On 8 October 1918, at the height of the Meuse- Argonne offensive, quiet and unassuming Cpl. Alvin C. York, a thirty-year-old farmer and blacksmith from Tennessee, engaged the enemy in what would become the single most heralded action by a U.S. soldier during World War I. After six of York's fellow platoon members from Company G of the 328th Infantry Regiment were killed by heavy German machine-gun fire, York, a skilled marksman, told his comrades to stay under cover and, finding a strategic position from which to fire on the Germans, killed more than twenty of them. Eight of the remaining Germans attacked the position held by York, but he shot each of them in turn. Then, holding a German major at gunpoint, York marched into the enemy camp and took 132 Germans as prisoners of war. Awarded the Medal of Honor and the French Croix...