Paris – Nineteen .45-caliber cartridges buried in northeastern France may mark the spot where Sgt. Alvin York became America’s most celebrated soldier of World War I, a research team said Thursday.
The Sergeant York Discovery Expedition said that after four years of work, it found the cartridges buried 2 to 4 inches in soil near the village of Chatel- Chehery, where York single- handedly took out a nest of German machine guns.
But in March, a group led by academics from York’s home state of Tennessee said they were “80 percent sure” they had found the spot where York carried out his heroic deeds – a location different from that announced Thursday.
The most recent group to claim it had found the “York spot” said the presence of the cartridges – which the earlier group had not found – was the “final piece of the puzzle” needed to identify the spot with “100 percent certainty,” the group said in a statement.
It cited American military documents stating that York had fired at least 21 .45-caliber rounds with an automatic Colt pistol in his Oct. 8, 1918, assault on the German position.
“The battlefield archaeology confirms what we know about the York story,” the statement said, adding that it had unearthed the cartridges last weekend.
The group said it also discovered a host of other artifacts, including 250 German machine gun casings, at the site in the Argonne forest near France’s border with Belgium.
York, a member of the 82nd Division, was awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism for taking on the nest of 35 machine guns. York – at the time a corporal – captured 132 German soldiers and killed at least 20 others in the battle.
Gary Cooper starred in a 1941 movie about York, who died in 1964.
