Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 322 - Alvin York

Episode Date: July 28, 2024

GET YOUR TICKETS FOR OUR BELFAST SHOW: https://www.universe.com/events/lions-led-by-donkeys-podcast-live-in-belfast-tickets-83V5QD Vote for us to win a podcast award: https://www.podcastawards.com/ Alvin York started WWI as a conscientious objector and finished it as a bloodthirsty demon built for war. Sources: https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/sergeant-alvin-york-personal-accounts-that-reveal-his-true-story/ https://www.historynet.com/alvin-york-hero-argonne/ Douglas V. Mastriano. Alvin York: A New Biography of the Hero of the Argonne

Hey everybody, if you ever wanted to see us live but you missed the other shows, well, you have another chance. Me and the boys are hitting the road once again. The Lions Led by Donkeys podcast is coming live to Belfast at the Oye Music Center Saturday, October 26th. So get your tickets while they last. You can find the link in our show notes. So get them now. Do it. Hey everybody, welcome to the Lions of By Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe, shivering in the cold dark trenches of the western front. My feet have developed the tensile strength of a sponge, and the last batch of poison gas shells had made it so whenever I sneeze, I

also shit blood, which is comforting to me, because at least it's warm. Joining me, confused as to why he's here for a variety of geopolitical reasons, is Tom. Our commanding officer, Nate, cannot join us here today because he's stuck in the hospital suffering from a Victorian-era wasting disease, which the doctors have diagnosed as, unfortunately, being from Indiana. When you said, I want to try out a new bit at the start of the show, I did not expect it to be that.

I had to edit it because Nate is not here. I mean, like, to be fair, I flew back from continental Europe last night and I very much felt like that. I was like surrounded by the dying to try to support warm one. I just came back from a trip to Germany, which is lovely until I went into a city in Germany, which I'm not a fan of. But countryside's nice. Yeah, it was lovely until you had to deal with Doofban. Look, I have taken a train to Germany twice since I've lived in the Netherlands and both

times it's gone terribly. And it's not to say that like the Dutch train system is incredible or anything, but it's mostly fine. It has its fucking issues. It could certainly be cheaper, but compared to the Deutsche Bahn, it is like the Tokyo Metropolitan subway. I don't know. I mean, like, to be fair, everyone says that Deutsche Bahn is like so fucked and the trains in Germany are just so fucked in general.

Yeah. And I will say like from regional travel in the Dusseldorf area, everything worked. But as soon as I attempted to leave that general area, it was like everything was actively on fire and nobody knew what was going on. Like at one point the screens for the train just turned off. Another point they weren't being updated and they weren't saying over the loudspeaker

what stop it was. So I just said, like, look out the window and hope I could catch the sign that told me where the fuck I was. I mean, to be fair, like twice in the past few weeks, someone has set my local tube station on fire. So that's like an active, active arson versus like, no, the door down just doesn't work. The biggest setback I've ever had in another one so far

was like we don't have trains inside the city. We have like a tram system and it's normally pretty much perfect. Though the other day it was stopped because the tram I was on, someone threw a brick at the window. Which to me is go faster, get away from the man with the brick. I'm trying to think, what grievance would someone have with a tram in The Hague and

off the trail brick at it? According to the news, it was football hooligans. There was a big football match here that I was not aware of. I mean, because know, because of where I live, there's occasionally large protests that close down the trams. You can imagine. But, you know, and that's fine. They're not normally like slow down for more than five minutes and it's you, you get refunded, but never had a brick thrown at me while using public transportation. I mean, like to be fair, last night I was learning about a Hungarian football hooliganism and the new emerging national.

Well, they're around in 2016. National Hungarian team hooligans called the Carpathian Brigade, who want the restoration of Greater Hungary name of a more common Alliance other than like far-right people and football who against oh, that's another thing Obviously, it's been a long time so they've been like in Germany for any sustained amount of time So I don't remember how it was when I was like 18, but I was not Expecting to see so many stickers on the walls of various things in Dusseldorf expecting to see so many stickers on the walls of various things in Dusseldorf

advertising football ultra clubs because like obviously they exist in the Netherlands I've heard they exist a lot harder in like Rotterdam This is what people have told me I cannot confirm any of that But you wouldn't see like a sticker for a football ultra their football hooligan club Just like on a telephone pole, at least where I live, they were fucking everywhere. Do so. Or like, like it's like putting up stickers, like advertising the crimes are going to commit. It makes no sense to me.

Yeah. But maybe that's like the American in me coming out that fully doesn't really get ultras. Yeah. really get ultras? Yeah, it's like football. Who ism is like very interesting as like a 20th century movement. Now, for the most part, it's just fascists. Yeah, I've always kind of got that like that. That part I've kind of understood as an outsider into the world. Like that we don't really have ultras in the American football scene.

We just have Americans, which are bad enough. Yay. Americans go really galaxy ultras. My favorite dumb part of American soccer slash football is the American teams that pick up like European naming conventions. Like we don't call things we don't call soccer football, but we'll have multiple clubs call themselves like FC. We even have a team that calls themselves real for some reason. It's fucking weird. That's just, uh, that's just to account for all the

Cubans that are in Florida. No, it's salt Lake. It's fucking salt Lake. Yeah. There's a, there's not a whole lot of it. whole lot of incredibly right wing Cubans in Salt Lake. No, when I think of Salt Lake I definitely think of Spanish football. Fucking ridiculous. Speaking of none of those things, if you could tell from the intro, today we are jumping back in our very stupid time machine and going back to World War I. And we're probably going to talk about a guy that, since Nate isn't here, Tom has no idea

who this guy is. Have you ever heard of Alvin York? Does he have two brothers who are also chipmunks? Unknown. Actually, he has like 11 siblings, but from my understanding, none of them cut a sick record deal. Okay. 11 siblings.

Either he is like fucking like dust bowl, like emergent hero or like someone from like an incredibly wealthy family. Free dust bowl. Okay. Um, but I'm going to say he might be the most American man we've ever talked about on this show for both good and bad reasons. Okay. Can you explain it to me in the metaphor of a burger?

Okay. What if a burger was really, really poor and religious? Um, and then found out that killing people was actually very fun to them. Okay. So he's just a Big Mac then. Hmm. Perhaps. I'm not sure of the bloodlust of a Big Mac. Once again, the only casualty of a Big Mac was Morgan Spurlock.

I was about to say, we now go live to our burger correspondent, Morgan Spurlock. Oh wait, no we don't. Hey, we're free for three. Watch out, who's next? Yeah, people are starting to pick up on this death note feature that we have on the podcast. But I've laid out some rules for it. For it to work, we can't actively wish them harm. Yeah. We have to just talk about them and make fun of them because whether it be OJ Simpson, Toby, Keith, or now

Morgan Spurlock, despite the fact we may all in our back of our head wish horribly bad things to these people, we were just talking shit. And we didn't say like, ha ha ha, we hope this happens to them. We were just shit talking who they were as a person at length, and then they dropped dead

before the episode came out. Yeah, I see fucking Mike Tyson somewhere. It's like, I'm very scared of this man called Joe Kisabian. Oh no, I think that means Mike Tyson is on the chopping block. I had to- Actually, you know what? You know, much like Morgan Spurlock, due to virtually the exact same thing

that I will not go into on the show because this one does not need a content warning and I'm not gonna give one for it, I'm fine with that. Everybody we're gonna go back and listen to this great story from Joker's Abbey and about World War II. The guy from the dust bowl. You know one of my favorite things as I've said before on the show about Mike Tyson is that he once paid a man hundreds of thousands of dollars to just go to his press conferences and yell gorilla warfare and the man's name is Crocodile and I think that's just magnificent.

And someone told me they were gonna do that at the live show and then someone like was like, please don't. I disagree. I'm not gonna pay you tens of thousands of dollars but if you wanna yell gorilla warfare during a live show, it would bring joy to my heart. Maybe don't do it at the live show that's coming after the Hague. Oh, no.

You could probably infer the location from that joke, but. Cobble. Now, we are talking World War One today,. The reason why Elven York is a good example as the quintessential American is because, for starters, when you think of the people who become war heroes, people always want to imagine them as bigger, faster, stronger, whatever, these larger than life figures. And that image is always helped along by media. In fact, it's invented by media most of the time. If you're going to be good at killing your fellow man like a machine,

you have to, you know, look and act like Arnold Schwarzenegger and command. Where in reality, most, you know, soldiers are just like in the port of Luz straight jorking at all times. Yeah, I can attest to that fact. I have awards that will attest to that fact. And people who've been listening to this show long enough know that just isn't true. Outside of soldiers who do like crazy things that you would have heard about, they're just normal people. And the most dangerous people that have ever walked the earth

are the most unassuming motherfuckers you'll ever see simmy oh hi-ha the most deadly sniper in human history was literally a tiny little fella smadley butler I mean he looked dangerous but that's because he killed so many people his eyes were dead like a doll's eyes. He didn't look dangerous, he looked insane. That's true, that's true. I mean, Ludmila Pavlichenko looks like a normal woman, and she upends many people's narratives of masculinity when it comes to service, to the point that they mostly just pretend that she never existed.

There's Desmond Doss, a guy who refused to carry a weapon into combat and became an unkillable medic god in the jungles of Pacific Theatre. I mean, Audie Murphy, famously so small the army didn't want him. You know? Adrian DeWeert, a short skinny guy who had one arm. I mean, to be fair, he lost that arm because he was a psychopath. Yeah. And also a nutsack full of shrapnel. Dude came bullets.

Now that brings us to the subject of today's episode, Alvin Callum York. He was born in a literal log cabin in Jamestown, Tennessee, December 13th, 1887. His family was normal for its day in this area, namely dirt fucking poor with a ton of kids. And this is because, I mean, they're farmers, and back then kids were, you birthed children, not because you wanted kids, but because you wanted help on the farm.

I need a platoon of these little shits. I don't have to do so much back-breaking labor. Yeah, like, you know, a couple of decades later he could have just been Elvis. Hmm. I mean, we're unaware of how Elvin York could swivel them hips. Like, if you look at a picture of Elvin York, and you look at a picture of early Elvis Presley, I think we're all going with Elvis Presley on this one. Hey mama, I'm going to fight in the European theatre, mama. And you can assume because Alvin York was born in 1887, he was at least as racist as Elvis Presley. Yeah. Austin Butler's gonna play him in the biopic, but still doing the Elvis voice.

I'd watch that. Fuck it. Give him the hair too. I mean, to be fair, when I was watching Dune 2, I could, like, kept having to stop myself laughing in the cinema because I kept imagining fucking Austin Butler as Faye Routh doing the Elvis voice. I'm on Dune, momma. I'm coming here to depose the House of Trades, mama. I posit that with Rami Malek playing Freddie Mercury, but in the HBO miniseries, The Pacific.

Because he's in The Pacific and he's the best character of the whole fucking show. Give him the teeth. Make the teeth act, you know, which is what he did throughout that entire movie. It'd be great. Now York's grandfather on his mom's side has an interesting life story. William Brooks was born in Michigan and drafted the fight in the US Civil War, but after his first taste of combat he decided, man, this shit sucks and deserted. He fled to North Carolina, changed his name, started his family, and eventually made their way to Tennessee.

And that is the family that produced Elvin York's mother. This is the peak era of like, I'm just going to move three towns over and just change my name. Yeah. Yeah. A time where you could literally disappear if you wanted to, and it wasn't even that hard. It just required you to have, I don't know, a horse. The Yorks were poor, even for their day. Elvin's father had no real normal job to speak of. Instead, they were forced into subsistence farming. And he did a little bit of what I saw described as, quote, illegal blacksmithing on the side I don't know what that means in the 1800s

I don't think there's much licensing for your local blacksmith back then. That's an intensely ominous sentence Highly illegal blacksmithing. I mean nowadays it's just that weird friend, you know that prints 3d guns But I don't know what that meant. He's whammer robots from fucking elder scrolls yeah you hear about that York fella he's unleashed the elders horror of the Daedric fucking robots in his farm that York fella he's building machinations and automatons out the wazoo. I think it's a sin against God, but he pays his rent on time. Why in God's name he got 11 children when he got all those automatons running around? Sure, they do the work.

They could pull a plow. Now they were such subsistence farmers, they literally had to hunt and fish for survival when the crops went bad, which they did often because York's dad sucked at farming. Which to be fair, no shade, if I had to live off of farming, I would die. Off of farming in the 19th century as well? Yeah, yeah, I would die so fucking hard. I tried to grow a garden when I lived in every place I've lived where I've had a yard,

which is also is every place I've lived in the United States until I left it. Failed every time. I think I successfully grew kale once, but I can't even lay claim to that because it grew after I forgot about it. That's what that's why this is why you grew because you forgot about it. Much, much like the rest of my family, I could like,

I could only let something I brought into this world grow and thrive after I abandoned it. Yeah, listen, you know, you took the real Detroit move and shouldn't have been pouring diesel on the flowers. It's not what on the flowers, it's not what they need. But it's got what cars crave. Do cars in the Cars universe get drunk if they're like a petrol car but they drink

diesel? Hmm, I think that would be like if you drank bleach wouldn't it? Yeah. Does like, like Lightning McQueen finally like see the darkness of his existence and butt chug bleach until he fucking dies I mean look the gas the gas tank is in the back all the chugging that the cars are doing the cars The force is technically butt-chugging not King shaming the cars. I just said that out loud Somebody clip that their mother made their entire family's clothing supply

clipped up. Their mother made their entire family's clothing supply, like they were literally wearing home spun rags, and their father took all of the kids out of school when he arbitrarily decided they had enough of that book learning for the rest of their life. Which was a grand total of nine months of school. You don't have enough of that book learning, you're gonna join your father making automatons. I didn't need to go to god damn MIT to learn the forbidden arts of dwarven robotics. I'm combining necromancy and robotics, I'm making robots. Like Elvin York is functionally illiterate until he's an adult, which is pretty common for someone who's a subsistence farmer, you know, in early America. Then the dad died in 1911, leaving Elvin to kind of become their father figure for the rest of the small army of siblings,

which caused him to move away and look for work in railroad construction so he could make more money and then send back home. I mean, maybe he had 11 kids, maybe he was trying to start the first ever American soccer team. Yeah, yeah. Real Tennessee. They suck, but they have good fundamentals. My boots are made out of dried cabbage leaves. My whole team is wearing Dwemer armor. We I made it in my illegal forage!

We play soccer to bring glory to the Daedra gods! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! This is where Elvin York found good old-fashioned boos for the first time, really. And, and as any man living a shit existence working a shit manual labor job at any point in history, but especially the 1900s would do, he quickly became a violent alcoholic. And this didn't seem to be a gradual thing either. Alvin seemingly went from zero to a hundred overnight. Like he took one sip of alcohol.

He's like, oh, this is going to ruin my life. I can't wait. Yeah, listen, sometimes sometimes some people's hyperfixations is just being an alcoholic. I don't have a problem. I just really, really enjoy it. Yeah. Yeah. He had a problem. He got blackout drunk and became a common fixture in the local saloon brawling scene and because these were saloons specifically made for railroad workers effectively, they also doubled his casinos

called blind tigers because they were illegal. I don't know where the tigers get involved, but yeah he's getting piss drunk on get involved but yeah he's getting piss drunk on shit backwoods whiskey and getting in bar fights in illegal casinos. Sunday Sunday Sunday at the blind tiger casino illegal bar brawls. Elvin New York strolls up like you guys are fucked I got this from my dad's highly illegal forge in the backyard. He's just coming up with fucking like power armor like fucking boxing gloves made out of steel. I saw this in the documentary, real steel.

I learned how to make these gloves off game facts. When he wasn't busy losing his paycheck at the casino or drinking it away at the saloon, he made money off of marksmanship competitions. Out back in the street. Because he was a crack shot. His dad had taught him how to be one from like when he was 6 years old because remember they were literally hunting for survival. He was the best shot anyone had ever fucking seen. All while drunk.

The man would get pissed drunk and do trick shots and snipe shit from hundreds of meters away. Fucking impressive, honestly. This is just a competitive shooting version of people who say they drive better when they're drunk. I'm more relaxed. Yeah, it's easy, just close one eye and aim for the middle. Even amongst other railroad workers, York was considered a bit of a bastard. He was lazy, quick to fight, and spent a lot of time in the local jail, along with, you know, a constant state of public drunkenness and indecency around the clock.

Like a lot of people who grew up without literally any money, he had no real understanding of how to spend it when he got it, and he was always drowning in gambling debt and drinking debt to the point he could have been a member of my family. I really hope my mom isn't listening to this. How good is Alvin York at stealing catalytic converters? Alvin York just stumbling out down the streets of Detroit with copper wire in one hand and like a used needle he got from his friend in the other like, where's my kids at? He and his friends all assumed that he would amount to nothing other than eventually being

a corpse in a gutter somewhere someday. And he almost certainly would have been right, but then something happened that changed Elvin York's life. Unfortunately, that was one of his friends being stabbed to death in a bar fight right next to him while working in Kentucky. Drunk and pottering existence due to his friend's senseless death, he stumbled into a revival tent held by the Churches of Christ of Christian Union's charismatic street preacher, H.H. Russell in 1915. I say as H.H. Russell, the Lord Jesus Christ does not support these Dwemer machines. Cast out the evil of the D'Aidra Hordes! You must throw away all your dwarven steel ingots, them to the church Jesus needs the steel

Nobody asked him his opinion on the high elves. It'll be bad Now they asked me in the paper if I support Nord's Let me tell you the Nord's are the only true people of America. No dark elves We we will drive out all the Khajiit out of town America is Skyrim. We will drive all the Khajiit out of North Carolina Their skooma is ruining our children our police officers even so much as breathe Skuma they go into a fit when I hear the words Kha has wares if you have corn, I am filled with a blind rage. Your southern accent is better than mine.

Honestly, I'm impressed. The Churches of Christ and Christian Union is a Protestant church formed as a breakaway group of the Christian Union, which itself was formed in opposition to slavery in the American South. group of the Christian Union, which itself was formed in opposition to slavery in the American South. This version of the faith leaned heavily towards what was called the Holiness Movement, and without going into an exhausting level of weird esoteric American theology here, the American Holiness Movement is tied to things like Quakers.

Quakers were famously anti-slavery and also known as being pacifist, etc. etc. And big fans of oats. Huge fans of instant oats. Um, whereas the original union were Calvinists and therefore fine with slavery. Yep. Calvinists. I put, I like the idea of since Quakers were so into oats, just like an apps roving band of absolutely jacked Quakers, like it's like seeing, you know, a dude who works in like a supermarket who's like raped. I was like, there is the Quaker Oats guy strides out from a farmhouse, just absolute mass monster like Ronnie Coleman in his. Say your prayers, eat your oats, get gains. Do trend.

Like there is there's functionally no reason to be that jacked and working in subway. And the same way, like there's no reason to be a jacked Quaker who eats like 500 grams of oats every day because you're never you will function function never use those muscles because you're a pacifist See that's how you stay a pacifist you make other people accept that you're a pacifist Now the new Union hit the road as a peace-loving revival movement telling people whatever they had previously done would be Forgiven as long as they repented and moved towards living a life of peace in Harmony with their fellow man, though there is a little bit more to it as well life in General was supposed to be a practice in strict purity in order to achieve this holiness and forgiveness

Namely no drinking no swearing, you know normal stuff like only read the Bible study the passage but also had things like no dancing, no movies, and no swimming. And no conversing with the dragon priests trying to summon the eldritch horrors of the dragons of Skyrim. Strictly no dragon policy. Your sinning will bring about a band of draugr to this town and you will be stricken down with their dead magic I really like the no swimming thing though. It makes no sense. I- is it because Jesus walked on water? I- I- I would say it's more of a like a kind of pure

Atanical thing because like obviously you have to take off your clothes to go swimming. Yeah I mean kinda you could try to swim in your clothes back then but they're all like heavy ass as fuck and you just drown. You just drown because like your clothes are just made from raw hemp. It's probably what his mom was sewing him. I sewed you this out of rocks cause I hate you. My beret is made out of gunny sacks. I went and joined the- I'm just going too far, it's going from there. I went and joined the army and my uniform was too smooth after wearing a lifetime of clothes made out of gunny sacks.

My whole body is a callous. I asked the officer, could he drag me behind him on his horse for a while to rough up my clothes? Also, because I'm into that sort of thing. It's very hard to be into BDSM during World War One. Now, they this church wasn't technically pacifists, like not doctrinally, but the church teachings were founded as inherently nonviolent in all matters, as well being strictly apolitical in all things. No voting, no taking part in the state, do with it like pay taxes and whatever so you

don't get like vanned away or whatever, but like as little as possible. Yeah, they're just Mennonites with buttons on their clothes. See see, that's what happens when the buttons, when the buckles turn into buttons. Become American. I don't even know what the fuck that means. So obviously this appealed to York to have just watched his friend get stabbed to death in a bar fight that he had played a role in and he's feeling very guilty over it. So York completely and totally devoted himself to his newfound religion immediately.

He led their choir, he met his wife within the first few months, and by all accounts, completely new man. Never drank again, never even looked at it like 180, you know? Unfortunately for him and most of the world, it was 1917. And World War I was tearing through a generation of sweet, sweet, succulent meat. And the US was slowly but surely being pulled in. That meant York and people like him would need to register for the draft. And he did.

And there's this thing in the United States and a lot of other places you can register as a conscientious objector. And you have to add, like they ask in the form, why are you an objector? And now that kind of requires you to have a decent grasp of reading and writing, which Elvin York did not. So when on the form, the question says like, do you claim exemption from the draft? He had a nine month long education and wasn't exactly strong with words. So he simply answered, yes, don't want to fight. I would like to think of this as when he wrote, don't want to fight. He used the number two, like he was texting in the early 2000s. So he did not cite why he just said, I don't want to.

And of course it was immediately denied. He appealed and with the help of his preacher, he fully explained why he objected. And you can find this letter in the public domain and you can tell from what I'm about to read you that Alvin York did not write this. It says, quote, you denied my claim for discharge based on the grounds I'm a member of a well organized religious sect or organization whose existing creed or principles forbid its members from participating in the war, etc. Yeah, Alvin New York did not write that. Now, it was denied again, both by the state and the federal level, for the simple fact that his

church never bothered to register themselves as a church with the government due to their total rejection of politics, and therefore they were not considered a legitimate Christian sect of belief to object for. For fuck's sake, he just says that I object to fighting these Austro-Hungarian killing machines. I will not go fight the Kaiser or the Austro- Hungarians. I believe they are using Dwemer weapons. As you can see in my father's forge I've created a machine that you will see in the future film Wild Wild West. It is a giant spider that shoots flames. Through the use of machinations I've created a sort of giant arachnid. I will be joined

on the battlefield piling it up by one Will Smith They say Tommy Lee Jones will play me in the movie. I do not like Tommy Lee Jones. He is Catholic So Elvin York was drafted six months before his 30th birthday, which would have been the cutoff for conscription anyway So he kind of got fucked twice there. However, just because the army ignored his beliefs did not mean he was just going to suck it up and eat shit. He reported for training in Georgia

and was easily the best soldier in his entire unit. However, he was vocally and personally deeply unsettled by the idea he might have to kill a man. In an era where being anti-war would land you in prison and refusing orders from an officer could get you the death penalty, he told anyone and everyone, sergeant to captain to major, whatever, he's like, I do not want to fight in this war. I will not fight in this war. I mean, look, you gotta really respect the fucking balls to do that.

100%. No, like nothing but respect because he very easily could have gotten the wall. And you know, also credit to his officers, like his battalion commander, this guy named Major Edward Buxton, who did not do that. And so Buxton was a Brown graduate, had a degree in philosophy, and then he went to Harvard and became educated as a lawyer in case anyone needed any more of a reason to hate him.

Buxton and York's company commander, Captain Edward Danforth, were both deeply religious men themselves, and they found that York had a very good understanding of scripture, even if he could hardly read and write write so they kind of respected him based on that it also helped that Like I said, he was a very good soldier He was great at soldiering that shot in the entire company as the best shot in the entire battalion He's just like yeah, I can shoot targets at fucking 700 meters all day. I'm not shooting a guy though

He's just doing like sniper elite 4 stuff he just shoots and then it goes into slow-mo as the bullet explodes a soldier's ball sack. Hold that thought. Oh for fuck's sake! So using the Bible as a reference these two officers began to show him all of the times that God and Jesus were actually pretty comfortable with violence should the need arise. And the Lord said we will strike down the dark elves. And you see here Alvin, when the Lord said the dark elves, that's what we think of as Hungarians now. We're now banned from Budapest. After all, if God could smite down humans, who were we to be any different or to think that we're any better than God? They cited like

famous Bible passages, you know, render unto Caesar, if you don't have a sword sell your cloak and buy one, and if my kingdom were of this world then my servants would fight for it. Stuff like that. Then, Buxton gave York a 10-day pass to go home and think it over. And just to be clear here, according to Buxton himself, he did not think it worked. They never once threatened York with prison, execution, which he could have faced because he was currently in uniform, so he fell under military code. Dodging conscription would lead to prison, but once you're already in, things get significantly more dire. Instead they were killing him with

kindness, and they had previously prepared his discharge paperwork, an honorable discharge by the way, because they assumed that when he came back he would still refuse. This is the last time a CO in the US Army would treat soldiers this well. It kind of, look, I kind of go both ways on this one, if I'm being completely honest. These two officers are very religious and using the man's religion that they understood, they convinced him that murdering people is okay. Okay, yeah, maybe that is the most US military thing to ever happen. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's a fact a little bit chaplain still do to this day.

Yeah. On top of a lot of other fucked up shit. But like, they're very understanding to him, while simultaneously kind of turning him into a religious zealot. Yeah, and now like recruiters are just telling like 18 year olds that if you join and do your four years instead of the GI Bill, we will make Hatsune Miku real and she will be your girlfriend. That's right. Nowadays, instead of like citing Bible passages, like you want to buy a Ford Mustang with 20% interest sign here, Dirk. Do you want a free concert from BTS? Ironically,

BTS. I think they got conscripted. Yeah, the BTS, they're not touring because they have to do their mandatory service. How much would it suck to be in a unit with the guys from BTS? Like, you know they're not doing any work. Yeah, you're getting out of PT because you have to do your, like, skincare routine. Yeah, your 13 hour long skincare dance training every day. Yeah. I gotta say, BTS, they got some bangers. I'm not a big K-pop person, but I can appreciate a good song.

I can say with confidence I've never listened to any K-pop. And for the sake of my career, I'm not saying anything bad about it. But yeah, funnily enough, Joe, right before the live show in The Hague, guess what's happening right before we have to set up. So I've heard I'm glad to share the stage with local K-pop legends in the Netherlands, you know. Yoast Klein is the best we are supposed to call it D pop, you know, Dutch pop. It's called gabber rap I know gabber slaps like gabber is so good. I'm a fan. I'm a huge fan actually I would open my eyes to it with used Klein and I'm a pretty big fan as someone who did a lot of drugs in his

Early 20s. I cannot Deny that I love gabber see it's interesting and I'm a pretty big fan. As someone who did a lot of drugs in his early 20s, I cannot deny that I love Gabber. See, it's interesting because I'm not so versed in the world of drugs as you are, but it's still I like it. You you you would look like a you know, like the the inflatable guys outside car dealerships. Like if you tried to do the gabber dance, you just look like the wacky wavy man. I always say I look like like whenever I dress up, I look like someone shoved a gorilla into a suit.

And if I tried to dance, I look like those videos from the zoo of gorillas just randomly spinning in circles on their ass. Because like you're like, that's funny. What is he doing? This doesn't make any sense. It's me. It's my rhythm. Much like a gorilla, you also have, that's funny. What is he doing? This doesn't make any sense. It's me. It's my rhythm Much like a gorilla you natural much like a gorilla you also have three percent body fat That's right, baby. Also weirdly large arms that I walk on

For comparison sake thousands of men like York who objected were sent to prison Many for years and some for even beyond the end of World War I. How badly an individual objector was fucked was pretty much entirely left up to the judgment of their officers directly in charge of them. And York just so happened to get as good as it was going to get. Despite the fact they were using religion to effectively brainwash him to some extent, they were also planning an exit if he came back and was like, no, you know, my deeply held beliefs say I cannot kill a man. But all right, go home.

Like they didn't. There was no stick in the carrot and stick in the situation, which I guess is going to get in World War One. You know, York returned from leave until Buxdon that he now believed there were times when war was moral and ordained by God, and he would fight, not for America, but for God. I have been told by the hand of Providence that I shall go to Central Europe and fight the evil of the Argonians. Ha ha ha! We now call them Lithuanians.

Ha ha ha! And our perfidious ally, the Britons, who are just British people. Yes. And I never understood that in Elder Scrolls. They're just a race called the Britons. Yeah. I was like, I wonder who those are. We can judge based on the fact that they only eat boiled meat.

Yeah. And they, I mean, listen, they all still have the mentality of living in the medieval age. So it's like the York's two commanding officers like, why the fuck is he talking about lizards and dwarves and shit? I don't know. Just get him back in the unit. Yeah. Just get him. Just make him sign the fucking contract.

It's weird me out. Yeah. Just like he keeps talking. Ask me the scum. He keeps talking about like Argonians and like lizard people and being able to breathe in their water. I'm like, you know, these like weird danger gods. Are you sure he's a Protestant? He keeps talking about Argonians. So we sent with the Argon Forest. He and his unit were eventually deployed to France to take part in the Sami hell offensive

in September of 1918, where witnesses saw that he had fully committed to his new role as what effectively is a paladin. He's just committing white boy jihad. Kinda, yeah. I mean like he's, previously he fully committed himself to being a pacifist, now he fully committed himself to killing as many people as possible for Jesus. Yeah if he could read right, he would have been Frank Herbert. Still not a Dune guy. You would love Dune so much. I disagree.

I disagree from everything I heard from it. I'm not. I don't want to be bought in. It's too weird for me. Like it's a it's a space political drama more than anything else, and I know you would love it. You would love the same things about Doom that you love about 40k. I'll take into consideration. The way that York thought this whole thing over is like,

why do I need to try to protect myself? God is protecting me. And if I die, that's God's plan. So why do I need to worry about it? Once again, white boy jihad. As Chet Hank said, it's white boy summer again so you know. White boy western front. Yeah. Actually that's just the western front. Well it is 1918 so a lot of these people aren't considered white yet. And everybody who isn't got dragged there by white people. Anybody who's to put up with white boy summers, not there, because they want to be. Afterwards, York and his unit would find themselves in the middle of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive,

the heaviest combat operation that American soldiers would suffer through. As soon as his commander moved them out toward a village, they came under artillery bombardment of explosives mixed with poison gas. Almost immediately an entire squad was wiped out, then another as they tried and failed to get their gas masks on in time for their lungs boiled into a kind of internal soup. They eventually made it into a position called Hill 223, which is never a good sign if you're a soldier and sent to a place that only has a number for a name. This is the history version of when you watch a war movie and you see a soldier like, see this picture of my baby girl?

Just born two weeks before I shipped out. I'm like, oh, that motherfucker is dead. Either that or it's like in a horror movie when the music suddenly stops. Or then someone runs upstairs. York and his men were reinforcing another American company that had just been smashed the day prior, losing nearly 80% of their men. The American plan was to launch a counterattack to get some good old fashioned revenge, and it was supposed to be set up with a WWI standard preparatory artillery bombardment.

But the artillery never showed up. Commanders looked at their watches as they got closer and closer to 6am when they were supposed to attack, and assuming the artillery was just running late or something, but it still never came. Despite this, the American commander in the area, Major James Tillman, decided Fuck it, attack anyway. Where was the artillery? It just didn't get the orders. Yeah, which it happens. I mean like this This is the era where like you might have a radio and other times it's literally a man delivering a message by hand.

Sometimes shit just gets fucked up. So at 6 10 a.m. whistles blew and Americans were sent over the top with York finding himself in the first wave at the front as always on the far left of the American attack. The shock of the attack actually worked. The Germans didn't see it coming. So they suddenly had hundreds of Americans screaming at them about burgers or whatever. They retreated.

That's why the artillery didn't arrive, because they were meant to be firing artillery burgers on the soldiers at them. You get like four cannons in a row. One's firing a bun. The next lettuce. The next tomato. The next meat. The next bun. So they fire in a row. One's firing a bun. The next lettuce, the next tomato, the next meat, the next bun. So they fire in unison. In the air, they come together to form a burger. And no, but then they have like a stationary machine gun that fires packets of ketchup. So

it's like clay pigeon shooting. You aim at the bone. Yeah. You have one battery shooting ketchup, one battery shooting mustard across in the middle, and then it hits and everybody's just very happy about it. The Germans retreated, fell back to the reserve fallback trenches, which is very, very common for late stage of World War I. There's never just one trench. There's a series of trenches allowing for a defense in depth, right? However, in between the hill and the main German

positions was a valley, a heavily reinforced valley, and the Americans began to get torn apart by rifle, machine gun, and mortar fire. The situation is described by Elvin York as follows, and I will read this exactly how it is written. Do the accent, Joe, do the accent. The Germans met our charges across the valley with a regular sleet storm of bullets. I'm a telling you, I swear to God it says I'm a telling you, that that there valley was a death trap. It was a triangular shaped valley with a steep ridge covered with brush and swarming with machine guns on all sides. I guess our two waves got about halfway and then Jess couldn't get no further know how. The German Dung got us dead and they got us right smart. They

just stop us in our tracks. Their machine guns were up on them heights overlooking us and well hidden. We couldn't tell for certain where their terrible heavy fire was coming from and most seemed though it was coming from everywhere. As he finished out just like one of the straps of his dungarees just pe- Hahahaha! He's all stressed out so he reaches into his pocket and pulls out just a long piece of wheat to put between his lips instead of a cigarette. I say Lord of Mercy, these Germans they done hiding in them bushes. They fillingin' us with bullets, and all we tryin' to do is just fire our buggers." The American counterattack had broken apart as York's commander looked to his flank for the other unit that was supposed to be there, only to see that it was wide open.

That is because, unbeknownst to anyone, their orders had changed and nobody had told them. Just before the attack, a runner with a message for Major Tillman was sent running in his direction telling him, change of plans, do not attack, the artillery isn't coming, but he got shot and died before he could deliver the message. That meant Tillman's unit, with York in it, was now attacking completely on its own, in the wrong direction away from the rest of the Americans. Whoops. Yeah, it seems like, you know, to quote the name of this very show, a very lions led by

donkeys moment. It's one of those situations where occasionally people and you know, we've been accused of being guilty of this as well. I disagree, but you know, it's very easy to be like, oh, commander was stupid. He did something dumb, right? And to some extent that is true, right? Like the commander could have been like,

okay, there's no artillery coming. We're not attacking because that was supposed to be our cue effectively. Also, it's a bad command decision to attack a Duggan enemy unsupported, right? Like those are decisions that we can make. And this is not hindsight 2020 moment. That man was a trained and educated American military officer with combat experience. He should have known those things. And the way

that the American military has always worked is in absence of command, take command, make your own decisions. The times that we criticize people for making dumb choices in situations like this, because yeah, the communications got fucked and the orders to not attack did not show up. But he could have inferred with the realities on the ground and been like, I probably shouldn't attack. And that's when we simplistically call someone stupid. It's stuff like that. It's not because people make, it's not because every bad military decision ever made is made because someone is just dumb. It's the

inability to take command when no command is given. The independence of command structure, which is supposed to exist. He's just like, all they said I have to attack at six am, I have to attack at six am, you know? Fuck it. It's also as well like the like the tactical situation of like trying to go over a hill into a valley and then take another steep hill while you are like besieged on both sides with fire. Kind of like what the fuck are you going to do? Right. With a company. Yeah. Remember, like this is a hundred and some odd guys.

It's not that many people. It's not like, oh, I have three divisions at my disposal to throw into this. It's like, no, I, I have, you know, an understrength company that's already been hit with artillery and gas the other day. As York and his platoon got into the valley, his platoon leader was killed. This left the platoon under the command of Sergeant Harry Parsons as they continued their attack forward toward the German positions. Then they hit another hill called Hummersburg, which was reinforced with multiple machine

guns with a perfect line of sight on the American advance. So Parsons ordered his squad leaders, York and three others, to take their squads, 17 men total, and to find a way to work their way around and take those machine guns out. Then out of nowhere, like a gift from the war gods, the American artillery randomly began to fall directly on top of where York and the other squaw leaders were moving toward. An hour late is better than not at all I suppose. I mean yeah, as like with the hand of God in provenance foretold the burgers did rain from the sky and those Germans were beset with sesame seeds and buns.

I like to think that York is like I knew my prayers would be answered and Jesus started dropping shells on the Germans. Jesus just out back working like a fucking 155 or something. I guess he'd be crewed by like Saints or something around him? I don't know. Angels, Cherubim probably. Cherubim too small to lift the shells. Cherubim probably were the shells.

And because several machine guns had the perfect beat on the squads as they advanced, this artillery bombardment almost certainly saved all of their lives. Because it impacted so close to them that they had to ditch their guns and duck for cover. This allowed the Americans to easily make it to a nearby forest completely unhurt and undetected. The Germans busy not trying to get blown up, totally lost track of the detachment and you know soon York and this detachment is just kind of wandering around behind German lines, kind of lost. And they're just going for a nice walk in the forest.

Yeah, it's lovely this time of year. They had no maps or anything. They just assumed that they would find their way towards the positions at some point. Like, York was like, I figured the machine guns would fire again, and then I'd just go towards the gunfire, and I'd find the machine guns. Like, can't argue with that I suppose. Dome guy logic. Yeah it's not wrong there's better ways to be right but he's not wrong. Then they ran into two German sanitation soldiers who were filling canteens for the wounded in a nearby stream. As they're wearing Red Cross armbands and this is the area where people tend to listen to those kinds of kinds of things the Americans didn't

shoot them but they did chase after them to try to capture them and get some information from them, despite the fact nobody here spoke German. But whatever. Oh yes, I'm just getting water to clean off the shit off my boots. The medics running away, like that Gunther from The Simpsons, like, do not chase me, I'm full of chocolate! The German soldiers ran for their lives and accidentally led York and the others directly to the command bunker a short ways away, which remember, they had no idea where it was.

This is where things get completely fucking bonkers. The soldiers warn their commander, Lieutenant Paul Vollmermer that a force of easily a hundred Elite American shock troopers had broken through their line are now making straight for them Remember there was not even 20 of them and they were not only Volmer was so confused at the moment that he was like is one he's like, I didn't know Americans had fucking shock troopers What are you talking about? There's no we would have noticed a hundred people getting back here But before he could try to do anything Those soldiers were telling other soldiers who were telling other soldiers are telling others and soon

The news of this I don't know 19 fucking 17 version of the Navy SEALs being right outdoors Spread all throughout the German positions the American soldier the Americans that have released this new super weapon called Billy Blazkowicz. I know it's 25 years before Wolfenstein, but it still holds. We have to be safe about these kinds of things. The soldiers in the command bunker were tossing down their weapons and walking out and surrendering before any of them could give orders of any kind of control over the situation and before they even saw any Americans. But like this is the thing about World War I is that like World War I is almost universally a war that no one really wanted to fight

like on the ground. Definitely not by this stage. Yeah, like no soldier who was like on the ground really wanted to be in that war because you would get turned into human mulch The true belief, you know what you call a true believer by 1917 and 1918 dead three years ago It's one of those things where it's like, you know World War two like came to a like very specific like violent end because of like The I suppose extension of fighting over time. Whereas World War One just kind of trundled along because there was nothing really there

to stop it and everyone on the ground was either conscripted or forced to fight in the front through other means. And it's just like no one really wanted to be there. It's like 6am in someone's sitting room after a party and it's just like am I gonna go home? I don't know. We're already here like what if we just hash this out by digging a trench through this sitting room for the next four years Yeah, exactly Steve's front By the time Volmer made it to the entrance of his bunker He was standing face to face with as Volmer put it quote a large and strong American man with a red mustache broad features and a freckled

face this is but he met Nate much like you know the end of an after party just just a dude in the corner who's trying to freestyle over like YouTube beats this is why I don't go to house parties. I guess me and Elvin York have that in common. Now obviously Vollmer did not just run into Nate, he ran into Elvin York. And Vollmer didn't resist and he simply surrendered. However that led to a small problem for the Americans. You see Vollmer had 70 men with him and there's only 17 Americans.

There's combat going on all around them and they're literally surrounded by Germans who, you know, it was only a matter of time before a nearby German is like, yo, what the fuck is going on over there at that company command bunker, right? One machine gun unit that was stationed above Volmer's position on the hill

looked over and saw exactly that. A whole bunch of people surrendering, Americans hanging out with guns, and then soon they turned their machine guns the hill looked over and saw exactly that. A whole bunch of people surrendering, Americans hanging out with guns, and soon they turned their machine guns towards the bunker and opened fire. In the opening burst of machine gun fire, six of the 17 Americans were killed along with several POWs who were screaming in German for them to please stop shooting at them. After that, York was the last man standing with any rank left alive and unhurt, and he was now in charge of the whole thing as a corporal.

He knew if he was going to make it out of there alive and he was going to complete his mission, he was going to have to take out those machine guns. Though he was kind of uncomfortable ordering someone else to do it, so he just said, fuck it, I'll do it myself. The soldiers around him watched in awe as he simply got up and sprinted towards the guns, and not knowing what else to do, they simply gave him covering fire and let him go. Once clear of the killing fields, York jumped into a nearby ravine for cover, settled in and went German hunting using his old hunting skills that his dad had taught

him. He's doing John Wick shit. Kinda, except nobody had to kill his dog. Yeah. He just had to get a message from God, which is more, a little bit more unsettling. Within only a few minutes, using his rifle, York had dropped 19 Germans, dead, no wounded, because he shot each one of them dead in the chest. He is the real Billy Blazkowicz from fucking Wolfenstein, what the fuck? Sensing a lull in the fighting, Jörg began to withdraw back towards his men and the POWs, only to stumble upon a trench with a German squad of 12 men inside who then charged out toward him wielding bayonets. Now what happened next comes from the article Elven York, hero of the argon.

Quote, seeing this, York dropped onto his side and dropped his rifle as it was out of ammunition and he did not have time to reload. He pulled out his M1911 Colt pistol. Using his hunting skills he learned while facing flocks of turkeys, he picked off the advancing foes from back to front. The logic behind this was if the lead German fell, the trailing soldiers would seek cover and therefore be more difficult to kill. As Germans fell, several of the attackers broke off and headed back towards the trench. By then, half of them were dead, and the only reason the rest of them were not is because Alvin York had run out of ammo, because his pistol only carried eight rounds.

It's like my daddy said, you know, like, Germans, they're a lot like turkeys. If you shoot enough of them, the rest of them will run. If they stare up at the sky too long they will drown in the rain. Then an attacking German chucked a grenade at him only for it to miss land amongst the German POWs and explode killing a few more of them. Meanwhile Alvin York's like thank you Jesus that was all you buddy thanks to the big man upstairs you only killed Germans. Lord above thank you Jesus that grenade has missed me and turned those Germans into more shredded currywurst.

They haven't invented currywurst yet because there are no Turks in Germany. Actually they were allies, so... Yeah, I know, I know. One last German came running out of trenches towards York. This is a German company commander named Lieutenant Fritz Endris, and York leveled his pistol and dropped him with a single gut shot. Vollmer watched all of this happen, and he was horrified at watching nearly 30 German soldiers get gunned down so effortlessly by a single man.

This led to the following conversation, which might go down in history as the most American thing to ever take place during a war. English! Volmer yelled at York. No, I'm not English, York responded. What? Volmer asked, clearly confused, as he was asking him if he spoke English. Only for York to reply, I'm not English, in English.

Then York added American This unit we only speak American He thought he was asking if he was British if you were going to address me German man you speak God's English American Vollmer then told him good lord. I don't care what you are if you don't shoot anymore, I'll make the rest of them give up. This dude rocks. Yorke agreed and Volmer blew his whistle, ordering anyone else nearby to surrender. Which must have been a surprise to the over 100 men who emerged from their trenches when

they saw only Elven Yorke standing in front of them, completely out of ammunition. When Vollmer asked him how many soldiers he had, York kind of sensed what he was getting at and he just said, I have plenty. He didn't. I have Nords. I have Red Guard. I have my Ork buddies. We call them the French.

My Ork buddies that is a detachment exclusively from Michigan. They do this strange spin move when they dance. I don't understand what it means. And they keep speaking Armenian. I should point out here that Vollmer was no coward or early officer, like young officer. He was as battle-hardened as a German officer got at this point in the war. He had been on the Western Front unbroken for four years. Jesus Christ, what?

He had ten campaigns under his belt. He was a war of the Iron Cross second class, the Knights Cross second class, and the Iron Cross first class, and some Queen of Württemberg medal that is very important. He was as bad as it comes, and one run in with Elvin York was all it took for him to be like, I'm done with the war. Yes, you get the Queen of Württemberg medal when your techno track goes number one when played in Burgheim.

Slowly the POWs snaked their way back toward American lines until they got with an eye shot of Lieutenant Joseph Woods. There were so many Germans walking towards him, he thought it was a counterattack, until he saw that they were all unarmed and York was walking at the head of the column. Insane. Woods asked York, how many POWs do you have? To which York said, quote, honestly, Lieutenant, I do not know. I do not own enough fingers and toes to count that high, but let me tell you, you could

not fit them in a Pentecostal church. It is at least 11. It is at least 20, and I tried curling my fingers and toes, but I ran out of those too. So Woods counted them as they walked in. 132 in total. York was immediately promoted and awarded the Medal of Honor as well as every other nation in the allied like group awarding him 49 other medals. He's on Gaddafi level of medals. He really is, yeah.

Somewhat weirdly, his actions went nearly unheard of, even in his small town until after the war, nearly a year later. And then when word began to spread, York was back in the US and people from Tennessee lobbied to get him a hero's welcome upon his return. And he did, before briefly being sent back to Georgia to be demobilized and sent back into the civilian world. Now, after his initial burst of tours and whatnot, York stopped entertaining his own celebrity, refusing to take any money or sponsorships that were offered to him minus one. A new farm, purchased by the local Rotary Club. I'm a humble man.

I do not care for honors or medals. I simply want to take up my father's business of building automatons. So I thank you for your welcome home and all the parades but I do got robots to be fixing. I say I say I have a simple automaton farmer. I'm a simple automaton farmer. All of the land in the Dust Bowl is going to be useless in the next ten years. So I am pivoting and re-skilling my business into solely building automatons. And automaton related materials. Some people say Henry Ford mastered manufacturing in Detroit, but in reality it was made in

Tennessee with the York Automaton Company. The York still couldn't quite figure out how to handle money, and the farm was a fucking money pit because he also inherited his father's inability to farm anything other than the aforementioned automatons. This led to him accepting the Rotary Club's constant donations as effectively a salary so his family would not be made homeless. When he did go on speaking tours, they turned out to be incredibly disappointing. He only went on speaking tours to raise money for local vocational schools and road projects

and people bought tickets and donated for them, assuming they would hear the York War story. But he never told it. He refused. You see, the important question in our local community is not how many Germans are killed or captured. It is instead reading the literacy, raising the literacy rate of children in the area and we are fundraising to build a new slide in the park.

Like, BOOOOOO! Show us the robots! The robots will be shown at the end of the talk. Please stay and listen about our community fundraiser. We are doing grassroots organizing. Thank you for coming to my Tennessee TED Talk. He believes since he was only one man in a war of millions, his story was not that important. And that was it.

He eventually founded the York Agriculture Institute, which was supposed to be a free, state-funded school. But as the Great Depression hit, state funding dried up. So York spent all of his money, all of his savings, and mortgaged his farm in order to pay for his students to have free food, free transportation, and free education as long as they went to school. What a fucking legend. Yeah dude, rules. They say Henry Ford was the inspiration for RoboCop but it was actually Alvin York's

automatons. Henry Ford only taught children to square dance and to hate black people. Alvin York instead fed the children and made sure they could read. Somewhat interestingly, as World War two was slowly pulling the US towards an active role and the vast majority of Americans favored isolationism, York did not. He became one of the loudest voices in the room for Americans to immediately get involved.

He said, quote, We must fight again. It's time now. The time is ripe, nor will it ever be to compromise with Hitler or the things he stands for. Hitler, inspired by the book 30 years later, Gravity's Rainbow, is deciding to build new V2 rockets to strap young twinks into to send them into the war zone. Alvin York instead believes that we shall fight the Germans to bring the young people of Europe bread and books. And send the twinks to my farm. Send the twinks to my farm, their small hands are great for building automatons. They can reach inside the small crevices to adjust the doohickeys and cogs.

And there's actually one thing that he said that is incredibly famous and is mostly known as something that President Franklin Telano Roosevelt said because he quoted it constantly, but it was actually Elvin York. Quote, By our victory in the last war we went at a lease on liberty, not a deed to it. Now, 23 years later, Adolf Hitler tells us that lease is expiring, and after the manner of all leases, we have the privilege of renewing it or letting it go by default. We are standing at the crossroads of history. The important capitals of the world in a few years will either be Berlin and Moscow or London and Washington. I for one prefer Congress and Parliament to Hitler's Reichstag

and Stalin's Kremlin. And because we work for a time, side by side, I know this unknown soldier does too. We owe it to him to renew that lease of liberty he helped us to get." He hated Communists too, in case you were wondering. RIP Alvin York, you would have loved young Sheldon. No, what's really wild here is obviously as the US finally did get involved in World War II, York tried to run down the list, even though he was in his mid 50s, overweight and diabetic. So they made him a major and put him on like a publicity tour

around bases giving handshakes and high fives and doing war bond drives and stuff like that. Though it seems his previous love of non-violence never came back after World War I. You see, the great red thread does not respect automatons. They believe that they are the same as people who would be working in the farms and in the factories and the artistic movement of Soviet realism wants you to believe that an automaton should look like a human being. Well, I believe it should look like a sex robot with tentacles. Wait, are we insisting that Elvin York had something to do with Iron Giant?

You see, a lot of people do not believe that a large robot can make friends with a small child and teach him the joys of friendship and the importance of enjoying your life and the grief and loss of the leaving of a friend, whatever York does. So during the Cold War, Alvin York favored an immediate nuclear strike on the USSR and said if they were looking for someone to press the button, he'd do it. The man got a taste for blood and went fucking feral for the rest of his life. Yeah, Jesus. Maybe his preachers were doing him like the world a favor by containing his never-ending bloodlust. I mean like I I could I was about to do like

the preacher voice and talk about the evils of communism, but like that literally was just the Cold War. Yeah it was. The rest of York's life was a string of medical problems of constant strokes and the oncoming creep of what happens if you have diabetes in the 50s. He died on September 2nd, 1964 at the age of 76, and he was weirdly honored by the US government in the form of a military vehicle the M247 sergeant York self-propelled anti-aircraft gun Which is personally I would like to be honored

the same way which is funny because they Made him they named an anti-aircraft gun after him a man who was you know could barely conceptualize of air travel What is a self-propelled projectile if not a type of automaton? And much like the man himself, the York gun platform hemorrhaged money for years before the project was finally canceled. Most of the vehicles produced were then turned into targets for Air Force bombing ranges, but one sits as a monument to the man in Palmall, Tennessee. A town I only know the name of because of a brand of American cigarettes, because this

is, like I said, quite possibly the most American story we've ever told. The end! A lot of people remember Alvin York for his heroic feats during World War I, but in reality most people should remember him for his invention of the Gundam. Or as I like to call it, the York Combat Platform. Now we- Tom, we do a thing on the show called Questions from the Legion. If you'd like to ask us a question from the Legion, you can support us on Patreon. You can ask us in our Patreon DMs. You can join the Discord and ask us in the channel that we use for Questions from the Legion. Or you can attach

your question to a York brand automaton and send it hurdling towards London. And Tom will pick up the message from the smoldering crater and we will answer it on the show. Today's question is what is your favorite gas station snack? Oooh, see in Ireland you've had one of these they have like hot food counters in pretty much like every petrol station. So like yeah yeah the the European version of gas station snack is significantly better than the American version. Yeah. Like we have like chicken fillet rolls, which is a baguette

with like breaded chicken in it and like different toppings. Um, there's also a jam bun, which is a, it's like a puff pastry with like cheese and ham in it. And like it just like is a pile of grease. They're really nice. Um, don't know if if I was looking for something that I could ubiquitously get anywhere in the world, it'd be like a can of white monster and a Kit Kat chunky with the peanut butter one. Now, that's a gas station snack. I feel like for a gas station snack, it can't be ready. Like it can't be.

You can't order it. It has to be prepackaged on the shelf or on one of those shitty roller machines. You know what I'm saying? Um, I think as someone who used to unfortunately do a lot of shift work in an ambulance, I have toured many a gas station snack. See, this is what I'm really excited about. If we ever do a US tour, because I will get to sample the roadside delights of America like a hot dog that's been there for seven hours.

Yeah. You're going to it's going to be a tour for your for your GI track. We'll just do a show in Dallas, Fort Worth, just so I can go to Buc-E's. Buc-E's are spreading beyond the beyond the borders of Texas. The encroaching Buc-Ees imperialism is a true threat to the mid to large size truck stop across the country. I think my favorite gas station snack is either, okay, a few things. I don't touch this shit on the rollers, no fucking way. But I found either A, giant bag of gummy bears mixed with a monster, not mixed with, but you know, a pairing if you will, or you can get lime, like cheap lime tortilla chips and

those horrible like tostitos brand cans of queso that has no cheese in it whatsoever. Those together, I mean, there's no better way to tell your internal organs that you brand cans of queso that has no cheese in it whatsoever. Those those together. I mean, there's no better way to tell your internal organs that you hate them than to eat this. But it's delicious. And I and I eat it all the time. I really want to try one of those like giant like I'm like. Now he has a joke that like I'm obsessed with the worst parts of American culture.

Like I want to like try the giant fucking coffee that has like shitloads of like weird syrups in it and like has like I I still don't understand what creamer is. It's been explained to me a couple of times. I still don't get it. But like I want something I can show you the world shining, shimmering creamer. I mean, on that topic, if you want us to do a US tour, support the Patreon. Yeah. Everybody, Tom, thank you so much for listening to the show. If you like what we do here, consider supporting us on Patreon.

You get over six years of bonus content, Discord access, every episode early. First dibs on live show tickets and merch in case you're wondering how our last live show sold out so quickly. It's because Patreon got first dibs on it. And if you want first dibs on it, you can support us on Patreon. You can also leave us a review on wherever it is you listen to podcasts. It helps immensely, not only to, you know, maybe win an award or two or whatever, but also to secure venues because they look at reviews before they let you use

their venue. So that helps us a lot. And Tom, you have another show plug your other show. Beneath Skin show about the history of everything told through the history of tattooing. So if you want to learn about like how tattoo accountants work, you can listen to an episode that I'm recording this week or learn about an Australian man who used to be a snake charmer until he killed someone with a poisonous snake and then decided to become a tattoo artist.

Yes, the hero's journey. The most Australian man ever or watch Glue Factory, a comedy podcast from some of the folks over on Trash Future, as well as Pierre Novelli and Olga Cock featuring fun guests. No, no topics, just riffs. Thank you so much for listening to us again. And until next time, I don't know. Tomitons swear off alcohol, reject the danger gods, construct the Tomitons in your backyard.