Avalon Chronicles #72: "Desmond Doss-The Rest of the Story"

Avalon Chronicles #72: "Desmond Doss-The Rest of the Story"

by Allen B. Clark                 allenbclark@aol.com
www.combatfaith.com         www.combatfaith.blogspot.com

     In the course of a conversation at a recent luncheon with some of my veteran friends, the discussion related to the movie Hacksaw Ridge, about which I have written a previous message. One of my friends in 2002 had been the deputy commander of Army troops on Okinawa and found out the island Marines were hosting Desmond Doss, the Medal of Honor Recipient and real live hero of the movie. Been quizzical about how that occurred since Doss was an Army veteran, he inquired and I guess it related to the inordinately efficient Marine public relations influence that they were selected to host Doss. Not withstanding that sponsorship, he became involved with the visit.
     Public Broadcasting System was filming a documentary on the action of Doss wherein he received his Medal of Honor for his heroism at the battle in 1945. Doss, his company commander from the battle, and three company mates and their spouses were flown to Okinawa. PBS also found three Japanese veterans who lived on the island, amazingly enough one of whom had been in the same battle in which Desmond Doss moved across the body-strewn battlefield to treat the American wounded soldiers and get them over to a rope system to lower them down the cliff to medical care.
     The Japanese soldier who had been in the battle, met Doss and said he knew who he was from the battle! The Japanese soldier said he was a sniper and had picked off and killed several American wounded and related he had had Doss in his sights THREE times to shoot him, but his rifle JAMMED each time!
      Doss said very simply, "It was not my time." There was definitely a supernatural intervention by God on behalf of Doss, who continued tirelessly with what could be defined only as a supernaturally gifted physical and emotional strength to go after "One More" brother each time he returned to the battlefield on the ridge top.
     If we truly believe the salvation message for eternity after bodily death that is offered by faith in Jesus, we must accept that, when it is our time, it is our time. I have faced a few perils on a battlefield and in medical issues, but believe I will live until I have served my mission on earth just as Doss lived with a much more important mission with his fellow combatants that night, My mission today, for which I constantly request the blessings of our Lord, is to have those "divine encounters" that place me in the paths of my younger veterans today so that I can be a "laborer of the harvest" for their soulful and spiritual healing just as Doss was put in the paths of his comrades for bodily healing.