From Yale: When Pacifists Fight
By Dan Gelernter
“As the citizen-soldier hero of the American Expeditionary Forces, he epitomized the gallantry of American fighting men and their sacrifices in behalf of freedom”
Thus spoke President Johnson in 1964 in eulogy of Medal of Honor winner Corporal (later Sergeant) Alvin C. York. In France, on October 18, 1918, York had essentially single-handedly killed 25 Germans, knocked 35 machine gun nests out of action, and captured 128 enlisted men and four officers in what is perhaps the best-known doughboy story from the First World War.
Perhaps most remarkable, though, is that York ever got to the battlefield.
York was born in the the Valley of the Three Forks of the Wolf River in Tennessee in 1887, the son of a blacksmith. As a young boy he learned how to shoot from his father; they needed the all the meat they could get to feed the family of 11 children, and so York learned to kill game with one shot to the head. He competed regularly in shooting matches with the other Kentucky boys – shooting matches that, as York recalls, had seen the likes of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett in earlier years.
Besides becoming a crack shot, York turned into a rowdy teenager, drinking, gambling, and having “a powerful lot of fist fights.”
In 1915, however, to win the love of the young daughter of a deeply religious family (and because he had begun to feel the wrongness of his past ways) York joined the Church of Christ in Christian Union – an extremely pacifist sect that had split off from the Methodists after refusing to endorse the Union during the Civil War.
By the time York was drafted in 1917, he had been imbued with the conviction that it was wrong to fight wars.
As Dave Kopel writes in the February 2006 America’s 1st Freedom:
“York quietly went through basic training and then in the spring of 1918 spoke to an officer about his continuing objection to the war. York’s sincerity was obvious, and he was taken to see Major Gonzalo Edward Buxton, Jr, the battalion commander. Buxton and York spent a long night discussing the Bible. Buxton pointed to Jesus’ instruction that the apostles should carry swords (Luke 22:36); to Jesus’ statement that earthly kingdoms, unlike Jesus’ spiritual kingdom, do fight (John 18:36); and to the obligation for Christians to give governments the “things that are Caesar’s”. Finally, Buxton read York Ezekiel 33:1-6, in which God told the prophet to tell the people to listen for the watchman’s trumpet, and to take warning when an armed invader comes.”
York remained unconvinced, however. Buxton sent York home on a 10-day pass to think things out for himself, and promised to assign York to a non-combat unit upon his return if he so desired.
Back at home York saw his family and congregation, and all urged him not to fight. Taking a page from the Bible, as Kopel writes, “he went into the mountains alone, where he spent two days and one night praying for guidance.”
When he came home, his mind was made up: “If some feller was to come along and bust into your house and mistreat your wife and murder your children, you’d just stand for it? You wouldn’t fight?” he asked of a fellow congregant.
York joined the 82nd infantry and shipped to France in May.
In the Battle of the Meuse-Argonne in October, York was on a small patrol that became the victim of a surprise machinegun attack from the hills. Nine men were killed or wounded, but York remained calm – and standing. Not even taking time to take cover, he immediately returned fire.
“In order to sight me or to swing their machine guns on me,” York recalled, “the Germans had to show their heads above the trench, and every time I saw a head I just touched it off. All the time I kept yelling at them to come down. I didn’t want to kill any more than I had to. But it was they or I, and I was giving them the best they had.”
When one of York’s five-round ammunition clips for his Enfield rifle ran out, the Germans made a bayonet charge, trying to get him before he could reload. York simply drew his Colt .45 and killed all six men charging at him. He shot the farthest man first, and worked towards the front, afraid that if he shot the front man first the others would “drop down and pump a volley into me.” The last German nearly got to York’s position before he was killed.
The rest of the Germans surrendered.
There are many lessons we can learn from York’s story (not the least of which is that it’s a good idea to teach your son how to shoot). But most important was York’s decision to fight – a lesson to anti-warrites everywhere.
York had concluded that “if some feller were to come along and bust into your house and mistreat your wife and murder your children” that it was your duty to fight. But in shipping over to France, York was only indirectly fighting for his country’s safety. Every war launched against democracy threatens the Unites States, however, whether it’s the First World War, or Vietnam. York understood that. It was not just a question of his own life, or his own country. He fought as well for the children of democracy – the young nations, struggling for freedom but not yet strong enough to win it themselves.
If York had been (as Robert Frost once called himself) an “Old Testament Christian,” the decision to fight would have been easier. As a Jew, the last thing I say in “grace” after a meal is a quotation from Psalms 29:11. “God will give might to His people; God will bless His people with peace.” Why do these two ideas go together in one line? Because there is no peace without strength.
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Reader Comments (13)
Still, in spite of the care with which the story was recounted, it is disingenous, at best, and manipulative, at worst, to extrapolate from it the lesson that you did. You contend that York's heroism teaches us to fight "in every war launched against democracy." But with respect to the implicitly justified war in Iraq, York's rationale behind going to fight in the first place--“if some feller were to come along and bust into your house and mistreat your wife and murder your children”--supposes that the enemy must act first. Nowhere in his conception of when its appropriate to fight can one find justification for preemption.
Perhaps more importantly, your analysis is plagued by revisionist history. When we fought in Vietnam, we waged an animalistic war, not, as you say, for the sake of democracy, but in support of dictatorship--both in terms of the nature of the Vietnamese government that we chose to defend, and the rights of our own citizens that we decided to take away. It's inviting, perhaps, to perceive history as you do, through a lens which renders people and events entirely black or white. But to engage in that form of perception means to miss what actually happened.
"If some feller were to come along and bust into your house and mistreat your wife and murder your children, you'd just stand for it?” asked York, "You wouldn't fight?" When people are responsible for death on an apocalyptic scale, York is right; we have an obligation not to stand idly by. It is little wonder, then, that people have chosen to protest a war which has killed over 11,000 people.
Finally, I don't believe in using the Bible to justify U.S. action for reasons that I have articulated previously. But if, on a personal level, you choose to direct your attention to the Hebrew Bible, I would suggest that you revisit Sodom and Gomorrah. G-d may have destroyed, justifiably in that case, two evil towns, but the true hero of the story is Abraham; the man who acts a conscientious objector. Just as York was morally required to step in and defend the victims of the Nazis, people have a right and, indeed, an obligation to speak up when they believe that our government is acting unjustly. You act contrary to the very democracy you seek to defend when you strive to silence them.
Rebecca
That means that there's no necessity to wait for the enemy to act first. A reasonable expectation of violence like, say, threats from someone who's committed violence in the past are sufficient grounds to strike preemptively. The biblical edict against killing requires moral justification not stupidity.
The toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime then, was justified from a moral standpoint but more then that, it was required from a legal standpoint. You'll recall that Hussein invaded Kuwait, was thrown out and signed an agreement to prevent his regime from being destroyed in 1992. He was in material breach of the agreement within two weeks of signing it but judged, successfully for twelve years, that he could get away with continuing abrogations of the agreement. The terms of that agreement were all the justification the U.S. needed then, as they were sufficient ten years later, to depose Hussein.
With regard to your views on the Vietnam war, they're as divorced from reality as your views on the Iragi war. The primary difference between the two is that one war was fought to stop a stupid and brutal political philosophy from swallowing another nation and the other was fought to put an end to the rule of a stupid and brutal dictator. And if you bother to do some research on the Vietnam war you'll discover that it wasn't lost on the battlefield but on American TV screens. The noble People's Army was so militarily inept that it took them two years and the complicity of the Democratically-controlled American Congress to achieve victory.
York had concluded that “if some feller were to come along and bust into your house and mistreat your wife and murder your children” that it was your duty to fight. But in shipping over to France, York was only indirectly fighting for his country’s safety. Every war launched against democracy threatens th