On the eve of Veteran’s Day, I sat beside my husband in our local movie theater, the movie having just ended and the transition from movie world to real world imminent. In those remaining moments before the lights came on, I heard the beginning of applause from the rows behind me. A few hands clapping and then many. Instinctively, I clapped and kept on clapping–vigorously, loudly as if the final curtain of La Boheme had just fallen and this was my first opera–until my husband grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet to exit the theater.
We had just seen Mel Gibson’s latest film, Hacksaw Ridge, a profile of Private Desmond Doss’s heroic work in saving roughly 75 wounded soldiers during the allied invasion of Okinawa. Drafted into the army in April 1942, Doss, a ship joiner in the shipyard in Newport News, Virginia, refused the option of a deferment. Like many other young men at this time, he wanted to serve his country. Unlike most, however, Doss chose not to bear arms during his service. A Seventh Day Adventist, he held strong religious and personal convictions about using weapons and taking lives, even in battle. He explained:
My dad bought this Ten Commandments and Lord’s Prayer illustrated on a nice frame, and I had looked at that picture of the Sixth Commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ There’s a picture that had Cain and he killed his brother Abel, and I wonder how in the world could a brother do such a thing? I’ve pictured Christ for savin’ life, I wanna be like Christ go savin’ life instead of takin’ life and that’s the reason I take up medicine.
Because of his convictions, he chose to enter the army medical corps. In this way, he could serve and save, rather than take lives. The army tried to send Doss to a conscientious objectors’ camp, but he protested, stating that he believed the war was just but that killing was wrong. He identified himself as a “conscientious cooperator”–not “objector”–and explained that he genuinely wanted to cooperate with the army in his service as a medic. In the end, the army did classify him as a “conscientious objector,” a label that Doss felt did not fairly represent him.
His fellow soldiers misunderstood him, calling him names like “Holy Joe” and “Holy Jesus.” They mocked his prayers and his compulsion to carry a Bible in his pocket. In the Conscientious Objector Documentary, Doss recalls what one soldier threatened: “I swear to God Doss, you go into combat, I gonna shoot you.”
And yet, not only did none of Doss’s fellow soldiers shoot him in combat, they came to regard his convictions and his other-worldly courage as a type of sincere and unusual heroism. The battle at the Maeda Escarpment, or Hacksaw Ridge, in April 1945 was a battle for such a hero. “Ridge” sounds like such an innocuous word. In reality, the “ridge” was a 400 cliff at the top of which were Japanese machine gun nests and deadly booby traps. Hacksaw Ridge was the key to taking Okinawa and, by anyone’s assessment, an impossible mission. Doss’s battalion was charged with this mission.
Being a medic put a target on Doss’s back, for medics were particularly targeted by the Japanese soldiers. This, coupled with the fact that he did not carry a weapon, made Doss a literal sitting duck. Still, he refused to leave injured and dying soldiers behind, and each time he saved a life, he prayed aloud, “Lord, please help me get one more.” Time after time, life after life, Doss worked miracles as he maneuvered through Japanese booby traps, incoming gun and artillery fire, charging enemy soldiers who emerged from a network of tunnels and from behind piles of dead bodies. The medic without a gun did not take a single life and, after hours of applying tourniquets, administering morphine, holding bloodied hands and praying for desperate souls, he ultimately saved an estimated 75 lives.
Doss’s only son, Desmond Jr. told People Magazine that countless Hollywood agents and screen writers visited their home, soliciting permission to use his father’s story in feature films. Although Desmond Sr. was again willing to cooperate, his son said that “The reason he declined is that none of them adhered to his one requirement: that it be accurate.” And so he held to his convictions until Mel Gibson agreed to “his one requirement.” Although his father did not live to see Hacksaw Ridge, his son revealed that it was “remarkable, the level of accuracy in adhering to the principal of the story in this movie.”
And so I sat in the darkened theater clapping for Desmond Doss, for all that he was and all that he did. Every muscle in my body ached for release, for I had been curled and pressed into my theater seat, one compact ball of tension. A few times, my arms burst from the ball to cover my face, but for a good portion of the movie, I hugged my knees to my chest. I made myself as small as I could and barely breathed.
It has been weeks now since I viewed this movie, but I cannot stop thinking about Desmond Doss, the “conscientious cooperator.” On my grown-up Christmas list, I’m making a big plea for more conscientious cooperators. Truthfully, our world could use them. Imagine a world peopled with individuals who, like Doss, hold fast to their convictions but also commit themselves and their lives to working within the system, conscientiously cooperating rather than objecting. Imagine these people from all walks of life, all political, social, and religious persuasions, all ages and races who submit to the prevailing legal, social, political, educational, and governmental systems even when they sincerely find these systems broken or simply wrong. Imagine them cooperating within these systems to the extent that they can (without abandoning their principles) to elicit real change. And finally, imagine these folks, unarmed, their backs and hearts bent to this task, pledging daily, “Lord, please help me get one more.”
In a world in which too many are armed with wicked words and ways, we can all benefit from a hefty dose of conscientious cooperation. Cliched as it sounds, it does start with me. Before I look around for evidence of more Desmond Dosses to grace our world, I need to look to my own heart and head. Honestly, too often I find myself wallowing in murky pools of self-pity and futility. I am one ordinary midwestern woman, now retired. What can I really do? In the whole scheme of things, my presence and efforts seem puny, at best, and utterly futile, at worst. And then the voice of Desmond Doss chastens me: “Lord, help me get one more.” One became two, two became three, and then there were 75 living, breathing men who owed their lives to their medic.
Even a retired grandmother in rural Iowa can conscientiously cooperate within the systems around me to pull a Desmond Doss. I can reach one, help one, perhaps even save one. Most certainly if I can, anyone can. As we lament the current state our of country, our communities, and perhaps our lives, we can throw down whatever arms we have been using (or perhaps, dreaming of using) and, armed with conviction and cooperation, we can get to work. I’m pretty confident that Desmond Doss would expect no less.
