"The success of this assault had a far-reaching effect in relieving the
enemy pressure against American forces in the heart of the Argonne
Forest."
In decorating Sergeant York with the Croix de Guerre with Palm, Marshal
Foch said to him:
"What you did was the greatest thing accomplished by any private soldier
of all of the armies of Europe."
When the officers of York's regiment were securing the facts for their
report to General Headquarters and were recording the stories of the
survivors, York was questioned on his efforts to escape the onslaught of
the machine guns:
"By this time, those of my men who were left had gotten behind trees,
and the men sniped at the Boche. But there wasn't any tree for me, so I
just sat in the mud and used my rifle, shooting at the machine gunners."
The officers recall his quaint and memorable answer to the inquiry on
the tactics he used to defend himself against the Boche who were in the
gun-pits, shooting at him from behind trees and crawling for him through
the brush. His method was simple and effective:
"When I seed a German, I jes' tetched him off."
In the afternoon of October 8--York had brought in his prisoners by 10
o'clock in the morning--in the seventeenth hour of that day, the
Eighty-Second Division cut the Decauville Railroad and drove the Germans
from it.
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