On this date in 1918, during the Allied Meuse-Argonne Offensive in World War One, Alvin York of Tennessee won the Medal of Honor for his bravery under fire.

“…those machine guns were spitting fire and cutting down the undergrowth all around me something awful. And the Germans were yelling orders. You never heard such a racket in all of your life. I didn’t have time to dodge behind a tree or dive into the brush… As soon as the machine guns opened fire on me, I began to exchange shots with them. There were over thirty of them in continuous action, and all I could do was touch the Germans off just as fast as I could. I was sharp shooting… 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 I had.”

Audie Murphy, who saw the parallels between his life and that of York, saw Warner Brothers’ Sergeant York in Greenville, Texas in October, 1941.  Cooper was already his favorite actor and he liked the movie so much he saw it twice.