My dad bought the Ten Commandments
and The Lord's Prayer illustrated.
--in a nice frame.
And I had looked at that picture, of the sixth commandment:
"Thou shall not kill."
Because the picture had Cain, who'd killed his brother, Abel.
And I wondered how in the world could a brother do such a thing?
I've pictured Christ as saving life.
I wanted to be like Christ:
saving life, instead of taking life.
And that's the reason I took up medicine.
NARRATOR: Desmond Doss was drafted into the army
in April, 1942.
He wanted to serve his country, but electing not to bear arms,
the Virginia native instead joined the army medical corps.
Assigned to the U.S. invasion of Okinawa,
where deeply entrenched Japanese forces hammered American troops
from caves and tunnels,
Doss and his battalion were ordered to assault
a jagged 400-foot escarpment overrun with Japanese defenders.
The Japanese had been there for years.
They had that mountain honeycombed
and camouflaged to look like natural terrain.
That's what we had to face.
So I remember there were eight or nine of the Japanese
positions we destroyed before we contacted A Company.
And when the day was done,
I didn't have a single man killed.
The next day, we thought the big job was done.
But instead, everything we tried this day went wrong.
We threw hell-- all types of high explosive
demolition-- on the Japanese position.
We decided there was only one thing left to do.
We had 35 gallons of high-octane gasoline
in five-gallon Army water cans.
Two men opened up the can,
lit it up and threw it--literally threw it, over the bank.
The ammunition dump must've gone off.
The whole mountain just seemed to quake.
I didn't think anything would be able to survive it.
But to our surprise
out came these Japanese from both sides for us.
NARRATOR: Showering Doss's battalion with artillery,
mortar and machine gun fire,
the Japanese drove the majority of the group
back down the face of the escarpment.
But dozens of casualties were still left behind.
I had these men up there, and I shouldn't leave 'em.
They were my buddies. Some of my men had families.
And they trusted me.
I didn't feel like I should value my life above my buddies'.
And so I decided to stay with them.
And take care of as many of them as I could.
I didn't know how I was gonna do it.
NARRATOR: Doss remained to tend the wounded,
dragging them to the cliff's edge
and attempting to lower them down the escarpment.
But I didn't have enough rope to do
the job like it should be done.
Then the Lord brought to my mind that knot
I learned in West Virginia that I'd never seen nor heard of before.
NARRATOR: Relying on his childhood experience
rescuing flood victims,
Doss fashioned a special sling
that enabled him to lower the men one by one to safety.
So I just kept praying, "Lord, please help me get one more..."
"...one more..." until there were none left.
And I was the last one down.
NARRATOR: By nightfall,
he had managed to rescue 75 fallen comrades.
There were 15 of us that got the Medal that day.
When my time came, I went up.
President Truman, he came out and he stepped over the line,
he caught me by my hand
and shook my hand like I was an old-time friend,
somebody he'd known all his life.
He didn't even give me a chance to get nervous.
When you've had explosions
and bullets so close you could practically feel it, and not get wounded up there,
when I should've been killed a number of times.
I know who I owe my life to, as well as my men.
That's why I like to tell this story, to the glory of God, because I know,
from a human standpoint, I should not be here.
You can't always win.
But when your buddies come to you and say
that they owe their life to me,
what better reward can you get than that?
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