The archive · 130 files · 5 conflicts
Search the record.
Every film and article, indexed by conflict, front, role and year. Search a name, a unit, a place or a file number.
File 028Article
Western Front, France · 1917–1919
The Stray from the Yale Bowl
A brindle stray wandered into an Army training camp in Connecticut in 1917, was smuggled to France, and spent eighteen months in the trenches with the 102nd Infantry. He was gassed and wounded, and came home a celebrity. General Pershing pinned a medal on him. His rank of sergeant was never official, but nobody in the regiment argued.
File 011Article
Argonne, France · 1918
Sergeant York’s Seventeen
A Tennessee blacksmith’s son who had asked not to fight led the survivors of a seventeen-man patrol in the Argonne on 8 October 1918. By the end of the morning they had more than a hundred prisoners.
File 007Article
Serbia · Macedonia · 1914–1922
Sergeant Major Sandes
A clergyman’s daughter from Yorkshire went to Serbia in 1914 as a volunteer nurse and came home a decorated infantry officer, the only British woman known to have served as a soldier in the First World War.
File 006Article
Argonne, France · May 1918
The Sentry Post in the Argonne
On sentry duty in the Argonne in May 1918, Private Henry Johnson of the Harlem Hellfighters fought off a German raiding party with grenades, a rifle butt and a knife. It took the United States ninety-seven years to give him its highest honour.
▸ Film
Western Front
John Barkley
Alone in a wrecked tank, he broke two German attacks with their own machine gun
▸ Film
Western Front
Freddie Stowers
They faked a surrender to wipe out his company. He took the hill anyway
▸ Film
Western Front
Stubby
A stray dog caught a German spy and survived 17 battles — his men called him Sergeant
▸ Film
Western Front
Henry Johnson
He ran out of bullets and fought off two dozen Germans with a knife — alone
▸ Film
Western Front
Dan Daly
Two Medals of Honor, denied a third — the Marine they couldn't promote
▸ Film
Western Front
Alvin York
He used a turkey-hunting trick to kill 25 Germans and capture 132