<table> </table> On a day that was cloudless and pleasantly warm for the season, the gentle North Carolina landscape slid by like a painting below.</p><p>Maximum capacity of the small plane was six, but on this flight there were only three aboard besides the pilot. One of them, a colonel, was on the division headquarters staff. Another was an old master sergeant, a veteran of two of the unit&#8217;s four World War II parachute jumps.</p><p>The third, a lieutenant like the young pilot, was an infantryman, qualified by rank and training to lead a platoon. But before military service he&#8217;d spent a year as a beginning journalist, so it would be his duty to write a report on their uncommon mission.</p><p>&#8220;How long&#8217;s the trip?&#8221; he asked.</p><p>&#8220;Well, it&#8217;s 350-some miles to where we&#8217;re headed,&#8221; the pilot said. &#8220;We&#8217;re making 140 an hour or a little better, so it&#8217;s the best part of three hours. Then we&#8217;ll get a rental car, go to the agency, pick up the vehicle you&#8217;re delivering. And it looks on the map like you&#8217;ve got 20 or 25 miles on hill roads to his place.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;Which means we get there when?&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;Four o&#8217;clock, or half past. You men can do your thing &#8212; present him the car. After you come back down and turn in the rental, we&#8217;ll grab a bite before we head back to base.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;ll be dark by then.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;That&#8217;s not a problem. I&#8217;m instrument-rated.&#8221;</p><p>&#8226;&#8226;&#8226;</p><p>Theirs was an errand of compassion.</p><p>The ultimate destination was the small town of Pall Mall, Tenn., home of a man who, more than a generation earlier, had been the most famous of American war heroes.</p><p>On an October day in 1918 in the Argonne forest of France, he and 16 other soldiers of the 82nd Division were detailed to secure control of an important railroad right of way.</p><p>It was not expected to be a serious encounter. But the small detachment found itself under murderous machine gun fire from bunkered German positions. At the very outset, many of the American boys were slain &#8212; falling, it was afterward said, &#8220;like long grass before the mowing machine.&#8221;</p><p>What turned the battle was the expert marksmanship of one of the unit&#8217;s riflemen, a conscript whose lethal talent had been honed by hunting squirrels and deer in the woods of his Appalachian home.</p><p>Any foe he targeted with his M1917 &#8220;American Enfield&#8221; was certainly doomed. He answered the enemy gunners with such deadly effect that they panicked, abandoned their positions and gave up the fight. By day&#8217;s end, he and just seven surviving comrades had taken 132 German prisoners.</p><p>And the name of Alvin Cullum York was forever inscribed in the roster of legendary U.S. military men.</p><p>He received a harvest of decorations, including the Medal of Honor and military citations from allied nations, and was promoted from corporal to sergeant in reward for his gallantry. On his return, a parade was held for him in New York. His home state made him the gift of a farm.</p><p>In 1928, a book was published with his wartime diary and the story of his life. It was followed in 1941 by the movie titled simply &#8220;Sergeant York,&#8221; directed by Howard Hawks, with Gary Cooper in the starring role.</p><p>But this was 1958. His feat of heroism had been 40 years and two wars earlier. Time had not been kind to that brave and simple man, born to hardship in a log cabin in 1887, one of 11 children of unlettered parents struggling to survive.