Seeing two comrades who had been caught between two machine gun positions and bleeding out in the open, he sprinted across a vast open space to retrieve them. He realized that one was dead, but managed to drag the other across churned up, ankle-deep mud to the safety of the nearby jungle, the whole time under a barrage of Japanese fire. As if he had not excelled himself already, Doss then built a bamboo stretcher, lay the wounded soldier upon it, and dragged him off to safety.
But it was Doss’s exploits on Okinawa on April 29 1945 that earned him the fame he has today. Doss’s unit had been assigned the herculean task of taking the Maeda Escarpment. Better known now as Hacksaw Ridge, this 400-foot obstacle was teeming with hidden gunners, pillboxes, flamethrowers and booby traps. And its capture was essential if the US army were to take control of this strategically vital island. The ascent was hellish: incessant mortar shelling; flamethrowers; men being cut in half by close fire machine gunfire… Doss’s battalion would eventually reach the summit, but only to then be ambushed between two concealed trenches.
Doss saved scores of men from the aftermath of a Japanese ambush. The official figure is 75; Doss claimed it was 50, his Medal of Honor cites 100. But the figure is irrelevant; what’s relevant is the tenacity and fervent devotion with which he worked. Doss single-handedly devised a pulley-system that lowered the wounded down the 40-foot cliff face to the ambulances waiting below. And he did this for five hours straight, constantly under sniper, machine gun and artillery fire.
Two weeks later, Doss was back in action a few miles past the escarpment. But this time—owing to a miscalculation of (not so) friendly artillery fire and a ferocious Japanese counterattack—he found himself sheltering in a foxhole where a Japanese grenade inflicted severe shrapnel wounds to his legs and back. Refusing to draw another medic from cover, Doss tended to his own wounds and waited five hours to be rescued. While eventually being borne on a litter, he spotted another man in more serious need of aid and conceded his own place, saying that with his injuries he could afford to wait.
While waiting, however, a sniper round shattered three bones in his arm. Even with Doss’s durability and determination, there was only so much damage his body could take and he was forced to retreat back to his station. Testament to his strength is the fact he managed to do this unaided, crawling around 275 meters back to his aid station despite the damage done to his limbs. Eventually, on May 21 1945, Doss and his comrades were saved by an act of mercy—the USS Mercy. The ship evacuated them from the bloody war zone and deposited Desmond at a military hospital where he would start off on his lifelong (but never completed) road to recovery.
After the war, Doss had his only child, Desmond Doss Jr., with his first wife Dorothy, and all three were present when President Truman presented Doss with his Medal of Honor in 1945. His fortunes faltered later in life; he battled illness and lost Dorothy in a car accident in 1991. But he remarried Frances Duman in 1993, and enjoyed 13 more years with her until falling seriously ill in 2003. Finally, on March 23 2006—just over sixty years after his extraordinary feats in the Pacific—he passed away at his home in Piedmont, Alabama, surrounded by loved ones.
Since Achilles first graced Homer’s “Iliad”, it’s always been a warrior’s headcount that’s determined their prowess and reputation. Refusal to fight, on the other hand, has been met with ridicule—perhaps most notoriously with the handing out of white feathers to those who refused to participate in the mechanized slaughter of WW1. Desmond Doss wasn’t the first to buck this trend, but his conduct certainly set a fine example. And his receipt of the Medal of Honor sends out a powerful message that, being in line with his faith, Doss would certainly have been proud of: even in times of war, the preservation of life has more value than the taking of it.