He is keenly appreciative of his own limitations and quietly he
observes everything around him. From early childhood he had been taught
to be swift and keen in observation--the rustling of a leaf might be
related to a squirrel's presence, and behind each moving shadow there is
a cause and a meaning.
When he came to Prauthoy, France, the soldiers sought to honor him by
having him carry the Division flag in the horse show. All was new to him
and he was told but little of the routine expected of him. He had become
the man whom all the American soldiers wished to see, and his presence
was the feature of the occasion. The officers of his own regiment
watched him closely, and not a mistake did he make in all the day's
maneuvers. A comment of one of the officers was; "He seems always
instinctively to know the right thing to do."
He came from a cabin in the backwoods of Tennessee but he was raised
under influences that make real men. A boy's ideal, in his early life,
is the father who guides him, and Sergeant York had before him a
character that was picturesque in its rugged manhood and honesty, and
inspiring in its devotion to right and justice. The very privations he
endured and that he saw influencing his home throughout his childhood
were due to principle, for William York would owe no man beyond the
period of his promise to pay.
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