The single greatest American hero of the Great War was Alvin York, a poor young farmer from Tennessee who single-handedly killed two dozen Germans and captured another 132—in a single day. It was a great story, inspiring the Hollywood film starring Gary Cooper, but as James Carl Nelson relates, it was not the whole story. Returning to that fateful day in October, 1918, Nelson reintroduces York and offers profiles of 16 of his fellow-soldiers at the Argonne, including a patrician Connecticut farmer, a runaway who joined the Army under a false name, and a Polish immigrant who enlisted in hopes of expediting his citizenship