As World War Two draws to a close, American soldiers in the Pacific are under heavy enemy
fire from the Japanese on top of the infamous Hacksaw Ridge.
As the Americans rush to retreat down the cliff, one man stands alone on top of the
ridge.
Committed to nonviolence, he doesn’t even carry a gun, but he will go on to save the
lives of more than seventy-five men that day, and become the man who won the Medal of Honor
without ever firing a shot.
Desmond Doss was born in Lynchburg, Virginia in 1919.
His father, William Thomas Doss, was a carpenter and a veteran of World War One.
His mother Bertha was devoutly religious, and she raised Desmond as a Seventh Day Adventist.
Along with his older sister Audrey and younger brother Harold, Desmond attended the Park
Avenue Seventh-Day Adventist Church school.
After he completed the eighth grade, young Desmond left his schooling behind and took
a job at a local lumber yard to help the family make ends meet during the Great Depression.
Desmond was very involved in the Seventh Day Adventist church, and his faith was incredibly
important to him.
He wholeheartedly embraced vegetarianism and always strived to live his life in line with
his religious convictions, including his strong commitment to nonviolence.
Although Desmond’s mother was very religious and instilled these values in her children,
his father suffered from depression and alcoholism throughout his life, likely a result of what
he had experienced fighting in the first Great War.
Desmond witnessed the destruction this caused, and it strengthened his commitment to pacifism.
After one particularly violent incident between his father and uncle, in which Desmond ended
up having to wrestle a gun out of his father’s hands, young Desmond resolved that he would
never again lay his hands on a weapon.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Desmond enlisted in the
army.
Even though his job as a joiner at a shipyard was important to the war effort and could
have exempted from military service, Desmond knew that he couldn’t stay safely at home
when his fellow countrymen were risking their lives - including his younger brother Harold,
who was serving with the U.S. Navy on board the USS Lindsey.
Desmond reported to Fort Jackson in South Carolina for training, where he quickly realized
that his faith and his commitment to non-violence would be seriously tested in the army.
Desmond immediately made it clear to his superiors that he would not kill enemy soldiers, or
even carry a gun.
Because of his religious beliefs, Desmond was considered a “conscientious objector”
- someone who opposes bearing arms and is usually against military service of any kind.
Desmond considered himself to be a “conscientious cooperator” rather than an “objector”,
since he was happy to wear the uniform and serve his country, just not through violence.
Desmond had always dreamed of being a doctor, but he knew that his lack of schooling would
never allow him to follow that dream.
He thought that being an army medic would allow him to serve by saving lives, rather
than by taking them.
Plus, he felt that it would be an acceptable work-around to his conviction to avoid working
on the Sabbath.
Seventh Day Adventists observe the Sabbath from Friday evenings until Saturday evenings
- during that time they refrain from “secular labor” and instead use the time to focus
on their relationship with God and care for the needs of others.
Desmond felt that his healing work as a medic would be acceptable work to do during the
Sabbath, but he did not participate in any other work duties on those days, earning him
scorn and suspicion from his fellow soldiers and superiors.
They resented the fact that he was exempt from some chores, and because he refused to
carry a gun, they didn’t feel that they could count on him to protect them in battle.
His commanding officers considered him a liability, and tried to intimidate him, ridicule him,
and break him with extra hard work duties.
When that didn’t work, they tried to have him declared mentally unfit for service and
even court martialed him for refusing a direct order to pick up a gun.
He was ostracized, bullied and beat up by fellow soldiers, and one man even warned him:
“when we get into combat, I’ll make sure you don’t come back alive.”
Despite the tension and abuse, Desmond held true to his convictions and lived by the golden
rule - do to others what you would have them do to you.
He refused to give in to the bullying and slowly began to build trust with his fellow
soldiers with his unwavering kindness and generosity, and his knack for healing blisters
on march-weary feet.
Before long, Desmond would more than redeem himself in the eyes of his fellow soldiers.
Twenty-six year old Desmond deployed as a medic with the seventy-seventh division of
the three-hundred and seventh infantry in the summer of nineteen forty-four.
First, Desmond served on the islands of Guam and Leyte, where he distinguished himself
by bravely and repeatedly running into enemy fire to treat fallen soldiers and carry them
to safety.
By the time his unit was getting ready to deploy to the front in Okinawa, Desmond had
been awarded not just one, but two Bronze Stars with “V” devices for exceptional
valor.
By the spring of nineteen forty-five, the Germans were close to surrendering in Europe,
but in the Pacific theatre, the Japanese were still fighting to the last man.
Desmond and his unit were redeployed to Okinawa, the Japanese’s last barrier to an American
invasion of their homeland.
The Americans were in the midst of a month-long campaign to capture the Maeda Escarpment,
a four-hundred foot sheer rock face that the soldiers had dubbed “Hacksaw Ridge”.
The terrain on top of the cliff was treacherous, full of caves and holes where the Japanese
were dug in and waiting to attack.
Time after time, as the Americans tried to take the ridge, they faced what the Japanese
called a “rain of steel”, because there was so much shrapnel and bullets flying through
the air.
After spending weeks treating soldiers caught in this brutal “rain of steel”, on May
fifth, nineteen forty-five, Desmond was the only medic available to go “over the top”
with the infantry men as they attempted once again to take the ridge.
Desmond and his unit used cargo nets to climb the imposing cliff face.
Almost as soon as the Americans secured the top of the ridge, the Japanese emerged from
their hiding places and launched a fierce counterattack.
The Americans quickly retreated, but less than a third of the men made it back to the
bottom of the cliff - more than a hundred men were left wounded and lying on enemy soil.
Desmond was the only man to ignore the order to retreat.
Rather than escape down the cliff to safety, Desmond turned around and ran back into enemy
fire and directly to the side of an injured soldier.
He quickly treated the man’s injuries right there in the field, under heavy enemy fire
and in plain view of the enemy, before dragging the man to the edge of the cliff face and
lowering him to safety in a rope sling, using a special type of knot that Desmond himself
had discovered.
Desmond could have stopped there and still been considered a hero, but he knew that saving
lives was his calling and he had faith that God would protect him, so he vowed to stay
and rescue as many men as he could before he was killed or collapsed from exhaustion.
He stayed on top of the ridge for hours, and he ran back into the chaos again and again
to treat the injured and drag them to safety.
After he lowered each man to safety, he said a little prayer to himself to keep him going:
“Lord, please help me get one more”.
It would appear that the Lord answered his prayer, and then some - early estimates were
that he had saved fifty men that day, but military officials argued that it was at least
a hundred, so the official reports settled on seventy-five.
Whatever the final number was, there’s no denying that Desmond Doss was a true hero
that day.
And in case anyone had any lingering doubts about Desmond’s religious convictions being
a liability, he did all of this on the Sabbath, his day of rest.
Desmond didn’t sit back and relax after this.
A few days later he went along on a night raid and was hiding in a shell hole when a
Japanese grenade landed at his feet.
The explosion sent him flying through the air, and his hip and leg were shredded by
shrapnel - in the end, seventeen pieces of metal were embedded in his body.
Even this wasn’t enough to take down this hero - Desmond treated his own wounds in the
field and waited five hours for rescue.
When help finally did arrive, they were attacked again as they attempted to escape - the Japanese
were known to specifically target medics.
When one of his rescuers was wounded, Desmond crawled off of the litter he was being carried
on and insisted that the other man take his place.
As he attempted to make his way to safety on foot, his arm was shattered by a sniper
bullet.
Once again, he treated himself in the field, making a splint for himself out of a rifle
stock before dragging himself to safety with his one remaining good limb.
Because he had been missing for so many hours, Desmond arrived at camp to find out that he
had been presumed dead in the battle.
The news had even been reported on the front page of his hometown’s newspaper, and he
had to write a letter to his mother to set things straight.
Desmond was evacuated from Okinawa on May twenty-first, and after receiving treatment
for his injuries, he was back in the U.S. by October nineteen forty-five.
On October twelfth, nineteen forty-five, just days after returning home, Desmond stood proudly
on the lawn of the White House and accepted the prestigious Medal of Honor from President
Harry S. Truman in recognition of his incredible bravery in the Battle of Okinawa.
Truman told Desmond: “I’m proud of you.
You really deserve this.
I consider this a greater honor than being president.”
Desmond was humble about this honor, giving the credit to God, whom he believed saved
his life many times during the war so that he could keep doing the righteous work he
was doing in battle.
Desmond’s war service may have been over, but his personal battle was just beginning.
He recovered from the injuries he received in battle, but his left arm sustained permanent
damage.
In nineteen forty-six he was diagnosed with Tuberculosis, which he had contracted in the
Philippines.
It took more than five years of treatment before he could be released from the hospital
in nineteen fifty-one, although he was considered ninety percent disabled by the military because
he had lost one lung and five ribs during the course of his treatments.
He became one-hundred percent disabled in nineteen seventy-six after an overdose of
antibiotics left him completely deaf, but thankfully he was able to regain his hearing
with a cochlear implant in nineteen eighty-eight.
After the War, Desmond had originally planned to return to his carpentry career, but he
quickly realized that his injuries and lingering health issues made it impossible to work.
Instead, he focused on his family and his faith, buying a small farm in Georgia where
he and his wife Dorothy, whom he had married in nineteen forty-two before deploying, raised
their son Desmond Junior.
Desmond also worked extensively with his church until his death in two-thousand six at the
age of eighty-seven.
Even after his death, his legend lives on.
Countless books and movies have been made about his life, several schools and highways
have been named for him.
He’s been honored with statues at the National Museum of Patriotism in Georgia and Veterans
Memorial Park in Tennessee, and became a heroic example of living your faith for the Seventh
Day Adventist Church.
He was even posthumously honored by PETA in twenty-seventeen for his lifelong commitment
to vegetarianism.
Desmond Doss’s story made its way to the big screens in the twenty-sixteen Oscar-winning
film Hacksaw Ridge.
The film’s writers worked hard to make the film as true to Desmond’s life as possible,
but they noted that it was difficult to find information about the man and his life because
the war hero was incredibly humble and unassuming, and lived a modest and private life after
the war.
Desmond Doss was the first man to voluntarily enlist to serve in the U.S. Army and then
be given Conscientious Objector status for his nonviolent religious convictions.
He was also the first Conscientious Objector to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor,
an impressive feat considering the fact that Desmond did not fire a single shot or even
lay his hands on a gun during the war.
Desmond Doss is a true American hero and his story is an impressive example of standing
up for your beliefs in the face of overwhelming odds.
Now for more amazing stories like Desmond Doss’s check out “Titanic Officer Who
Became a Hero of Two World Wars”, or this other video!
And don’t forget to like, share and subscribe!
See you next time!