Desmond Doss was born on Feb. 7, 1919 to a middle-class family in Virginia. His family were devout Seventh-day Adventists. Once as a kid, he walked six miles to donate blood for a stranger he heard about on the radio. Later, he did it again. He graduated from 8th grade and went to work for a lumber company. When Pearl Harbor occurred, he was working in a shipyard. You got a draft deferment for that kind of work, but he insisted on enlisting at age 18. He was sent to boot camp where he told his superiors that he could not kill due to his religious beliefs. He refused to carry a gun. This did not make him popular with the other recruits. Eventually, he got his wish and was designated a conscientious objector and made a medic. He served in the Philippines and on Guam. He was awarded two Bronze Stars for bravery. By this time, he had gained the respect of the men, who at first had been hostile to a man who refused to fight. Then his unit was sent to the hell of Okinawa. His unit was given the mission of attacking Japanese forces on top of a 400 foot high escarpment. The G.I.’s called it Hacksaw Ridge. Immediately upon scaling the cliff, they were hit with artillery and machine gun fire. He worked on the wounded and then hand-lowered them to safety. At one point, he rescued a wounded soldier who was 200 yards in front of the American line. He rescued four wounded men in front of a cave while the Japanese attempted to kill him. After crawling to another wounded man at a cave mouth, he carried him 100 yards through fire to safety. In his greatest feat, he crawled into no man’s land at night to reach a wounded man. He was wounded himself in the legs by a grenade. He patched himself up and waited five hours for stretcher bearers. While being carried back, he got off the stretcher to aid another. He was hit again in the arm and improvised a splint with a rifle butt. He crawled 300 yards to an aid station. By the time the battle was over, he had saved 50-100 men. And he was on a hospital ship as a victim. He was awarded the Medal of Honor by Pres. Truman. He is the only serviceman to get the Medal of Honor who was a conscientious objector. After the war, he suffered from the results of his numerous wounds. He owned a small farm.
https://warmoviebuff.blogspot.com/2022/02/macarthur-1977.html
https://allthatsinteresting.com/desmond-doss
0 Comments