At 0700 on April 29th, 1945, Private First Class Desmond Doss crouched at the base of a 400foot cliff on Okinawa, watching American soldiers die on the rocks above him.
26 years old, three combat campaigns, zero weapons.
The Japanese had spent years fortifying the Mietta escarment.
They called it Hacksaw Ridge.
Machine gun nests honeycombed the cliff face.
Mortar positions zeroed in on every approach.
Underground tunnels connected dozens of hidden bunkers.
The Americans would have to climb cargo nets straight up into the kill zone.
Daws had arrived on Okinawa with B Company, 307th Infantry Regiment, 77th Infantry Division.
By the end of April, A Company had already been nearly annihilated trying to take the escarment.
The survivors would join B Company for another assault.
The mathematics were brutal.
The cliff rose 360 ft at a steep angle, then shot straight up another 35 ft as a sheer rock face.
The only way up was cargo nets dangling against the overhang.
Every man who climbed became a target.
But Desmond Doss faced a problem none of the other soldiers understood.
He carried no rifle, no pistol, no bayonet, no weapon of any kind.
The only thing in his hands was a medic’s kit, and the men around him had spent three years trying to get rid of him.
It had started at Fort Jackson, South Carolina in 1942.
Doss was a 7th Day Adventist from Lynchburg, Virginia.
His faith forbade killing.
His faith also forbade working on the Sabbath, which he observed on Saturday.
When he refused to touch a rifle during basic training, the harassment began immediately.
The other recruits saw him as a liability, a coward hiding behind religion.
They threw boots at him while he prayed at night.
They called him names that would follow him across the Pacific.
One soldier made a promise that echoed through the barracks.
When they got into combat, he would make sure Doss did not come back alive.
His commanding officers tried to have him discharged on grounds of mental illness.
When that failed, they attempted a court marshal for refusing to handle a weapon.
The charges were eventually dropped, but the message was clear.
Nobody wanted Desmond Doss in their unit.
Nobody trusted him.
Nobody believed a man without a gun could be anything but a burden in combat.
Doss shipped out with the 307th anyway.
He served as a medic on Guam in 1944.
The men who had threatened to kill him watched something unexpected.
The skinny kid from Virginia ran into enemy fire without hesitation.
He dragged wounded soldiers to safety while bullets struck the ground around him.
He earned a bronze star for valor.
Then another bronze star in the Philippines.
By the time the 77th Division reached Okinawa, the threats had stopped.
The men had seen what DOSs would do for them.
But respect did not change the tactical reality.
On Hacksaw Ridge, medics were priority targets.
Japanese soldiers were trained to shoot medical personnel first.
It destroyed morale.
It left the wounded to die slowly.
And Doss would be climbing that cliff with nothing but bandages and morphine.
The assault was scheduled for the morning.
Doss knew what waited at the top.
Intelligence reported thousands of Japanese soldiers entrenched in caves and tunnels across the escarment.
Machine gun positions covered every inch of the plateau.
Artillery and mortar crews had pre-registered their fire on the American approach routes.
The men who made it up the cargo nets would be walking into a storm of steel.
Doss had one advantage the other soldiers did not.
He had learned a knot during training at Fort Jackson, a double bolan.
He had actually made it by mistake trying to tie a standard bolan and getting it wrong.
The error created two loops instead of one.
His instructors had mocked him for it, but Doss remembered how to tie it.
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Back to Doss.
The night before the assault, Doss sat with his equipment.
Bandages, sulfa powder, morphine ceretses, plasma bottles, and one length of rope.
By dawn, he would be climbing into the most heavily defended position on Okinawa.
The men beside him carried rifles and grenades.
Doss carried faith and a knot that everyone had laughed at.
The cargo nets went up at dawn on May 2nd, 1945.
B Company and the remnants of A Company began the climb.
Doss grabbed the rope netting and pulled himself toward the overhang 360 ft above.
His medic bag hung across his chest.
The weight of bandages and plasma shifted with every movement around him.
Soldiers climbed with M1 rifles strapped to their backs.
Doss climbed with empty hands.
The double Bolan knot he had accidentally invented worked on a simple principle.
A standard Bolan created one loop.
His version doubled the rope before tying which produced two loops instead.
One loop could go under a wounded man’s arms.
The other could support his legs.
The knot would not slip under load.
It would not tighten and cut off circulation.
And one man could operate it alone, lowering another man’s full weight down a cliff face.
Doss had practiced the knot hundreds of times since Fort Jackson.
The other soldiers had laughed at his mistake, but mistakes sometimes become innovations.
The double bolan could lower a 200lb man smoothly and safely.
It could be tied in seconds, and it could be anchored to a tree stump or rock outcropping with minimal equipment.
The climb took nearly an hour.
Japanese machine gunners held their fire, waiting for the Americans to reach the top.
The first soldiers pulled themselves over the edge and onto the plateau.
Then the killing started.
Artillery rounds exploded across the escarment.
Mortar shells walked through the American positions.
Machine gun fire cut down men who had survived the climb only to die on flat ground.
The plateau was approximately 300 yd wide and covered with shell craters, shattered trees, and Japanese fighting positions.
Every rock concealed a tunnel entrance.
Every depression hid an enemy soldier.
Doss moved through the chaos without a weapon.
His job was simple.
Find the wounded.
Stop the bleeding.
Get them to safety.
The difficulty was everything else.
Japanese snipers targeted anyone wearing a Red Cross armband.
Doss had removed his medic insignia before the assault.
It made him look like every other soldier.
It also meant the enemy could not specifically hunt him.
The first wounded man Doss reached had taken shrapnel to the abdomen.
Doss pressed bandages against the wound and sprinkled sulfa powder to prevent infection.
He could not evacuate the soldier while the firefight continued.
He marked the location in his mind and moved to the next casualty.
Then the next, then the next.
By midday, the plateau was littered with wounded Americans.
Some could still fire their weapons, others could not move.
The Japanese had zeroed their mortars on the cargo net positions.
Any soldier trying to climb back down became an easy target.
The wounded were trapped on top of the escarment with nowhere to go.
Doss counted the casualties as he worked.
The number kept climbing.
15 wounded, 20, 25.
The medics from other companies were either dead or pinned down.
Doss was the only medical personnel still moving freely across the plateau.
His 145-lb frame made him a smaller target.
His refusal to carry a weapon meant he moved faster than soldiers burdened with rifles and ammunition.
The tactical situation deteriorated throughout the afternoon.
Japanese reinforcements emerged from tunnels behind the American lines.
Machine gun fire came from positions the soldiers thought they had already cleared.
The enemy was everywhere and nowhere.
They appeared, fired, and vanished back into their underground network.
By evening, the company commander faced a decision.
The Americans could not hold the plateau through the night.
Japanese infiltrators would pick them off in the darkness.
The order came to withdraw back down the cargo nets.
The able-bodied soldiers began their descent, but dozens of wounded men remained on top.
Doss watched the retreat begin.
He knew what happened to wounded Americans captured by Japanese forces.
torture, execution, bodies mutilated as warnings to other soldiers.
The men lying on that plateau were the same men who had thrown boots at him during basic training.
The same men who had threatened to kill him.
The same men who had called him a coward.
Doss did not follow the retreat.
He stayed on the escarment alone, unarmed, surrounded by enemy soldiers emerging from their tunnels.
And he had a rope.
The first wounded man Doss reached weighed nearly twice as much as he did.
The soldier had taken machine gun rounds through both legs.
He could not walk.
He could not crawl.
Without evacuation, he would bleed out on the plateau or be killed by Japanese patrols sweeping the escarment after dark.
Doss grabbed his rope and found a tree stump near the cliff edge.
The stump was shattered by artillery fire, but still anchored solidly in the ground.
He wrapped the rope around it twice, then tied his double bow line at the working end.
Two loops, one for the armpits, one for the legs.
He dragged the wounded soldier to the edge, positioned him in the makeshift harness, and began lowering.
The rope burned through his hands.
The soldier’s weight pulled against the stump anchor.
Doss fed the line slowly, controlling the descent, foot by foot, 35 ft down.
The sheer cliff face scraped against the wounded man’s back.
Doss could not see the bottom in the darkness.
He could only feel the tension in the rope and pray the knot would hold.
The weight suddenly released.
Hands below had grabbed the soldier.
Medics at the base of the cliff pulled him from the harness.
Doss hauled the rope back up hand overhand and went looking for the next casualty.
The second evacuation went faster.
Doss had learned how much rope to feed and when to break.
The third evacuation revealed a problem.
His hands were bleeding.
The manila rope had stripped skin from his palms with every descent.
By the fourth evacuation, the rope was slick with his own blood.
Doss wrapped torn strips of his undershirt around his hands and kept working.
The Japanese had not yet discovered what he was doing.
The darkness concealed his movements along the cliff edge.
The wounded soldiers he reached were scattered across 300 yd of plateau.
He had to find them, drag them to the evacuation point, rig the harness, and lower them one at a time.
Each round trip took between 15 and 20 minutes.
Find a casualty.
check his wounds, drag him to the cliff, rig the bow line, lower him down, haul the rope back up, start again.
The physical toll was enormous.
Doss had not eaten since morning.
He had not slept in over 20 hours.
His arms shook with exhaustion after every descent.
By midnight, Doss had evacuated more than a dozen men.
His hands were raw meat wrapped in bloody cloth.
His shoulders burned from hauling the rope.
But the plateau still held wounded soldiers he had not reached.
Some were hidden in shell craters.
Others had crawled into depressions seeking cover from Japanese patrols.
Doss moved through the darkness, feeling for bodies, listening for breathing.
The partial success revealed a new danger.
Japanese soldiers had noticed the disappearances.
Wounded Americans who had been lying on the plateau were vanishing.
Enemy patrols began searching the cliff edge.
They knew someone was still up there.
They just had not found him yet.
Doss heard voices in the darkness.
Japanese close.
He flattened himself against the ground and stopped breathing.
A patrol passed within 20 yards of his position.
Their flashlights swept across the plateau.
If they found him, he had no weapon to fight back.
No way to defend himself.
He could only wait and hope they moved on.
The patrol continued toward the northern end of the escarment.
Doss waited until their lights disappeared, then resumed his work.
But now every evacuation carried additional risk.
The Japanese knew something was wrong.
They would be watching the cliff edge.
They would be listening for the sound of rope against rock.
Doss reached another wounded soldier near a destroyed machine gun position.
The man had shrapnel wounds across his chest and abdomen.
He was conscious but too weak to move.
Doss began dragging him toward the evacuation point.
50 yards.
The ground was uneven and covered with debris.
Doss pulled with his legs, keeping low, moving inches at a time.
A flare shot up from the Japanese lines.
White phosphorous light flooded the plateau.
Doss froze.
He was completely exposed.
30 yards from the cliff edge, a wounded soldier in his arms and Japanese eyes everywhere.
The flare burned for 30 seconds.
Doss pressed his face into the dirt and did not move.
The wounded soldier beneath him groaned.
Any sound could draw Japanese attention.
Any movement could bring rifle fire.
Doss clamped his bloody hand over the man’s mouth and waited.
Shadows stretched across the plateau as the flare descended.
Japanese soldiers scanned the terrain from their positions.
Doss could see their silhouettes against the white light.
They were looking for movement, looking for targets, looking for the American who had been stealing their prisoners.
The flare sputtered and died.
Darkness returned.
Doss counted to 60 before he resumed dragging the wounded soldier toward the cliff edge.
His arms had stopped shaking.
They had gone numb.
The exhaustion had passed through pain into something beyond feeling.
He moved on instinct now.
Find the wounded.
Drag them to safety.
Lower them down.
Repeat.
The evacuation point was compromised.
Doss could see Japanese soldiers moving near the tree stump where he had anchored his rope.
They had found it.
They knew exactly where the Americans were disappearing.
If he tried to lower another man from that position, they would be waiting.
Doss needed a new anchor point.
He crawled along the cliff edge, searching for another suitable location.
The escarment was not uniform.
Some sections dropped straight down.
Others had ledges and outcroppings that would snag a descending body.
He needed a clear drop with something solid to tie off the rope.
50 yards south, he found a rock formation jutting from the plateau.
It was smaller than the tree stump, but stable enough to hold weight.
Doss tested it by pulling with his full body.
The rock did not shift.
He wrapped his rope around the base and prepared for the next evacuation.
The wounded soldier he had been dragging was still 30 yard away.
Doss crawled back to retrieve him.
Every yard felt like a mile.
His knees were torn from crawling across debris.
His hands left bloody smears on the ground.
The physical cost of each rescue was mounting faster than his body could sustain.
He reached the wounded man and began pulling again.
20 yards to the new anchor point.
15 10.
Another flare shot up from the Japanese lines.
Doss froze again.
This time the light illuminated his original evacuation point.
He watched Japanese soldiers examining the tree stump.
the rope marks in the bark, the disturbed ground where he had dragged dozens of casualties.
They knew.
They understood exactly what had happened.
And now they would be hunting him specifically.
The flare died.
Doss completed the evacuation at his new position.
The wounded soldier descended into darkness.
The rope went slack.
Doss hauled it back up.
His shoulders screamed with every pull.
The muscles in his forearms had cramped into knots.
He had been working for over 6 hours without rest.
Dawn was approaching.
The darkness that had protected him would soon disappear.
Japanese patrols would be able to see him clearly.
Every movement across the plateau would be visible.
Every trip to the cliff edge would be a death sentence.
Doss calculated the wounded still remaining.
He had evacuated somewhere between 30 and 40 men.
But there were more.
He could hear them in the darkness.
Weak voices calling for help.
Moans of pain from shell craters he had not yet searched.
The number of casualties from the day’s assault was higher than anyone had estimated.
The mathematics were impossible.
Each evacuation took 15 to 20 minutes.
Dawn was less than 2 hours away.
Even if he worked without stopping, he could only reach another six or eight men.
The rest would be left on the plateau when the sun rose.
Left for the Japanese.
Doss found himself praying in the darkness.
The same words repeated over and over.
A plea that had no logical answer.
He was one man, 145 lbs, no weapon, bleeding hands, exhausted beyond measure.
And somewhere on that plateau, wounded Americans were waiting to die.
He whispered into the night, “Lord, help me get one more.” Then he went back to work.
Dawn broke over Hacksaw Ridge at 0547 on May 3rd.
The first rays of sunlight illuminated a plateau covered with destruction.
Shell craters, shattered equipment, bodies of Japanese and American soldiers scattered across 300 yards of contested ground, and one medic still working at the cliff edge.
Doss had not stopped.
Through the entire night, he had continued his pattern.
Find the wounded, drag them to the anchor point, rigged the double bow line, lower them down, haul the rope back up.
His hands had stopped bleeding hours ago.
The wounds had clouded into thick scabs that cracked and reopened with every grip on the rope.
He no longer felt the pain.
He no longer felt anything except the weight of each man descending into safety.
The sunlight should have killed him.
Japanese snipers could now see every movement on the escarment.
Mortar crews could track his position.
Machine gunners had clear lines of fire to the cliff edge.
But something strange happened as the light spread across the plateau.
The Japanese fire did not come.
The enemy soldiers had watched the evacuation through the night.
They had seen the single American crawling across the plateau, dragging wounded men twice his size.
They had seen him work for hours without rest, without weapons, without any concern for his own survival.
Some accounts would later suggest the Japanese held their fire out of respect.
Others would credit the chaos of their own defensive positions.
The truth remained unclear.
What mattered was that Doss kept working.
By 0700, he had evacuated over 50 men.
The soldiers at the base of the cliff had lost count.
Wounded Americans kept appearing at the bottom of the cargo nets, lowered on a rope harness that descended from somewhere above.
The medics below worked frantically to treat the casualties.
They had no idea one man was responsible for all of them.
Doss found another wounded soldier near the eastern edge of the plateau.
The man had crawled into a foxhole during the night and passed out from blood loss.
He was barely breathing.
Doss checked his pulse, applied fresh bandages to his wounds, and began the long drag back to the evacuation point.
80 yards across open ground.
The Japanese could see him clearly now.
They still did not fire.
The soldier weighed over 190 lb.
Doss weighed 145.
The physics made no sense.
A smaller man should not be able to drag a larger man across rough terrain for hours without collapse.
But Doss had moved beyond physical limits.
He operated on something that could not be measured or explained.
Each time he completed an evacuation, he told himself the same thing.
One more.
Just one more.
By 0900, the count reached 60, then 65, then 70.
The soldiers at the base of the cliff began to understand what was happening above them.
One medic, no weapon, an entire night of rescues.
The men who had thrown boots at Desmond Doss during basic training were being carried to safety by the same hands that had never held a rifle.
The final evacuation came just before 1000 hours.
Doss lowered the last wounded soldier he could find on the plateau.
The rope went slack.
He hauled it back up one more time, then collapsed at the cliff edge.
His arms would not move.
His legs would not respond.
He lay on the ground where Japanese soldiers could have killed him with a single shot.
They did not.
75 men.
The official count would be disputed for decades.
Doss himself estimated 50.
His commanding officer insisted the number was closer to 100.
They eventually compromised at 75.
But the exact figure mattered less than the fact itself.
A single unarmed soldier had rescued an entire company’s worth of casualties from a position that should have been a death trap.
Below the escarment, soldiers stared up at the cliff edge.
They could see Doss lying motionless against the sky.
Word spread through the battalion.
The conscientious objector, the coward, the man they had tried to discharge from mental illness.
He had saved them all.
The question now was whether anyone above private first class would believe it.
Doss did not leave Hacksaw Ridge after the night evacuation.
He rested for a few hours at the base of the cliff, ate his first meal in over 30 hours, and climbed back up the cargo nets.
The battle for the Mietta escarment was far from over.
The Japanese still held their tunnel network.
American casualties continued to mount and B company still needed its medic.
Word of the overnight rescues spread through the 307th Infantry Regiment within hours.
Soldiers who had not witnessed the evacuation heard the stories from those who had.
75 men lowered down the cliff face by a single unarmed medic.
The man who had been mocked at Fort Jackson.
The conscientious objector who refused to touch a rifle.
He had done something no one could explain.
The following days tested Doss again.
On May 2nd, he exposed himself to heavy rifle and mortar fire to rescue a wounded soldier 200 yd forward of American lines.
The same escarment, the same Japanese positions, the same complete disregard for his own safety.
He dragged the casualty back through fire that should have killed them both.
Two days later, four soldiers were cut down while assaulting a Japanese cave position.
The enemy was dug in 8 yards from where the Americans fell.
Grenades rained down from the cave mouth.
No one could reach the wounded without crossing through the barrage.
Doss crossed anyway.
He advanced through the shower of explosives, reached his comrades, dressed their wounds under fire, and made four separate trips to evacuate all of them.
On May 5th, the intensity increased further.
An artillery officer was hit by enemy shelling and small arms fire.
Doss braved the bombardment to reach him.
He applied bandages, moved the officer to a position with some protection from direct fire, and administered plasma while mortar rounds exploded nearby.
The procedure required steady hands and concentration.
Doss performed it with high explosives detonating within yards of his position.
Later that same day, another American was severely wounded by fire from a cave.
The soldier had fallen 25 ft from the enemy position.
Japanese riflemen could see anyone who approached.
Doss crawled to the wounded man anyway.
He rendered aid at pointlank range from the enemy, then carried the soldier 100 yards to safety while continuously exposed to fire.
The pattern was impossible to ignore.
Doss did not have one exceptional night on Hacksaw Ridge.
He had weeks of exceptional service.
Every day brought new casualties.
Every day brought new rescues.
The medic who carried no weapon consistently went places no armed soldier would go.
He reached wounded men that everyone else had written off as lost.
His reputation transformed within the 77th Infantry Division.
The soldiers who had doubted him now requested him specifically.
When patrols went forward, they wanted Doss with them.
When assaults were planned, commanders asked if the medic from B company was available.
The man they had tried to discharge had become their most valuable asset.
Other medics in the division studied his methods.
The double bow line knot he had accidentally invented during training became a topic of discussion.
His willingness to remove Red Cross insignia to avoid being targeted was adopted by other medical personnel.
His practice of marking wounded locations mentally before returning to evacuate allowed more efficient triage under fire.
Battalion commanders began documenting his actions.
The rescues on the night of May 2nd and 3rd were extraordinary, but the sustained performance across weeks of combat was equally remarkable.
Doss was not a one-time hero.
He was a consistent force that reduced casualties and improved morale across the entire regiment.
Reports moved up the chain of command.
Company level to battalion, battalion to regiment, regiment to division.
The 77th Infantry Division headquarters received detailed accounts of a conscientious objector performing acts of valor that defied conventional military understanding.
A soldier who would not kill was saving more lives than anyone who would.
The documentation accumulated, witness statements, afteraction reports, casualty evacuation records.
Somewhere in that paperwork was the foundation for something Desmond Doss had never sought and would never have requested.
The question was whether the army would give its highest honor to a man who refused to carry its weapons.
The night of May 21st brought the end of Desmond Doss’s war.
His unit launched a night attack on high ground near Shuri.
The assault went wrong almost immediately.
Japanese forces were waiting.
The Americans walked into a company of enemy soldiers in the darkness.
Hand-to-h hand combat erupted across the hillside.
Doss scrambled to treat the wounded as grenades flew through the night.
He found cover in a shell hole with three other soldiers.
They crouched in the depression, waiting for the chaos to subside.
Then a Japanese grenade landed among them.
The other three men were on the lower side of the hole.
Doss was facing the direction the grenade came from.
He saw it arc through the darkness and drop into their position.
There was no time to grab it and throw it back.
No time to warn the others.
Doss kicked his left foot toward where he thought the grenade had landed and pressed his helmet into the dirt.
The explosion sent him sailing through the air.
When he landed, he knew immediately that his legs were destroyed.
17 pieces of shrapnel had torn through his lower body.
His legs and hips were shredded.
Blood soaked through his uniform.
The three soldiers in the hole with him were unharmed.
His body had absorbed the blast.
Doss treated his own wounds in the darkness.
He applied bandages and tourniquets with hands that had been raw meat for weeks.
Rather than call for another medic and risk that man’s life, he waited 5 hours alone in the shell hole, bleeding.
The sounds of combat gradually faded as dawn approached.
Litterbearers found him after sunrise.
They loaded him onto a stretcher and began carrying him toward the aid station.
Then Japanese tanks counteratt attacked.
The evacuation team dove for cover.
Doss looked over and saw another wounded soldier on the ground.
The man was hit worse than he was.
Doss rolled off the stretcher.
He crawled to the other soldier, bandaged his wounds, and told the litterbearers to take that man first.
He would wait for them to come back.
The stretcher disappeared toward the aid station.
Doss lay on the ground, bleeding from 17 shrapnel wounds, waiting for help to return.
A sniper found him first.
The bullet entered his wrist, exited through his elbow, and lodged in his upper arm.
The bone shattered on impact.
Doss now had 17 pieces of shrapnel in his legs and a compound fracture of his left arm.
He was alone.
No stretcher, no litterbearers.
300 yd from the aid station, he found a broken rifle on the ground nearby, the weapon he had refused to touch for his entire military career.
Doss picked it up and used the stock to fashion a splint for his destroyed arm.
Then he began crawling 300 yd across rough terrain, dragging a shattered limb, leaking blood from wounds across his entire body.
He reached the aid station under his own power.
The army initially reported him dead.
The news reached his hometown of Lynchburg, Virginia, and made the front page.
Doss corrected the error by writing a letter to his mother from the hospital ship.
He was alive, barely.
4 months later, on October 12th, 1945, Corporal Desmond Doss stood on the White House lawn.
President Harry Truman held the Medal of Honor in his hands.
The citation covered actions spanning from April 29th to May 21st.
The escarment rescues, the forward evacuations, the cave assaults, the grenade that should have killed four men.
Truman shook his hand and told him the award was a greater honor than being president.
Doss became the first conscientious objector in American history to receive the Medal of Honor for combat actions.
The soldier who would not carry a weapon had earned the nation’s highest military decoration.
The men of the 307th Infantry Regiment had one more gift for him.
During the battle, Doss had lost a small Bible he carried everywhere.
His unit went back to the escarment after the fighting ended.
They searched the battlefield until they found it.
They returned it to the man who had saved them all.
The war left permanent marks on Desmond Doss.
The shrapna wounds healed slowly.
The compound fracture of his arm required extensive surgery, but the worst damage came from something he had contracted months earlier on laty tuberculosis.
The disease had been spreading through his lungs while he crawled across Hacksaw Ridge.
By the time doctors diagnosed it, the infection had caused irreversible damage.
Doss spent more than 5 years in army hospitals after the war.
Surgeons eventually removed one of his lungs entirely.
The operation saved his life, but left him permanently disabled.
He returned to Lynchburg, Virginia with the Medal of Honor, a Purple Heart with two oakleaf clusters, two bronze stars, and a body that would never fully function again.
The injuries prevented him from holding a regular job.
The man, who had carried wounded soldiers twice his weight across a battlefield, could no longer perform sustained physical labor.
Doss never complained.
He settled on a small farm in Rising Fawn, Georgia with his wife, Dorothy.
They had married just before he shipped out to the Pacific.
She had given him the Bible he carried through every battle.
The same Bible his unit had searched the escarment to find after his evacuation.
He kept it for the rest of his life.
The farm became his sanctuary.
Doss worked when his body allowed and rested when it did not.
He remained active in his 7th day Adventist church, the faith that had shaped every decision of his military service.
The beliefs that had made him a target at Fort Jackson had also made him a hero on Okinawa.
He never saw a contradiction.
For decades, Doss lived quietly.
He gave occasional talks about his experiences, often demonstrating the double boline knot for young people in church groups and scout meetings.
He visited schools and veterans organizations when his health permitted, but he never sought fame.
He never wrote his own book.
He deflected praise toward the men he had served with and the God he believed had protected him.
Dorothy passed away in 1991 after a car accident.
Doss remarried in 1993 to Francis Duman who cared for him through his final years.
His health continued to decline.
The tuberculosis, the shrapnel wounds, the broken bones had accumulated into a lifetime of chronic pain and limitation.
Hollywood had tried to tell his story for years.
Producers approached him repeatedly.
Audi Murphy, himself, a Medal of Honor recipient and actor, wanted to make the film.
Doss refused every offer.
He did not want his story sensationalized.
He did not want actors putting words in his mouth that he had never spoken.
He waited until he found filmmakers he trusted.
In 2004, a documentary called The Conscientious Objector finally brought his story to a wider audience.
Doss participated in interviews sharing details he had kept private for 60 years.
The film captured his humility, his faith, and his complete lack of self-promotion.
He still insisted the real heroes were the men who had not come home.
Desmond Doss died on March 23rd, 2006.
He was 87 years old.
10 years later, the feature film Hacksaw Ridge introduced his story to millions of viewers worldwide.
The movie won Academy Awards and earned over $180 million at the box office.
Doss never saw it, but his legacy was finally secured.
Today, monuments stand in his honor at the National Museum of the United States Army and at the Mietta Escarment on Okinawa.
The cliff he climbed.
The plateau where he saved 75 men.
The ground that should have been his grave became his memorial.
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