![]() ![]() Instead, it focuses on the upbringing that shaped Doss’ convictions and the gruesome battle that compelled him to put them in action. The number of lives Doss risked his own to save is under debate-he estimated it at 50, the military insisted it was closer to 100, so they settled on 75-but Gibson’s movie doesn’t concern itself with those details. (He died at 87 in 2006.) Screenwriter Robert Schenkkan, who wrote the first draft (co-writers include Randall Wallace and Andrew Knight), based the story on military records and footage of interviews with Doss, though finding ample material proved challenging because his subject’s modesty made him averse to the limelight. He died in 2006.The words that emerge from Garfield’s mouth are, in fact, the same words the real Doss uttered on the Japanese island more than 70 years ago-and, indeed, much of the plot is faithfully drawn from Doss’ life. President Harry Truman awarded Doss the Medal of Honor in 1945. "And then to have him end up saving my life was the irony of the whole thing." "He was one of the bravest persons alive," Glover says in the documentary. The same soldiers who had shamed him now praised him. It's the only explanation I can give."ĭoss saved 75 men - including his captain, Jack Glover - over a 12-hour period. Who was also at Hacksaw Ridge, says in the documentary, "It's as if God had his hand on shoulder. I just kept praying, 'Lord, please help me get one more.' " In Benedict's documentary, Doss says: "I was praying the whole time. He dragged severely injured men to the edge of the ridge, tied a rope around their bodies and lowered them down to other medics below. Under a barrage of gunfire and explosions, Doss crawled on the ground from wounded soldier to wounded soldier. ".The Japanese called it 'the rain of steel' because there was so much iron flying around." ![]() "It was full of caves and holes and the Japanese were dug in underground," says Mel Gibson, who re-created the battle in And at Okinawa in the spring of 1945, Doss' company faced a grueling task: Climb a steep, jagged cliff - sometimes called Hacksaw Ridge - to a plateau where thousands of heavily armed Japanese soldiers were waiting for them. A 1940 law allowed conscientious objectors to serve the war effort in "noncombatant" positions, so Doss went with his company as a medic to the Pacific theater. In the documentary, Glover says Doss told him, " 'Don't ever doubt my courage because I will be right by your side saving life while you take life.' " Glover's response: " 'You're not going to be by my damn side if you don't have a gun.' "Ĭourtesy of the Desmond Doss Council During the battle, Doss (seen here at the top of Hacksaw Ridge) dragged severely injured men to the edge of the ridge and lowered them down to other medics below.īut hard as they tried, the Army couldn't force Doss to use a weapon. Jack Glover, tried to get him transferred. "They just saw him as a slacker," the filmmaker says, "someone who shouldn't have been allowed in the Army, and somebody who was their weakest link in the chain."ĭoss' commanding officer, Capt. They considered him a pest, questioned his sincerity and threw shoes at him while he prayed. He interviewed several World War II veterans who were in Doss' battalion. "It started out as harassment and then it became abusive," Benedict says. The Army made Doss' life hell during training. "He just didn't fit into the Army's model of what a good soldier would be," says Terry Benedict, who made a documentary about Doss called He enlisted in the Army as a combat medic because he believed in the cause, but had vowed not to kill. Now, he's the subject of a new film directed by Mel Gibson calledĪ quiet, skinny kid from Lynchburg, Va., Doss was a Seventh-day Adventist who wouldn't touch a weapon or work on the Sabbath. Thousands of American and Japanese soldiers were killed, and the fact that Doss survived the battleĪnd saved so many lives has confounded and awed those who know his story. The battle at Hacksaw Ridge, on the island of Okinawa, was a close combat fight with heavy weaponry. Desmond Doss is credited with saving 75 soldiers during one of the bloodiest battles of World War II in the Pacific - and he did it without ever carrying a weapon. ![]()
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