Appalachian Figures
In the autumn of 1918 a young mountain farmer from the head of a Breathitt County creek crawled forward through shell-scarred French mud and did something that reshaped his life and his home county’s memory of the Great War.
Sergeant Willie Sandlin of Company A, 132nd Infantry, 33rd Division, earned the Medal of Honor for a lone assault on German machine gun positions at Bois-de-Forges on September 26, 1918. His citation, preserved in War Department General Orders No. 16 and on the Congressional Medal of Honor Society’s official recipient page, credits him with advancing alone on machine gun nests that were holding up the line and setting an example of “bravery and coolness” for his men.
A century later most Kentuckians can still name Alvin York, the Tennessee sharpshooter whose story became a Hollywood film. Far fewer know that only one Kentuckian received the Medal of Honor in World War I and that he came from the hill farms along Longs Creek, Hell-fer-Sartin, and Owls Nest in Breathitt, Perry, and Leslie counties. The trail that lets us tell his story runs through draft cards, War Department books, congressional speeches, old news photos, and a roadside marker on the Hyden courthouse lawn.
This is the story of Sergeant Willie Sandlin as it emerges from those primary records, the near-primary Kentucky sources built on them, and the way his neighbors chose to remember him.
From Longs Creek to Hell-fer-Sartin
Official Medal of Honor records list Willie Sandlin’s birth as January 1, 1890 in Jackson, Breathitt County, Kentucky, with his service accredited to Hyden in neighboring Leslie County. A black granite war memorial near Hyden adds a little more mountain geography, recording that he was born “at the head of Freeman Fork of Longs Creek” in Breathitt County.
Family and local histories, distilled in James M. Gifford’s biography Sergeant Sandlin: Kentucky’s Forgotten Hero, paint a hard beginning. Sandlin was the second of five sons of John Sandlin and Lucinda Abner. When he was about ten, his parents’ marriage collapsed, his father went to prison on a murder charge, and his mother died in childbirth. Relatives on the Leslie County side of the family took the children in, raising Willie along Hell-fer-Sartin Creek in country that was still largely beyond the reach of paved roads and formal schooling.
Genealogical compilations from the Military Legacy of Perry and Leslie Counties, along with census and draft card transcriptions, trace him across that triangle of counties, linking a Breathitt County birth to residences near Buckhorn in Perry County and then to Hyden and Owls Nest Creek in Leslie County. Those same compilations warn researchers not to confuse him with other men named William or Willie Sandlin in the area, such as William “Shug” Sandlin of Buckhorn, a different Perry County farmer whose grave in Laurel Point Cemetery has sometimes been mistaken for the Medal of Honor recipient’s in online trees.
The picture that emerges from these near-primary sources is of a boy who grew up shuttling between kinfolk, with little formal schooling and a great deal of farm work, in the hardscrabble years when the eastern Kentucky counties were sending timber, laborers, and eventually soldiers out into the wider world.
A mountain soldier of the regular army
Unlike many World War I Medal of Honor men who came out of National Guard units or wartime volunteer regiments, Sandlin had already chosen the Army before the United States entered the conflict. Gifford’s study and related reviews agree that he enlisted in the regular Army in the early nineteen-teens and was serving on active duty years before the American Expeditionary Forces sailed for France.
By the time the War Department compiled its postwar roll of honors, he was listed as a sergeant in Company A, 132nd Infantry, 33rd Division. The 33rd was an Illinois division, built on that state’s National Guard but filled out in France with replacements from across the country, including mountain men from Kentucky. Sandlin’s Medal of Honor file in the Congressional Medal of Honor Society database confirms his unit, his rank, his birth in Breathitt County, and the fact that he entered service at Hyden, tying him firmly to the eastern Kentucky draft and recruiting system.
When his draft registration was recorded at Buckhorn in June 1917, he joined thousands of other rural men signing cards in courthouse yards and one-room schools. For a farm laborer with limited education, regular army pay offered a steady wage and a chance to see more of the world than the loops of the Kentucky River.
Bois-de-Forgès, 26 September 1918
The action that made Sandlin famous took place on the first day of the Meuse-Argonne offensive, the largest American operation of the war. Early that morning, the 33rd Division pushed forward near Bois-de-Forgès, just northwest of Verdun. German machine guns, protected by shell holes and hastily fortified positions, caught the advancing Americans in open ground and forced whole companies to the dirt.
Sandlin’s Medal of Honor citation, first printed in War Department General Orders No. 16 in 1919 and reprinted in a 1920 government volume of awards, describes what happened next. It states that he showed “conspicuous gallantry in action” by advancing alone on a machine gun nest that was stopping his company’s advance, killing the crew with a grenade and allowing his line to move forward. Later in the day, according to the same citation, he again went forward by himself and put two more machine gun nests out of action, setting an example of “bravery and coolness” for his men.
A century of retellings in Kentucky newspapers and veterans’ pieces has amplified those bare government sentences. Articles in Kentucky Living and the Northern Kentucky Tribune repeat the tradition that he destroyed three German positions, killed twenty-four enemy soldiers, and helped capture as many as two hundred more who found themselves suddenly cut off. The details vary, as battlefield numbers often do, but the core story remains the same. Under heavy fire and without direct orders, a mountain sergeant from Hyden crawled forward and dealt with the obstacle that was killing his men.
The War Department’s own Medal of Honor roll underlines how rare that kind of recognition was. Out of the millions of Americans who served, only ninety soldiers received the Medal of Honor for World War I service. Among that small group, Sandlin is the only man officially recorded as born in Kentucky.
Pershing’s ceremony at Chaumont
For those ninety men, the Army staged public ceremonies that doubled as morale exercises and political theater. The Congressional Medal of Honor Society’s recipient file notes that Sandlin’s medal was presented at Chaumont, the American Expeditionary Forces headquarters in France, on February 9, 1919, by General John J. Pershing himself.
Contemporary War Department histories and Allied documentation show that men like Sandlin often stood alongside other highly decorated soldiers at these events. Many also received foreign decorations. Modern summaries of his record note that France awarded him the Médaille Militaire, one of that country’s highest honors for non-commissioned officers, in recognition of his conduct under fire.
The ceremony at Chaumont placed a farm boy from Longs Creek on the same platform as some of the most famous soldiers of the war. It also fixed his name in the official American and French lists of valor at the very moment the AEF was preparing to demobilize and send its doughboys home.
A Kentucky face in Washington and Louisville
After the guns fell silent, Sandlin kept showing up in the national and regional photographic record. The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division preserves a glass negative titled “Sgt. Willie Sandlin, Gen. F. T. Hines, Gen. L. M. Brett, Sgt. Sam Woodfill, 9/5/24,” part of the Harris and Ewing news collection. The shot, taken in Washington on September 5, 1924, shows Sandlin standing with two generals and fellow Medal of Honor recipient Samuel Woodfill, one of the most decorated American enlisted men of the war.
Closer to home, the University of Louisville’s Herald-Post Collection holds multiple original photographic prints labeled “Willie Sandlin of Hyden, Kentucky, 1921.” The catalog notes describe them as portraits of Sergeant Sandlin in his World War I uniform, stamped on the back with the date September 29, 1921. In another related print he wears a fedora and pin-striped jacket instead of uniform, a sign that by the mid-twenties he was already slipping back into civilian life.
Together these images form a small but powerful visual archive. One shows him in Washington, shoulder to shoulder with generals and fellow heroes. The others show him framed for a Kentucky newspaper audience, a mountain soldier from Hyden whose story mattered enough to merit studio portraits and carefully inked crop marks.
Owls Nest Creek and a modest hero
When Sandlin came home from France he did not return to a city parade or a desk job. Gifford and other interpreters of his life describe him stepping off a train in Hazard, then walking the last miles back into Leslie County. He married Belvia Roberts around 1920 and eventually settled on a small farm on Owls Nest Creek, not far from Hyden. The Kentucky Humanities feature “Kentucky’s Forgotten Hero” draws on local memories and archival material to describe a family of seven children, seasonal work as a farm hand and road builder, and the constant strain of ill health tied to wartime gas exposure.
Newspaper columns and veterans’ tributes paint him as deeply reluctant to talk about the moment that made him famous. Berry Craig, writing for the Northern Kentucky Tribune, quoted older accounts that called him “the most modest hero of the world war” and noted that he refused to wear his decorations in public, even though France and the United States had both decorated him. A Kentucky Department of Veterans Affairs article on his reinterment repeats the recollection that he seldom spoke about the battle itself, preferring to talk about what he might have done with more schooling.
This pattern of silence fits the broader mountain pattern of veterans who carried lung damage, nightmares, and chronic illness home from Europe but downplayed their own service in public.
Moonlight schools and the fight against illiteracy
If Sandlin rarely spoke about Bois-de-Forgès, he talked constantly about one consequence of his rough childhood. Like many poor Appalachian men born in the 1890s, he had grown up with limited access to education. The Kentucky Humanities article on him cites early Moonlight Schools coverage that called him “Kentucky’s greatest hero” and recorded that he joined Cora Wilson Stewart’s crusade to stamp out adult illiteracy.
Stewart, a Rowan County teacher and superintendent, had launched night classes for adults under the “Moonlight School” banner in 1911. By the late nineteen-teens and early twenties, as historian James Gifford notes in a separate study of Stewart’s movement, those schools had spread across Kentucky and even overseas. Stewart quickly realized that a decorated mountain sergeant who readily admitted his own educational shortcomings could be a powerful spokesman.
Reports from the period describe Sandlin traveling from town to town with Stewart, appearing at courthouse rallies and schoolhouse meetings to urge illiterate adults to enroll in night classes. The Humanities article notes that he and Belvia even named a daughter Cora Wilson Stewart Sandlin, a quiet tribute to the woman whose cause they had made their own.
In this phase of his life, the same shy man who flinched from war stories used his public platform to talk about reading, writing, and the gap between what he had accomplished on the battlefield and what he might have done in peacetime with more schooling.
Gas scars, small pensions, and the Congressional Record
The price of that battlefield fame showed up in his lungs and in the pages of the United States Congressional Record. War-era medical notes and later testimony summarized in a 2018 Senate tribute describe Sandlin as suffering repeated bouts of pneumonia and chronic respiratory disease that doctors traced to poison gas exposures in France.
By the late nineteen-twenties, he and his supporters were petitioning Congress for fairer compensation. An Indianapolis newspaper column from 1928, reprinted in later scholarship, described Stewart lobbying for “a ten-thousand-dollar farm” for Sandlin while pointing out that the decorated sergeant “hasn’t a roof of his own.” The Congressional Record entry from April 9, 2018, which looks back at those debates, notes that despite his injuries he received only a modest disability payment for most of his life.
In May 1949, at fifty-nine, Sandlin died in Hyden of lung infections that both Kentucky and federal sources attribute to his wartime gas exposure. Contemporary obituaries and modern biographical sketches agree that he left behind Belvia, their children, and a farm that had never been entirely secure.
From Hurricane Cemetery to Zachary Taylor to Hyden
Sandlin’s remains have traveled almost as much as he did. Early burial records place him first in Hurricane Cemetery near Hyden. Later he was reinterred at Zachary Taylor National Cemetery in Louisville, where his government-issue Medal of Honor grave marker stood among the neat white rows of federal stones.
In 2018, as Kentucky prepared to open a new state veterans cemetery at Hyden, Sandlin’s family and local leaders decided to bring him home again. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs reported on the move in a feature titled “WWI Medal of Honor recipient re-interred at new state Veterans cemetery in Kentucky,” noting that he and his wife Belvia would be the first burials at Kentucky Veterans Cemetery South East.
The story quotes Dean Osborne of Hyden explaining that Sandlin was remembered not only for his military service but also for his work against adult illiteracy and that “you’ll rarely find a place in America that has the esteem and respect for veterans as mountains of Kentucky.”
Today the Congressional Medal of Honor Society lists his burial as Kentucky Veterans Cemetery South East, grave 1, with a notation that his remains were moved there from Zachary Taylor. Visitors who walk the rows on Tim Couch Pass now find his name at the head of a cemetery that will eventually hold thousands of other Kentucky veterans.
Roadside markers, bridges, and museum cases
Kentucky’s public memory of Sandlin is written into stone, bronze, asphalt, and display labels. On the courthouse lawn in Hyden, a Kentucky Historical Society marker erected in 1964 records that he was “the only Kentuckian to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor in World War I,” summarizes his action at Bois-de-Forgès, and notes that he settled in the county after the war and died in 1949.
A separate etched memorial panel near Hyden bears his portrait in uniform and repeats the statement that he was Kentucky’s only World War I Medal of Honor recipient, born at the head of Freeman Fork of Longs Creek.
In 2016 the Kentucky General Assembly adopted House Joint Resolution 79 directing the Transportation Cabinet to name a new Kentucky Route 30 bridge over the Middle Fork of the Kentucky River in Breathitt County as the “Sergeant Willie Sandlin Memorial Bridge.” Local news outlets covered the dedication, which tied his story back to the river crossings and mountain roads that shaped his early life.
Inside the Kentucky Military History Museum in Frankfort, visitors can see his medals and personal effects. The Kentucky Historical Society’s artifact catalog lists his Medal of Honor, a Bronze Star, a French decoration, and pieces of his uniform as part of the “Willie Sandlin Collection.” Modern exhibits at institutions like the Pritzker Military Museum and Library and the Frazier History Museum have used those items and the Harris and Ewing photographs to place him in a broader narrative of American soldiers in the Great War.
Sorting out the Sandlins
Anyone who has worked in eastern Kentucky genealogy knows that surnames like Smith, Baker, and Sandlin can create headaches for archivists. The Military Legacy projects for Perry and Leslie Counties devote careful attention to distinguishing Willie Sandlin the Medal of Honor recipient from contemporaries with similar names, including William “Shug” Sandlin of Buckhorn and William Berry and William Eversole Sandlin in other branches of the family.
Primary documents help keep the record straight. The Medal of Honor files and War Department rolls fix the hero’s birth date at January 1, 1890, his unit at Company A, 132nd Infantry, and his action at Bois-de-Forgès. Census entries, draft cards, and marriage records tie that same man to John and Lucinda Sandlin, to his move from Breathitt to Leslie County, and to his marriage to Belvia Roberts.
Other men named William or Willie Sandlin show up in Buckhorn cemeteries, in Owsley and Perry County censuses, and in World War II service records. They are part of the broader Sandlin story in the Kentucky highlands, but they are not the man whose citation appears under “SANDLIN, WILLIE” in the War Department’s World War I Medal of Honor volume.
For historians and family researchers, the lesson is simple. Always anchor a story in unit designations, dates, and primary citations rather than relying on name alone, especially in counties where the same surnames recur on every ridge.
Why Sandlin’s story matters in Appalachia
Taken together, the records surrounding Sergeant Willie Sandlin sketch the arc of a life that belongs squarely to the Appalachian experience of the early twentieth century. He was born on a remote creek, reared in the wake of family tragedy by kin who lived on small farms, and received little formal schooling. He entered the regular Army as a way out of poverty, found himself in the thick of industrialized war at Bois-de-Forgès, and for a few minutes on September 26, 1918, carried the weight of his company on his own shoulders.
The War Department and the Congressional Medal of Honor Society preserved his feat in the language of military citation. The Library of Congress and the University of Louisville fixed his face on glass and paper. Kentucky’s roadside markers, bridge signs, and museum displays make sure that motorists and schoolchildren still see his name.
Just as important are the ways he chose to use his fame. In the years between the armistice and his early death, he devoted himself to Cora Wilson Stewart’s Moonlight Schools, told crowds how much he regretted his own lack of schooling, and urged adults who could not read to claim the chance he never had.
In that sense, Sandlin’s story is not only about a single dramatic charge against machine guns in France. It is also about the long struggle in eastern Kentucky to link military service, civic responsibility, and education.
When visitors stand at his grave in Hyden or trace his name with a finger on the courthouse marker, they touch a story that runs from the head of Freeman Fork through the Argonne Forest and back to a Moonlight School blackboard. It is a story written in War Department orders and VA reports, but also in the memories of neighbors who remembered him as a quiet man who had seen too much war and wanted his children, and theirs, to be able to read.
Sources & Further Reading
War Department, General Orders No. 16 (1919) and Congressional Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross, and the Distinguished Service Medal (Government Printing Office, 1920), entry “SANDLIN, WILLIE,” Medal of Honor citation and service details. National War Memorial Registry+1
Congressional Medal of Honor Society, “Willie Sandlin,” official recipient profile with citation, birth and death data, presentation notes for Chaumont, and burial information. Congressional Medal of Honor Society
United States Army, “World War I, Full-Text Citations,” online list of Medal of Honor citations reproducing Sandlin’s General Orders entry. army.mil+1
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Harris and Ewing Collection, photo record “Sgt. Willie Sandlin, Gen. F. T. Hines, Gen. L. M. Brett, Sgt. Sam Woodfill, 9/5/24,” LC-DIG-npcc-26136. The Library of Congress+1
University of Louisville Photographic Archives, Herald-Post Collection, image records “Willie Sandlin of Hyden, Kentucky, 1921,” ULPA 1994_018_4155, 4156, and related catalog entries. digital.library.louisville.edu+2digital.library.louisville.edu+2
Kentucky Historical Society, roadside marker entry “Sgt. Willie Sandlin,” Marker No. 631, text noting his status as Kentucky’s only World War I Medal of Honor recipient and summarizing his action at Bois-de-Forgès. Kentucky History
Kentucky Historical Society, artifact catalog entries for the “Willie Sandlin Collection,” including his Medal of Honor, French decoration, and related material in the Kentucky Military History Museum. kyhistory.pastperfectonline.com+1
Commonwealth of Kentucky, House Joint Resolution 79 (2016), designating a Kentucky Route 30 crossing of the Middle Fork of the Kentucky River in Breathitt County as the “Sergeant Willie Sandlin Memorial Bridge.” Legislative Research Commission
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, VA News, “WWI Medal of Honor recipient re-interred at new state Veterans cemetery in Kentucky” (May 8, 2018), describing the move of Willie and Belvia Sandlin from Zachary Taylor National Cemetery to Kentucky Veterans Cemetery South East. VA News+1
Kentucky Department of Veterans Affairs, Kentucky Veterans Cemetery South East page and related releases identifying Sandlin as a notable burial and summarizing his reinterment at Hyden. VA News+1
James M. Gifford, Sergeant Sandlin: Kentucky’s Forgotten Hero (Ashland: Jesse Stuart Foundation) and Gifford’s studies of Cora Wilson Stewart and the Moonlight Schools, for biographical context on Sandlin’s childhood, military career, and literacy work. Appalachian Mountain Books+3Jesse Stuart Foundation+3Appalachian Mountain Books+3
Kentucky Humanities, “Kentucky’s Forgotten Hero,” narrative feature on Sandlin’s wartime exploits, postwar literacy campaign with Cora Wilson Stewart, and life in Leslie County. kyhumanities.org
Kentucky Living, “Honoring Kentucky’s only WWI Medal of Honor recipient” (2019), short profile emphasizing his action at Bois-de-Forgès, later poverty, and death from gas-related lung disease.
Berry Craig, “Old Time Kentucky: State’s only World War I Medal of Honor winner was also a modest hero,” Northern Kentucky Tribune, November 11, 2016, column on Sandlin’s modesty, additional decorations, and death from gas burns to the lungs. NKyTribune+1
Military Legacy of Perry County and Military Legacy of Leslie County, online compilations of county veterans providing genealogical profiles of SANDLIN, WILLIE (1890–1949) and discussing his draft registration, residences, and distinction from other Sandlins. perrycountykentuckymilitarylegacy.com+2perrycountykentuckymilitarylegacy.com+2
Find A Grave memorials and FamilySearch entries for William “Shug” Sandlin and related Buckhorn Sandlins, illustrating other branches of the family that must not be conflated with the Medal of Honor recipient. Find a Grave+2FamilySearch+2