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Corporal Desmond Thomas Doss was the first conscientious
objector to ever receive the Medal of Honor.
A simple man with a noble heart, Doss single-handedly rescued 75 men from the
fiercest battle in the entire Pacific Theater during World War II: the Battle of Okinawa.
Moreover, his actions rekindled the American spirit and indirectly
helped the 77th Infantry Division capture Hacksaw Ridge in May of 1945.
By October of that year, President Harry Truman bestowed him with the
medal and warmly told him: (QUOTE) "I'm proud of you. You really deserve this.
I consider this a greater honor than being president."
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Life-Long Vows
Desmond Thomas Doss was born on February 7, 1919, in Lynchburg, Virginia.
He was raised as a Seventh-Day Adventist by his mother and professed non-violence principles,
kept the Sabbath, and had a vegetarian lifestyle.
A picture in his childhood home portraying the Ten Commandments marked his life forever.
He was particularly intrigued by the Sixth Commandment: ‘Thou shalt not kill.’
Doss later recounted a story in which his drunk father and an uncle got into a fight.
His father took out a gun, but his mother quickly got between them and stopped a potential tragedy.
She took the gun away and emptied the bullets, then handed it to her son
and asked him to hide it. The impressionable child vowed never to touch a gun again.
But life got in the way when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December of 1941.
Doss honored the values he had been raised with and rejected a deferment offered by
his boss at the Newport News shipyard. He was convinced that he had a duty to
serve his country and couldn’t stand others giving up their lives for him.
The young man then volunteered to serve in the Army but made it clear he didn’t want to
shoot anybody. He was eventually drafted with the classification of conscientious objector,
but he kept explaining that he saw himself more as a conscientious cooperator.
Desmond Doss was to serve God and his country, in that order.
A Conscientious Cooperator
Doss initially expressed interest in serving as a medic but was sent
to Fort Jackson to train with the 307th Infantry, 77th Infantry Division instead.
He was ridiculed and isolated for years. The man of faith carried a pocket Bible with him at all
times, and while praying at night he would get shoes thrown at him. His superiors expected him
to crack and regarded him as a pest and a coward. They even wanted to throw him out of the Army.
In addition to his refusal to pick up a gun, Doss kept the Sabbath from sundown
Friday to sundown Saturday and did not perform any tasks during those 24 hours.
He was forced to do the toughest duties every Sunday in exchange.
Doss was restored to the medical attachment on May 5, 1942,
under Captain Solomon Statman, 307th regimental surgeon. Statman was Jewish
and quickly became annoyed by Doss’ refusal to work on Saturdays.
The soldier was constantly reminded that he was no different from everybody else
and was even threatened with court-martial. Still,
he kept requesting that his Sabbath be respected every single week.
Commander Jack Glover wanted Doss out of the Army, but he once told him: (QUOTE) “Don't ever
doubt my courage because I will be right by your side saving life while you take life.” To which
Glover responded: (QUOTE) “You’re not going to be by my damn side if you don’t carry a gun.”
Colonel Stephen S. Hamilton tried to humiliate Doss into bearing arms, but failed. And an officer
by the name of Captain Cunningham tried to force him to grab a rifle, but couldn’t make him. In
retaliation, Doss wasn’t allowed a furlough to visit his brother before he left with the Navy.
The commanding officers kept growing more irritated and attempted to discharge him
for mental instability, but Washington wouldn’t remove someone on religious grounds so easily.
Much to Doss’s surprise, Captain Statman welcomed him into the Medical Corps.
His father had called the War Service Commission, and Hamilton was reminded
that President Roosevelt had proclaimed that no conscientious objector was required to bear arms.
And no officer could contradict an act of Congress.
Proving His Worth
In March of 1944, the 77th Infantry Division was transferred to serve in the Pacific Theater.
During his first battles in Guam and the Philippines,
Doss got a chance to prove his worth. He would go around at night into the battlefields
and help anyone in need. He was warned that: (QUOTE) “Your own men might shoot you.”
But he disregarded such comments and carried on with his mission.
His task was complicated as unabating Japanese forces would look for medics to shoot them first
and break the American morale: (QUOTE) “They would let the infantry get by just to pick off a medic.”
Doss and his comrades were forced to remove their distinctive Red Cross patches,
and he refused to let any wounded men untreated. After his first battles, Doss was awarded two
Bronze Star Medals with V devices for valor while aiding the injured under enemy fire.
The 77th Division was then sent to the island of Okinawa, where the US Army and the US Marine Corps
faced the Imperial Japanese Army. The Battle of Okinawa began in March of 1945
and was the largest amphibious attack in the Pacific Theater.
By May, the division had repeatedly tried to capture the Maeda Escarpment,
an imposing 350-foot rock face known as Hacksaw Ridge.
But the Japanese troops defended it with all their might, and the feat seemed impossible.
Former battalion scout Ken LaFond recalled that: QUOTE) “It was a kill or be killed kind of war.”
The division was pushed off the ridge nine times over seven days,
and the Americans were not able to advance. It became a stagnant battle.
The troops then came up with the idea of using a cargo net to climb to the top.
Doss volunteered to go up and hang the nest along with two other soldiers from Company B.
They successfully completed the task without being fired by enemy forces.
Then, on April 30, 1945, Companies A and B were ordered to take over
the escarpment. Four days of relentless fighting ensued.
A Hero Is Born
As the carnage from the battle increased,
Desmond Doss kept focused on saving as many lives as he could.
One day he found a soldier with both legs severed, crying out for a medic.
The least gravely injured men were usually treated first,
but Doss didn’t care and dragged the soldier back to safety. He lived to be 72.
Another time, Doss heard Japanese soldiers inside a hole near the base of the ridge.
He pondered whether to drop a grenade and finish them, but he remained true to his
convictions and let them go. He later confessed it was the greatest temptation of his life.
Doss knew the Japanese tortured the wounded at nighttime,
so one night he went up the ridge and looked for injured men on the battlefield.
As he found them, he immediately dragged them towards the edge, sometimes as far as 200 yards.
Then he lowered them using a rope and a double-looped knot he invented.
The men at the base below didn’t know what was happening as injured men kept being lowered down.
They figured some repentant man must have been saving their wounded.
Meanwhile, Doss kept praying to God: (QUOTE) “Lord, please help me get one more.”
The soldier was never shot despite being surrounded by enemy troops.
A Japanese soldier later testified that he had Desmond in sight several times,
but his rifle kept jamming when he tried to pull the trigger.
Doss ended up rescuing an average of one man every ten minutes for 12 hours.
His commander wanted to give him credit for saving 100 men,
but Doss claimed he had rescued around 50. They eventually settled on a symbolic figure of 75.
Respect
The morning of May 5, a final, all-out attack on
Hacksaw Ridge was launched. The only problem was that it was a Saturday.
By then, the division had immense respect for the devoted medic.
Doss said he would go to battle, but he needed time to pray beforehand.
The request went up the chain of command, and the entire division
waited a few extra minutes so that Doss could finish reading his Bible.
In a surprising turn of events,
Doss saved Commander Jack Glover when artillery shelling nearly finished him that day.
Glover later said in the documentary ‘The Conscientious Objector’: (QUOTE)
"He was one of the bravest persons alive… And then to have him end up
saving my life was the irony of the whole thing."
By the end of the Sabbath, Hacksaw Ridge was secured,
and the division was finally able to advance.
Till The End
On May 21, Company B stumbled upon a Japanese Company during a covert mission,
and they engaged in hand-to-hand combat. Doss was caught in a hole with three other men when
a grenade was thrown at them. Realizing there was no way out, Doss attempted to save his comrades
and stepped on it, receiving about 17 pieces of shrapnel. Both of his legs were shattered.
The medic healed his own wounds as well as he could and waited five hours to be rescued and
carried on a litter. While being carried away, he spotted a wounded man and crawled off the litter,
demanding that the other soldier be first cared for.
A sniper bullet shattered his left arm while waiting to be retrieved.
He then took a rifle and used it as a splint while crawling 300 yards to the nearest aid station.
A 2016 film called ‘Hacksaw Ridge’ did not feature this act
as director Mel Gibson reckoned it was too heroic to be believable.
Doss was eventually taken to the Ship Mercy Hospital, where he realized he had lost his
pocket Bible on the battlefield. Some men from Company B then risked their
lives and went back to look for it. The Bible was then returned to Doss.
Doss was discharged on May 23 and led a peaceful farm life until he was 87.
His Medal of Honor citation read: (QUOTE) “Through his outstanding bravery and unflinching
determination in the face of desperately dangerous conditions Private First Class
Doss saved the lives of many soldiers. His name became a symbol throughout the 77th
Infantry Division for outstanding gallantry far above and beyond the call of duty.”
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