The ‘battle’ over the site of Sgt. Alvin York’s heroic deeds on October 8th, 1918 continues. Recently the research of ret. Col. Douglas Mastriano, Ph. D, has been called into question, with at least one critic accusing him of academic fraud. Mastriano, the driving force behind The Sgt. York Discovery Project, is an historian who frequently appears on CSPAN and has lectured at the U.S. World War One Museum in Kansas City as recently as 2018.  If you don’t know much about Sgt. York you can read his story by clicking here, and if you’re not familiar with the saga of the searches for the site you can read more about that by clicking here. To read more about the latest news, including the accusation of academic fraud, you can click here.

If you’re curious as to why this story is getting so much attention, Mastriano is pursuing political ambitions, and so stories about him are getting widespread coverage in Pennsylvania.

James (“Jim”) Patton BS BA MPA is a retired state official from Shawnee, Kansas and a frequent contributor to several WW1 e-publications, including "Roads to the Great War," "St. Mihiel Tripwire," "Over the Top" and "Medicine in the First World War." He has spent many hours walking the WW1 battlefields, and is also an authority on British regiments and a collector of their badges. An Army Engineer during the Vietnam War, he does work for the US World War 1 Centennial Commission and is affiliated with the WW1 Historical Association, the Western Front Association, the Salonika Campaign Society and the Gallipoli Association.