“I Whipped Out My Automatic”
“I turned in time to see a Heinie Lieutenant rise up from near one of them machine-guns and with six or seven men come charging toward me with fixed bayonets. They were only twenty yards away from me when I whipped out my automatic and I potted them off one after another.” (This man York, by the way, in a contest with an automatic pistol, hit a penny match-box every shot at forty paces.)
“As soon as the Germans saw the Lieutenant drop, most of the machine-guns stopped firing and the battle sort of quieted down, but I kept on shooting until the Major with the first batch of Germans we had come across, and who was lying on his stomach to avoid being hit by his own gunners, called to me in perfect English that if I would stop shooting he would make them all surrender, so I did. Then I called all our boys, and their affidavits show they came, and we herded the Germans in front of us and started toward our lines. I walked among four German officers and had our wounded bring up the rear. The Major asked me how many men I had, and I just told him, ‘I have a-plenty.’”
On the way they stirred up several more machine-gun nests, one of which put up a fight and York felt it a regrettable necessity to “shoot a man there.” After that when a nest was flushed the Major touched him on the arm and said, “Don’t kill any more, and I’ll make them surrender.” This was done and the hill was pretty well cleared up before they got to the other side and York’s herd of prisoners numbered 132, counted and certified to by Lieutenant Joseph A. Woods, Asst. Division Inspector, as they were reported to the P. C. of the 2d Battalion, 328 Infantry, that same Oct. 8.