Great story about one of the Maxims Sgt. York captured coming to the TN Museum of Appalachia and a benefit being held to fund it at the Knoxville Tennessee Theater! http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2010/jan/17/yorks-legacy-comes-to-east-tennessee/
Ticket proceeds will go toward safely securing the weapon. Later it will become the centerpiece in an extensive York exhibit.
How many times do you get to see a story like this?!?!
Ticket proceeds will go toward safely securing the weapon. Later it will become the centerpiece in an extensive York exhibit.
How many times do you get to see a story like this?!?!
Museum events
-- What: Museum of Appalachia presents "Sergeant York, An American Hero"
-- When: Sunday, Jan. 24
-- Where: Historic Tennessee Theatre, 604 S. Gay St.
-- Tickets: $100 per person (Ticket also good for grand re-opening of Sgt. York Family exhibit at MOA 2 p.m. Feb. 7.) Any unused or extra VIP tickets can be donated to veterans in Ben Atchley State Veterans Home, 9910 Coward Mill Road, Knoxville.
-- What's included: VIP ticket includes reception, music by Dixie Gray at 2 p.m., followed by 2:30 p.m. program and 3:30 p.m. screening of the 1941 classic film "Sergeant York" starring Gary Cooper.
Of the 2 million American soldiers who served in France during World War I, one name became synonymous with the doughboy war, an authentic all-American, sea-to-shining-sea hero: Alvin Cullum York.
York is easily the most famous soldier of World War I and perhaps the greatest American combat hero of all time.
Now, a part of the battlefield action that made York an international legend has come to the land of his beginning.
A renowned German machine gun that York captured in the closing days of the war in France is on permanent loan to the Museum of Appalachia in Norris. It will be on display for the first time Jan. 24 at the Tennessee Theatre downtown in a special exhibition.
It took nearly two years of working through federal red tape to get the German Maxim M1908/15 light machine gun to Norris from the Nahant, Mass., Public Library, which has possessed the weapon for the past 92 years.
Norris police took possession of the famous weapon, and Tim Hester, Norris city manager, signed it over to the museum in a simple agreement between the museum and the town of Norris.
An undisclosed amount of money was donated by the Museum of Appalachia to the Nahant Public Library for the gun. Museum authorities don't want to speculate about its worth.
From Tennessee farm boy to war hero
York was born at Pall Mall, Tenn., deep in the "Valley of the Three Forks of the Wolf River" on Dec. 13, 1887. The third of 11 children, he grew up a poor farm boy in a rural region.
Despite his religious beliefs and his desire to be a conscientious objector, York was drafted and sent to the 82nd Division. Later he was assigned to the division's Company G, 328th Infantry Regiment.
The 328th was part of the American Expeditionary Force's I Corps during the Meuse- Argonne Offensive, one of five major battles that the Allies called the "Grand Offensive," fought from about Sept. 26 through Nov. 11, 1918.
It was during the offensive that York pulled off one of the great feats of any combat soldier of any time. He single-handedly annihilated a German machine gun battalion on Oct. 8, 1918, killing 25 German soldiers and capturing 132 enemy soldiers. He seized more than 30 machine guns, which had been killing Americans with extreme accuracy and ferocity.
The M1908/15 Maxim light machine gun was one of the German weapons York confiscated in the Argonne Forest battle, making it a highly significant artifact and a priceless war piece.
After he marched his prisoners back to American lines, York ordered the Germans to toss the gun into a pile along with other arms.
Mayland Lewis of Nahant, Mass., a small island north of Boston and south of Salem, was an Army lieutenant assigned to the adjutant's staff. He took notes for the Army on York's bravery and the German surrender.
After noting York's exploits, Lewis plucked the machine gun from the pile and sent it to his folks in Nahant as a war memento of York's actions. In World War I, there were no restrictions against that sort of thing.
On Armistice Day in 1919, which celebrated the end of World War I, the Nahant Boy Scouts paraded the machine gun along the streets of the peninsula in a small red wagon, according to the Lewis family.
The only other time the machine gun made a parade performance was this past Veterans Day Parade in Nahant.
Alvin York's WWI German machine gun
* Museum of Appalachia board of directors chairman Buddy Scott, left, signs a document which will officially transfer a World War I German Maxim machine gun to the museum Thursday, Jan. 7, 2010.
* Founder John Rice Irwin poses with a German machine gun belonging to WWI hero Alvin York at the Museum of Appalachia Thursday, Jan. 7, 2010.
* Museum of Appalachia board of directors chairman Buddy Scott, attorney Billy Stokes, and City of Norris manager Tim Hestor pose with a German machine gun belonging to WWI hero Alvin York at the museum Thursday, Jan. 7, 2010.
* Museum of Appalachia founder John Rice Irwin, left, and Mark Evans, right, listen to attorney Billy Stokes, center, as they discuss a German machine gun from WWI belonging to war hero Alvin York Thursday, Jan. 7, 2010.
* See this entire gallery at full size
Up in the attic
Lewis gave the gun to the Nahant Public Library, which promptly retired it to the attic. There it remained until 2003, when Dan deStefano, library director, stumbled over it. He pulled it from the debris, believing the gun barrel to be some sort of pipe.
Library officials thought at first they might sell the machine gun. Then they discovered it was an unregistered automatic weapon. Federal law prevented the library from either owning or selling the machine gun legally.
The Nahant Police Department "arrested" the machine gun and locked it away. Nahant Library Trustee John Welsh tried to find a way to keep the one-of-a-kind weapon but discovered that he could only give it to a historic museum that receives federal funding, such as the Museum of Appalachia.
"It is the last surviving weapon captured by York," Welsh said. "So it is historically significant. And if we can't have it, then I think it is where it belongs."
John Rice Irwin, Museum of Appalachia founder, learned of the machine gun through a friend who had read about it. He enlisted museum board of trustees member Mike Evans, founding partner of The Evans Group, a national sales company representing leading manufacturers in the shooting, hunting, outdoor and law enforcement markets. Evans in turn enlisted the help of a friend, retired Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent Bob Bilbo.
Bilbo worked through almost 30 hours of federal weapons paperwork so that the museum could legally acquire it, a process that took the museum about two years to complete.
"This thing was like a secret weapon. We didn't have anything like it," said Evans, who worked with Welsh in Nahant to make it possible for the museum to receive the weapon. In the end, the machine gun was simply mailed through the United States Postal Service to the Norris Public Safety Department from the Nahant Police Department.
The water-cooled Maxim, or Maschinengewehr 08 (the year it was adopted by Germany), could spit out 400 7.9 mm rounds per minute and was accurate to a range of almost 4,000 yards.
Knoxville showing
The gun will be displayed 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 24, at the Tennessee Theatre during a special VIP reception.
Former U.S. Sen. Howard H. Baker Jr. will welcome special guests, and WBIR, Channel 10's John Becker will serve as master of ceremonies. For ticket information, call the museum at 865-494-7680 or visit www.museumofappalachia.org.
Ticket proceeds will go toward safely securing the weapon. Later it will become the centerpiece in an extensive York exhibit.
For his actions in the Argonne Forest, York received the Distinguished Service Cross from the U.S., France's Croix de Guerre and Legion of Honor, Italy's Croce di Guerra and the War Medal from Montenegro.
Then, after an Army investigation of the events on Oct. 8, 1918, Gen. John J. "Black Jack" Pershing, American Expedition Forces commander, upgraded the Distinguished Service Cross to the Medal of Honor.
On the day York received the Medal of Honor, Pershing called him the "greatest civilian soldier of the war."
Retired senior writer Fred Brown is a freelance contributor and may be reached at [email protected].
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