1/29/2024 0 Comments Desmond doss japanese gun jam![]() Using a rifle stock as a splint for his shattered arm, he crawled 300 yards over rough terrain to the aid station.įor Doss’ actions on Okinawa, his citation reads, “His name became a symbol throughout the 77th Infantry Division for outstanding gallantry far and beyond the call of duty.”Īfter returning from the war, Doss spent nearly six years in hospitals. While waiting for the litter bearers to return, Doss was hit in an arm. On their way to an aid station, the trio was caught in an enemy tank attack.ĭoss, seeing a more critically wounded man nearby, crawled off the litter and told the bearers to pick up the other man. Rather than calling for help, Doss treated his own injuries and waited five hours before two litter bearers reached him. Then, during a night attack on May 21, Doss was tending to the wounded when a grenade exploded, shattering his legs. He repeatedly braved enemy fire to aid the wounded and move them to safety. The Army then “compromised” and credited him with saving 75 lives.īut that wasn’t the only action on Okinawa between April 29 and May 21 that led to Doss’ Medal of Honor. The Army originally said Doss rescued 100 troops that day, but he believed he could not have lowered more than 50 men down the cliff. You made yourself as small a target as you could and just hoped and prayed didn’t hit you.” In the 1998 interview, he remembered that “I just caught them by the collar and dragged them. His Medal of Honor citation says that Doss “remained in the fire-swept area with the many stricken, carrying them one by one to the edge of the escarpment and there lowering them on a rope-supported litter down the face of a cliff to friendly hands.”Īs he made his way to each wounded man, Doss later recalled, he prayed, “Dear God, let me get just one more.” Those not killed or wounded were quickly driven back.ĭoss, however, refused to leave the dozens of wounded behind. He had already earned a Bronze Star for valor for putting himself at risk to care for wounded men on Leyte, in the Philippines, when his unit moved on to Okinawa in late April 1945.Īs a company aid man for the 1st Battalion of the 307th Infantry, he was part of the battalion’s assault on the heavily fortified Maeda Escarpment, a boulder-strewn slope that rises sharply and ends with a 30- to 50-foot-high rock cliff.Īt the summit, the soldiers were met with heavy artillery, mortar and machine-gun fire. ![]() An officer threatened to have him court-martialed and at one point even tried to have him discharged as “mentally unfit.”ĭoss’ refusal to carry a weapon so angered some in boot camp, he recalled, that one soldier vowed, “When we go into combat, Doss, I’m gonna shoot you myself.”Īs a medic in the Pacific, however, Doss quickly earned the respect of fellow soldiers in the 77th Infantry Division. ![]() “The other men hated him for not pulling KP on Saturday,” said Speer, adding that Doss was forced to make up for it during the week by doing extra KP and cleaning latrines.įellow soldiers threw shoes at Doss when he knelt beside his bunk and prayed. ![]() His religious convictions made him an immediate misfit in boot camp, where he was exempt from KP and other duties on Saturdays because his denomination’s Sabbath runs from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. “I didn’t want to be known as a draft dodger, but I sure didn’t know what I was getting into.” “I felt like it was an honor to serve God and country,” he told the Richmond Times Dispatch in 1998. Offered a deferment from military service to continue his work, he turned it down and registered for the draft as a conscientious objector.ĭoss, however, preferred to be considered a “conscientious cooperator,” telling the draft board that, although he was not willing to kill, he was more than willing to serve. “He was not proud of himself for what he had done he was proud that God was able to use him to save so many lives.”Ī native of Lynchburg, Va., Doss was working in a Newport News, Va., shipyard when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. “Desmond was a very humble man,” Pastor Les Speer, a longtime friend, told The Times.
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