One More

When Desmond Doss was drafted into the Army in 1942, he refused to carry a rifle.

He wasn’t afraid of the war; he could have stayed home with a deferment from his shipyard job, and he chose to go. He believed, from his faith and as deeply as a person can believe anything, that his job was to save lives, never to take one. So he trained as a medic, and he would not touch a weapon.

The Army had no idea what to do with him. His officers tried to have him thrown out. Other soldiers laughed at him, called him a coward, and worse. His commanders made his life miserable, hoping he’d quit. He wouldn’t quit, and he wouldn’t pick up the rifle. Like Daniel, he had made up his mind long before anyone tested it. And like Daniel, he stayed polite the whole time.

Understand what this cost him. Eli’s refusal to take the shortcut could cost him a ribbon. Daniel refused the food the king had assigned to him. Doss faced mockery during training. Before Okinawa, the men had come to trust him. Conviction almost always looks like foolishness first. The proof, if it comes at all, comes later.

In the spring of 1945, on the island of Okinawa, it came.

This lesson reaches the twentieth century, and a man whose conviction was tested harder than almost anyone’s: Desmond Doss, a US Army medic in World War II. Everything in this lesson is documented history, the ridicule, the cliff, the count, the medal.

A note before you read: Doss’s convictions about carrying a weapon were his own, and this lesson doesn’t ask your child to share them. That’s on purpose. And it’s worth saying out loud.