Book excerpt: This little book ought to be read by Americans everywhere, both because Sergeant York is a national possession, and also because it teaches the priceless value of individual character and may warn us here in America from allowing our children, who have to use machines, from being themselves made into machines. His is the story of Sergeant Alvin C. York of Tennessee, the outstanding hero of the World War and one of the greatest individual fighters in the history of modern or legendary warfare. In the heart of the Argonne Forest on October 8, 1918, practically unassisted, he whipped an entire German machine-gun battalion, killing twenty-eight of the enemy, capturing thirty-five machine guns and with the help of a handful of doughboys bringing in one hundred and thirty-two prisoners.