Randy,

I was at the WPAFB Chapel #2 a few weeks ago and heard a sermon about Desmond Doss. Thought you might be interested.

David

When he knelt to pray that first night in the Army, they showered Desmond Doss with jeers and catcalls. When he quietly but firmly refused to pick up a rifle, they called him a coward. When Harry Truman decorated him with the Medal of Honor, they called Desmond Doss the unlikeliest hero.

Although officially classified a conscientious objector, Doss saw himself as a conscientious cooperator, a proud noncombatant. Deeply religious and deeply patriotic, he declined the deferment offered him as shipyard worker in 1942 just as firmly as he refused to learn to shoot a rifle. A Seventh-day Adventist who daily read his Bible and said his prayers, Doss came to war to save lives, not to take them. He endured the harassment, fought attempts to discharge him as being unfit for service and trained to be a medic.

Assigned to the 77th Infantry Division and shipped to the Pacific, Doss served on Guam, Leyte and, finally, Okinawa. In the process, the tall, thin Virginian became the very symbol of courage and service to those who once jeered him.

In May, 1945, the 1st Battalion of the 307th Infantry Regiment was ordered to scale the 50-foot Maeda escarpment on the southern end of Okinawa. A barrage of Japanese mortar and rifle fire met the Americans and the battalion was forced off the escarpment, leaving behind 75 wounded comrades and Desmond Doss. Working slowly and doggedly under continuous enemy fire, Doss dragged each man to the edge of the cliff, tied him in a rope sling and lowered him to safety. One by one, he rescued them all.

Two weeks later, in another bitter fight, Doss rescued his badly wounded company commander. “He saved my life,” says Jack Glover. “The man I tried to have kicked out of the Army ended up being the most courageous person I’ve ever known. How’s that for irony?”

Not long afterward, Doss was seriously wounded in the legs trying to shield three other men from a Japanese grenade. Six hours later, a party of stretcher bearers found him and began carrying him off the field. Doss spotted another American hurt worse than he was and insisted that they put him down and take the other man. As he crawled toward safety Doss was shot wounded again by a sniper.

On the way out to a hospital ship offshore, Doss discovered that he had lost the Bible his wife Dorothy had given him. He sent word asking if the men could keep an eye out for it. The word passed from man to man, and an entire battalion combed the battlefield until Doss’s Bible was found. A sergeant carefully dried it out and mailed it to Doss.

On Oct. 12, 1945, Desmond Doss received the Medal of Honor from President Truman. He would spend a total of six years in hospitals as a consequence of his wounds and a bout with tuberculosis. Today, almost totally deaf, Doss lives with his wife in the mountain community of Rising Fawn, GA, where he serves his church with all the quiet determination he once put at the service of his country.

“I don’t think there is anyone who appreciates peace more than I do,” Doss once told an interviewer. “I am sad for the true heroes who paid the supreme price for our freedoms.”
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