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Text extracted from opening pages of book: HIS OWN LIFE STORY AND WAR DIARY EDITED BY TOM SKEYHILL GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, DORAN AND COMPANY, INC. 1930 TO OUR OWN LEAGUE OF NATIONS The American-born boys and the Greeks, Irish, Poles, Jews, and Italians who were in my platoon in the World War. A heap of them couldn't speaker write the American language until they larned it in the Army. Over here in the training camps and behind the lines in France a right-smart lot of them boozed, gambled, cussed, and went A. W. O. L. But once they got into it Over There they kept on a-going. They were only tollable shots and burned up a most awful lot of ammunition. But jest the same they always kept on a-going. Most of them died like men, with their rifles and bayonets in their hands and their faces to the enemy. I'm a-thinkin* they were real heroes. Any way they were my buddies. Ijes learned to love them. SERGEANT ALVIN C. YORK. FOREWORD MODERN war is an industrial art conducted like a great modern integrated industry. Improved means of transportation have made it possible to assemble and sustain vastly greater numbers of men upon rela tively narrow fronts, and these fronts become massing points upon which the adversaries concentrate their weight. Machine guns, long-range cannon, tanks, and airplanes are the modern weapons, and they represent the culmination of a tendency which has existed from the earliest times. Originally men fought face to face at short range with swords and battle axes. They separated the lines of combatants a short distance by the introduction of slings and arrows. The invention of gunpowder fur ther separated them* More powerful explosives and metals of strongertension have again increased the distance, until men now fight without seeing one an other, but aim their destructive missies over inter vening hills to places located by airplane observation. The directing heads of great armies are far to the rear-General Pershing's headquarters at Chaumomt and General Foch's headquarters at Three Fountains were a hundred miles from the battle line and their headquarters resembled the engineering and account ing offices of great Imsiftess houses. TJbe rival chiefV tains no loiiger engage in piettoesqpie personal encoun ter The fen$ l, pl? jtn, aitoy and even more, the' ': ' '' - til, via FOREWORD general of a group of armies, is a remote figure, and the process of command operates through hierarchical stages. When Owen Glendower summoned to his aid spirits from the vasty deep, they would not come, but when the modern commander summons them, they do come and preponderate in the battle. Along the line of battle itself, the issue meets with varying for tunes here advance and there retreat and the re sults have to be concentrated and tabulated in a remote place before one knows whether victory or defeat has resulted. There is nothing in modern war like the final and victorious charge of the guard. Still, the ultimate object of battle remains the same. It is to take and occupy enemy territory, and In spite of the machines which have been introduced, the last word is finally said by the man. Physical strength counts for less but character and courage count for more. The individual soldier who emerges from the mass has measured strength not with a single antag onist, but with all the unseen and multiplied terrors which modern science and invention haveconcentrated around the individual There is no longer the pomp and parade, the waving of flags and the call of trum pets; from the first to last, modern war is a grinding, deadly business. It Is often said that the glory and the opportunity for individual exploit have all been taken out of war, but every now and then circum stances still make opportunity, and certainly one such was made when Sergeant York, with his little band, found himself surrounded by machine-gun nests to Chatel-Chehcrry on October 8, FOREWORD ix Fortunately the Sergeant kept a diary in which he t