Word: sergeanting
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...Connally's meat, though he has never quite got his teeth in it. He volunteered as an infantryman in 1898, became a sergeant major, was on his way to Puerto Rico when the war ended. His first act when he went to Congress in 1917 was to vote for a declaration of war against Germany. Then he left the House (without resigning) to join the Army. He was a captain at Camp Meade, with overseas orders, when World War I ended. Too old to tote a gun now (he will be 64 this month), Tom Connally...
Lionized, publicized, feted, decorated, when he got back from France modest Sergeant York just went home to his family farm in the Valley of the Three Forks of the Wolf. On the way the No. 1 U.S. war hero quietly passed up a fortune in commercial publicity ventures. One of them was an offer from Jesse L. Lasky to make a picture. The hero's flat refusal stuck hard in Producer Lasky's craw. In the spring of 1940, he finally persuaded the Hero York that it had become a patriotic duty to film his life...
...Sergeant York is not a picture of trench warfare, but a story of an American country boy and how he came to fight for his country. So much of the film is given to the painstaking development of his character that his heroic feat, when it comes, is merely an extension of the everyday heroism of a dignified, impoverished mountain people...
Although the battle scenes take up comparatively little footage in Sergeant York, they are above Hollywood standard. York's incredible exploit seems almost credible. Its bang-bang excitement is leavened with the salty observations of one of his men (George Tobias). Says he to a captured German officer while York is squirrel-shooting his way to victory: "Five'll get you ten that guy knocks off your whole sauerkraut army...
...Sergeant York does not glorify war, does not try to horn in on the U.S. and World War II. It stays scrupulously within the bounds of one man's part in another war. But by showing what he found in the U.S. worth fighting for, it becomes Hollywood's first solid contribution to national defense...