"
When he entered the army Alvin York stood six feet in the clear. There
were but few in camp physically his equal. In any crowd of men he drew
attention. The huge muscles of his body glided lithely over each other.
He had been swinging with long, firm strides up the mountainsides. His
arms and shoulders had developed by lifting hay-ladened pitchforks in
the fields and in the swing of the sledge in his father's blacksmith's
shop. The military training coordinated these muscles and he moved among
the men a commanding figure, whose quiet reserve power seemed never
fully called into action by the arduous duties of the soldier.
The strength of his mind, the brain force he possessed were yet to be
recognized and tested. And even to-day, with all the experiences he has
had and the advancement he has made, that force is not yet measured. It
is in the years of the future that the real mission of Sergeant York
will be told.
He came out of the mountains of Tennessee with an education equal to
that of a child of eight or nine years of age, with no experience in the
world beyond the primitive, wholesome life of his mountain community,
with but little knowledge of the lives and customs, the ambitions and
struggles of men who lived over the summit of the Blue Ridge and beyond
the foot-hills of the Cumberlands.
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