They did not know the number of the enemy
that had come upon them. As each of the "Buddies" landed, he sensed the
situation, and prepared for an attack from any angle. Some of them fired
at German soldiers whom they saw reaching for their guns.
All threw up their hands, with the cry "Kamerad!" when the Americans
opened fire.
About their prisoners the Americans formed in a semicircle as they
forced them to disarm. At the left end of this crescent was Alvin
York--a young six-foot mountaineer, who had come to the war from "The
Knobs of Tennessee." He knew nothing of military tactics beyond the
simple evolutions of the drill. Only a few days before had he first seen
the flash of a hostile gun. But a rifle was as familiar to his hands as
one of the fingers upon them. His body was ridged and laced with muscles
that had grown to seasoned sinews from swinging a sledge in a
blacksmith-shop. He had never seen the man or crowd of men of whom he
was afraid. He had hunted in the mountains while forked lightning
flashed around him. He had heard the thunder crash in mountain coves as
loud as the burst of any German shell. He was of that type into whose
brain and heart the qualm of fear never comes.
The Americans were on the downstep of the hill with their prisoners on
the higher ground. The major's headquarters had been hidden away in a
thicket of young undergrowth, and the Americans could see but a short
distance ahead.
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