Desmond Doss: The Conscientious Objector Of Hacksaw Ridge
Wikimedia CommonsDesmond Doss.
Desmond Doss died in 2006 and never got to see his extraordinary feats of faith and bravery depicted on the silver screen.
The life of the religious veteran who walked into the bloodiest battle of the Pacific Theater with only his devotion to the Seventh Day Adventist church and no weapon was adapted by Mel Gibson and veteran producer Bill Mechanic in 2016 in the film Hacksaw Ridge.
According to People, the conscientious objector refused to carry a rifle and enlisted as a medic instead. The true tale was a natural fit for cinematic adaptation and received a standing ovation at its Venice premiere.
“[Mel Gibson and I] were very accurate with Desmond and what happened to him,” said Mechanic.
Nonetheless — as Gibson already understood from his previous work on Braveheart — remaining blindingly faithful to history isn’t always conducive to crafting a cinematic narrative.
Summit EntertainmentDirector Mel Gibson claimed he intentionally left certain true events out of the film because of how unbelievable they would be to audiences.
Mechanic admitted that the two “were not accurate on some of the details around it,” like the backstory of Doss’ father, for instance. “If you’re a slave to the complete facts, then you’re not making a movie that is compelling,” he argued.
According to filmmaker Terry Benedict, who made The Conscientious Objector about Doss in 2004, the medic’s peers mercilessly mocked him to “man up” and arm himself. This is accurately portrayed in Gibson’s film.
The battle of May 5, 1945, at the Okinawa Maeda Escarpment (which U.S. soldiers called “Hacksaw Ridge”), however, was not. The real-life battle was even more grueling than the movie depicted.
As the Japanese were known to torture their prisoners, Doss made sure to save even those who were terribly injured, to remove them from the top of the ridge. The documentary details Doss’ devout claim that God had spared his life that day.
This could sound preposterous were it not for the fact that even when Japanese soldiers had Doss entirely in their view, their guns jammed several times.
Doss saved countless lives in a matter of hours that day.
But some of the most impressive details of Doss’s service were left out. For instance, Doss was hit by a sniper and saw all the bones in his left arm shatter and yet he continued to crawl 300 yards to an aid station to seek help for those on the field.
Gibson intentionally excluded this from the film because he simply didn’t think audiences would believe it. As the film stands, one might think Gibson overdid it, but Okinawa survivors disagree.
“Oh yes, it was graphic,” said Joe Clapper, a 95-year-old Okinawa veteran in 2017. “But when you’ve been there, that’s what it’s like.”
Hacksaw Ridge only came to be because Doss’ only descendant, Desmond Jr., trusted Gibson to faithfully adhere to the truth.
“There was an endless stream of people coming through the door wanting to make a movie, write a book, etc.,” he said. “The reason he declined is that none of them adhered to his one requirement: that it be accurate.”
“And I find it remarkable,” Desmond Jr. concluded, “the level of accuracy in adhering to the principal of the story in this movie.”
