood legend: Alvin C. York, who was immortalised in the 1941 Academy Award-winning movie Sergeant York, starring Gary Cooper. The brave deed for which Alvin became famous took place during the Battle of the Argonne Forest (26 September–11 November 1918). This battle was part of the last – and the largest – offensive engagement in which the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) was involved during the Great War.
In reward for his bravery during this crucial turning point in the war, Alvin was awarded an almost unprecedented collection of medals. In his home country of America, he was given the Congressional Medal of Honour, the Distinguished Service Cross, the First and Second World War Victory Medals and the American Campaign Medal. In addition, Montenegro awarded him a War Medal, Italy awarded him the Croce di Guerra al Merito and in France he received the Legion of Honour and the Croix de Guerre.
In the many versions of Sergeant York’s story which exist, some details – such as the number of soldiers he led, killed single-handedly or captured – vary. Some people, including the Hollywood movie makers, were keen to capitalise on the story’s potential for propaganda, recognising how it could rouse American patriotism as the Second World War drew closer. Therefore, Alvin’s heroism and aspects of his life after the war became exaggerated and romanticised. Large helpings of fiction were blended with the facts and, once mixed, it becomes hard for the general public to ever separate the two again. The 1941 movie, for example, ends with Alvin and his girlfriend Gracie running hand in hand into a beautiful new farm which has been built for Alvin by the people of Tennessee. In reality, although the intention was there among the local people to build a new farm for their war hero, the Nashville Rotary failed to raise sufficient funds and defaulted on the instalment payments on the land. The burden of the remaining debt – and an unfinished farm, lacking in appropriate equipment – was therefore passed on to Alvin.
Meanwhile, other retellings of the story of Sergeant York suggest that he received too much of the credit for his platoon’s success and try to promote the part which some of his fellow soldiers played at Argonne, including Sergeant Early and Corporal Cutting – two men who were later awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in 1927.
But whichever version of the story you hear, there seems little doubt that Sergeant York’s actions in that French forest in October 1918 deserve to be classified as heroic, and there is no evidence to suggest that he was consciously trying to be a hero. Summing up his actions, York explained: ‘I didn’t want to go and fight and kill. But I had to answer the call of my country, and I did. And I believed it was right. I have got no hatred toward the Germans and I never had.’
Nor does it appear that York was actively seeking fame on his return to the USA. Writing in his diary on 22 May 1919, during a visit to New York where he carried out a set of interviews with newspaper reporters, he wrote:
It was very nice. But I sure wanted to get back to my people where I belonged, and the little old mother and the little mountain girl who were waiting. And I wanted to be in the mountains again and get out with hounds, and tree a coon or knock over a red fox. And in the midst of the crowds and the dinners and receptions I couldn’t help thinking of these things. My thoughts just wouldn’t stay hitched.
Alvin York’s story is a classic example of the birth of a legend: a man from humble beginnings, never predicted to amount to much, goes off to war and becomes a national hero, and from thereon in his story takes on an extraordinary life of its own.
This is our version of his incredible tale.
Alvin Cullum
York was born on 13 December 1887 in Pall Mall, Tennessee. His home was a simple one – a small, two-roomed log cabin in a poor, rural landscape where life was hard and money was scarce. Alvin shared that humble home with ten brothers and sisters, and to place enough food in the pot to feed a family of such size, his father had to juggle the farming of his own patch of land with a part-time job as a blacksmith.
There wasn’t much call for reading and writing in a place like Pall Mall back then. It was more important for Alvin to help his father work the land and learn how to hunt. With only nine months of schooling to his name, Alvin devoted his time instead to perfecting his aim with a shotgun, and soon there were very few squirrels, raccoons, deer or wild boar which could dodge the bullets of this precocious young marksman.
Alvin grew into a tall, healthy, strapping young man. Now ready to go out and earn a wage, he secured a day job working on the railroads. Suddenly, he was in the company of men who laboured hard all day and rewarded themselves by playing hard at night. Alvin threw himself headlong into this new world; too fast, perhaps. Rarely had he ever had two spare cents to rub together, yet now he frequently found himself with a day’s pay in his hand and no idea of how to spend it wisely. He succumbed to the temptations of drink and gambling, overindulging in both to the point where, far too often, his nights ended with a bar-room brawl.
Soon Alvin had a reputation as bad as his thirst, and the simple folk of Pall Mall wrote him off as yet another troublemaker who would not amount to much.
Ironically, Alvin might have continued heading down that disastrous path into self-destruction were it not for one particularly violent fight which broke out in a bar just over the county line into Kentucky. This time though, it was not Alvin at the centre of it but his best friend, Everett, and the results were tragic. By the time order had been restored and the night was over, Everett was dead.
The death of his best friend hit Alvin hard, and deep in his grief he swore he would change his ways. There would be no more drinking, no more gambling and certainly no more fighting. Rather than looking for trouble, Alvin now looked for God. On the first day of the year 1915, he converted to the Church of Christ in Christian Union and promised to abide by its rules against violence.
As well as faith and a new-found peace of mind, Alvin’s religion brought him the chance of love, for it was through his Church that he met his sweetheart – Gracie, the woman who would later become his wife. But, having found one another, the two young lovers were soon to be torn apart, for on 5 June 1917, six months before Alvin was to celebrate his thirtieth birthday, he received a request to register for the draft. The Great War in Europe was calling his name.
The reformed Alvin loved his country and his Church in equal measure, and so he was thrown into turmoil. His conscience led him this way and that, as he tried to ascertain the right path to take. In the end, his determination to leave his violent days behind him won out. Returning his papers to the Draft Board, he requested exemption on the grounds that he simply did not want to fight.
To the American army, Alvin’s objection to fighting was little more than an irritating housefly to be batted aside, and his draft papers were sent flying straight back at him. Alvin C. York was, without question, to report immediately for training in the 82nd Infantry Division of the 328th Regiment.
Seeing his rookie soldier’s distress, Alvin’s commanding officer knew just what to do. A fellow student of the Bible, he directed Alvin to passages in the Holy Book which helped justify violence in times of war. Taking comfort from those words, Alvin accepted his fate while his senior offer accepted that he had in his command a crack-shot marksman with no stomach for war.
The following May, the day finally came for the 82nd Infantry Division to set sail for France. For Alvin, this was not only the first time he had ever travelled more than fifty miles from his home; it was also the first time he had ever seen the ocean and he was overcome by the vast expanse of water surrounding him. Seasickness gripped him so hard that even the thought of the battlefields which lay waiting across the water did not quell his desire to be back on dry land.
And perhaps it was during this, his first battle of the war on an unfamiliar journey across the sea, against a wild and unpredictable enemy, that Alvin formed an unbreakable bond with the fellow men in his platoon. Certainly, by the time he stepped ashore in France, he was ready to fight to the death alongside them.
By October 1918, Alvin and his division were fighting their way through what was left of the woods of the Argonne Forest. Burned and broken by the shelling, the trees around them formed a frightening, grotesque silhouette against the fiery skies, and the ground underfoot was pockmarked and treacherous. As they headed for the front line, Alvin and his companions had to scramble over the corpses of slaughtered men and horses, while shells burst in their ears and enemy planes buzzed over their heads.
Desperate to halt the German bombardment, their platoon commander came up with a plan. He knew that the key was gaining control of the Decauville railroad behind a hill known as Hill 223. Swiftly, he ordered Alvin and sixteen other infantrymen to sneak behind the enemy lines and secure the German machine-gun post at the top of the hill, taking it by surprise from the rear.
Swallowing their fear, the men began to make their way quietly up the hill, staying low and out of sight in the brush. Undetected, they advanced a good 300 yards in front of their own line and took several prisoners before the alarm was raised.
When the counter-attack came, it was deadly.
Turning their machine guns around and thinking that they were about to be overwhelmed by a wave of American troops, the Germans opened fire in unison, throwing everything they had at their attackers.
Their targets were now so close they were hard to miss. Bullets ripped the lifeblood from six of them, and three more fell down wounded. With more than half of his tiny squad mown down, including his sergeant, Alvin took command. Thinking on his feet, his hunting instincts, drilled into him from when he was just a boy back in Tennessee, kicked in.
Alvin ordered everyone to stay down low, to take cover in the brush and to guard the prisoners. Then he began a single-handed move which not one of his enemy – nor perhaps, his countrymen – could ever have predicted.
As the machine-gun fire whistled over the heads of his crouching platoon, Alvin alone stood his ground, held his breath and took aim. He remembered how his father had taught him to shoot wild turkeys back home on the farm in Pall Mall: one by one, taking out the one closest to the back of the flock first, then the second, then third and on and on, so no single creature was aware that the ones behind him had fallen, until every last target was struck.
Seventeen German gunners were picked off by Alvin’s keen sniper’s eye. Then six more leapt out of their trench in fury, charging at the solo American assassin with their bayonets. Finding courage he never knew he had, Alvin did not move as he emptied his rifle of bullets and switched calmly to his pistol. In a matter of seconds, there were six more Germans dispatched to their graves.
The major in command of the German gun posts made his move, but nothing and no one was going to stop Alvin now. He was on top of the major in an instant and, before the German could issue a cry for help, Alvin had a gun to his head. With their major’s life hanging in the balance, the remaining Germans on the hill rushed to surrender. And so it was that just eleven American soldiers – and three of them wounded – led 132 German prisoners back down the hill and made it to safety alongside the rest of their division behind the front line.
So incredible was Alvin’s achievement, so stunning was his bravery, that he was made a sergeant and given the highest military honour in America – the Congressional Medal of Honour. But it was not fame and fortune which Alvin longed for on his return, nor did he court the hero’s welcome which he received. Rather it was a safe return to his beloved home in the mountains, and the beautiful woman who awaited him there, that formed his true prize.
So years later, when
Hollywood wanted his permission to tell his story on the silver screen, Alvin took some convincing.
‘This uniform ain’t for sale!’ he cried, and went back to his jobs on the farm.
But the movie makers would not give up and they had one more trick up their sleeve. What if Alvin’s favourite film star, Gary Cooper, were to agree to play his part?
Alvin was swayed and, promising to use his royalties to build a new Bible school, he signed the contract. The movie went on to win its handsome leading actor an Academy Award and Alvin became a war legend all over the world.
As promised, he did not allow his fame to bring him fortune, and when he died at the age of seventy-six on 2 September 1964, Alvin was back where he started in life, with barely two spare cents to rub together. But America would never forget its hero: it would never forget the day that Sergeant Alvin C. York went beyond the call of duty in the forests of Argonne in 1918. He was buried in the cemetery in his home town of Pall Mall, with full military honours and a State Governor and an official representative of President Lyndon B. Johnson among the chief mourners.
