Part two in a series on persistence.
His position on the edge of the cliff was completely exposed to enemy fire. His rope-burned hands were bleeding now, but he couldn’t let go. The weight on the line felt heavier with each passing moment, threatening to pull him right over the edge of the cliff, still he held tight. Lowering his burden little by little.
Finally, the rope went slack as the weight of his fellow soldier was taken by the ground three-hundred and some feet below. Doss knelt.
With the sound of gunshots ringing in the distance, his head resting on blood-saturated ground, he prayed. “Please, Lord, help me get one more!”
Crouched low and often crawling, Doss made his way across the darkened battlefield once again. Bodies littered the ground and he stopped at each one – checking for, hoping for, life.
The Persistent Hero
Desmond Doss.
A young man from Virginia, who enlisted to serve in World War 2.
Doss was actually drafted but, he was given the opportunity to be exempted from service, due to his position at a shipyard, and turned it down. He believed that he needed to fight for his country.
A Seventh Day Adventist, he also believed that it was wrong to kill.
Holding strictly to the fifth commandment, Doss refused to use or even touch a rifle. A conviction that got him into no end of trouble during his military training and eventually got him classified as a Conscientious Objector. Doss didn’t think this title was accurate, as he believed the war was justified but that killing was nevertheless wrong. He considered himself more accurately described as a “Conscientious Cooperator.”
Doss was deployed as an unarmed medic with the 77 division. Which was sent first to Guam, then to Leyte in the Philippines, and finally joined an allied invasion of Okinawa – an island three hundred and forty miles south of Japan.
It was for his role in this final conflict that Doss was later awarded the Medal of Honour by President Truman himself. The famous battle against the Japanese was fought at the top of the Maeda Escarpment.
The soldiers dubbed it “Hacksaw Ridge” due to the terrible carnage that took place there. The American troops ascended the three-hundred-and-fifty-foot cliff only to be faced with a nearly impenetrable battlefield. A piece of land that was already strewn with the dead bodies of hundreds of other American soldiers and heavily entrenched with enemies.
“The Japanese had been there for years, they had that mountain honeycombed and camouflaged, it looked like natural terrain. That’s what we had to face.”
One hundred and fifty-five men of the 77 division scaled the Maeda Escarpment, of which Doss was one. Only fifty-five of those were able to climb back down when the troop was ordered to retreat.
Though he wasn’t injured, Desmond Doss ignored the order and remained on the battlefield with the numerous casualties.
“I had these men up there and I shouldn’t leave ’em, they were my buddies, some of the men had families, and they trust me. I didn’t feel like I should value my life above my buddy’s, so I decided to stay with them and take care of as many of them as I could. I didn’t know how I was gonna do it.”
As night fell, Doss began to rescue the injured. With nothing but a rope and his own strength, he lowered one soldier at a time down the three-hundred-and-fifty-foot cliff. He worked all night, often under enemy fire.
A Japanese soldier later recalled having Doss in his sights multiple times, but every time he went to fire on the exposed medic his gun jammed.
Doss attributed his survival and the success of his rescue mission to God, saying:
“When you have explosions and bursts so close you can practically feel it, and you’re not wounded. When I should have been killed a number of times. I know who I owe my life to as well as my men. That’s why I like to tell this story to the glory of God, because I know from the human standpoint, I should not be here.”
After each individual rescue, Desmond paused to pray that God would help him save another.
“I just kept prayin’, ‘Lord, please help me get more and more, one more, until there was none left, and I’m the last one down.'”
That night on Hacksaw Ridge, Doss saved the lives of approximately seventy-five men!
A Shared Objective
The story of Desmond Doss didn’t stop there. He continued to demonstrate courage, selflessness, and persistence in the battles of Okinawa. He was badly injured in service. Later he came home to a proud family and a proud country.
In the essence of time, I’ll have to leave those stories for you to look up yourself but, before we finish, let me ask you this:
Do you go after men like Desmond Doss did?
Desmond Doss isn’t just an example of persistence. He persistently sought to rescue men. An objective that you and I, as Christians, are supposed to share.
In Part one of this series, we looked at what persistence is and found that true persistence requires motivation. In other words, to persist you need a reason to persist.
Private Doss had a reason. He was determined to save the lives of as many men as he could.
Though death surrounded him. Though he was a prime target for the enemy. Though the task demanded every ounce of his physical, mental, and emotional strength, he persisted.
Doss knew he was in a battle but he also knew what he was fighting for.
We are in a battle too, but we often forget that fact. We also have been charged with the mission of saving lives, but we don’t seem to take it as seriously as Private Doss did. We seem to be missing both the motivation and the persistence!
The gospel is our primary tool for saving lives, are we eager to use it?
We don’t like to witness. We don’t like to look silly or to endanger our reputations. So instead of refusing to retreat like Private Doss, instead of praying God would give us the strength to go on, we’re standing at the cliff’s edge wishing we could climb down.
Christians, we are the medics in this war, the rescue agents, but we aren’t doing our job!
We may share the gospel – once in a while and generally only if opportunity is placed right in our laps. To us the good news is an obligation, something we are required to speak of out of Christian duty.
We don’t know what it is to persistently seek after men’s souls. To earnestly pray that the Lord would give us just one more. Rather we are all too ready to check share the gospel off of our spiritual to do list.
Desmond Doss wasn’t like us.
He stayed on Hacksaw Ridge by choice while the rest of his troop descended to safety. He willingly crawled through a bloody, body-strewn field again and again. Because he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving someone behind. He loved his fellow soldiers and spent every ounce of his strength on their behalf.
It wasn’t a pleasurable task – the rope cut into his hands, his whole body was covered in dirt and other men’s blood, and while he lay on that cliff’s edge lowering men to safety his own life was placed in danger. But Doss wasn’t content to do anything less than rescue every man that was in his power to save.
Why are we content with less than that?
Jesus said He alone is the means of salvation. Do we believe that? Do we really believe that those who do not have faith in Christ are going to Hell?
I’ll admit that it’s not a nice fact to think about but it is an important one to remember. Because if we forget that we are trying to save lives, we lose our motivation to persist.
Let’s learn some persistence and not give up on the men and women who are stranded on our own Hacksaw Ridge!
In Christ
Quiana
*All quotes by Desmond Doss