Honoring Those Who Do Not Fight

It’s Memorial Day, which I enjoy. I’m a veteran, and I enjoy watching the war movies and the various patriotic shows. I’m going to annoy one set of friends by saying simply that I am proud to have served and that I would still make the same choice if I had it to do over again.

At the same time, something occurred to me today. I have never, not once, seen conscious objectors honored in church. Even when I was still a Seventh-day Adventist, a church that has historically stood against killing in war, the people who were honored were the ones who served. That’s mildly surprising. While I am not a pacifist, I can certainly understand the arguments of those who are. More importantly, I believe it requires an act of courage for them to stand against the tide and follow their conscience rather than the will of the current “Caesar.”

Though I believe political protest is important, I’m not referring to those who object on political grounds, and refuse to fight because a specific war is wrong. I’m referring here to those who cannot in good conscience take another life even to defend their country, or often even to defend themselves. They simply don’t believe it is, or can be, right. So they say no. I’m also not referring to those who become conscientious objectors on the tarmac as their plane is about to leave for foreign parts. I realize a crisis can bring one’s thinking to fruition, and heading off to war may be a crisis. But there’s also the simple issue of taking Caesar’s money when one doesn’t have to risk one’s life, and then backing out when it becomes dangerous. Crisis can bring out cowardice as well, after all.

Nonetheless, whatever one’s circumstances or reasons, one’s conscience should be honored in church. And I think there are sufficient scriptural grounds for those who do take a position of Christian pacifism that we ought to honor their choice.

I have a personal reason for bringing this up. This was a more risky position to take in World War II than it is now. My father spent World War II planting trees in Canada because he refused, on grounds of conscience, to bear arms. The option offered to conscientious objectors was either service in the medical or dental corps, or the Alternative Service Camps. He was not accepted for the medical corps, and so he did alternative service. My mother tells how she would have Hutterite patients, and how often others would treat them with disdain. She knew, however, that boys from her own Seventh-day Adventist Church were serving in similar circumstances, and would try to treat them with kindness. Little did she know at the time that her future husband was, in fact, serving in that way. (My family spanned the spectrum on this. I have an uncle who was in the Royal Canadian Engineers and was one of the first to land in Normandy on D-Day.)

I also remember Medal of Honor recipient Desmond T. Doss,  a Seventh-day Adventist who served in the medical corps in World War II and refused to bear arms even in self-defense. I was able to meet with Mr. Doss twice when he was living quietly on Lookout Mountain. He was an extremely humble man, and very matter of fact about his accomplishments, as I’ve noticed real heroes frequently are. They were just doing what had to be done. But I think his story stands as refutation to any who claim that conscientious objectors are cowards. Besides facing the very real anger of peers and community as they take an unpopular opinion, many faced the same dangers as any soldier, and did so without any means of defense. It is one thing to face the enemy with your own weapon in hand, though the protection may be illusory. It’s another to do what Doss did, without even a sidearm.

Here’s his Medal of Honor citation:

Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Army, Medical Detachment, 307th Infantry, 77th Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Urasoe Mura, Okinawa, Ryukyu Islands, 29 April-21 May 1945. Entered service at: Lynchburg, Va. Birth: Lynchburg, Va. G.O. No.: 97, 1 November 1945. Citation: He was a company aid man when the 1st Battalion assaulted a jagged escarpment 400 feet high As our troops gained the summit, a heavy concentration of artillery, mortar and machinegun fire crashed into them, inflicting approximately 75 casualties and driving the others back. Pfc. Doss refused to seek cover and remained in the fire-swept area with the many stricken, carrying them 1 by 1 to the edge of the escarpment and there lowering them on a rope-supported litter down the face of a cliff to friendly hands. On 2 May, he exposed himself to heavy rifle and mortar fire in rescuing a wounded man 200 yards forward of the lines on the same escarpment; and 2 days later he treated 4 men who had been cut down while assaulting a strongly defended cave, advancing through a shower of grenades to within 8 yards of enemy forces in a cave’s mouth, where he dressed his comrades’ wounds before making 4 separate trips under fire to evacuate them to safety. On 5 May, he unhesitatingly braved enemy shelling and small arms fire to assist an artillery officer. He applied bandages, moved his patient to a spot that offered protection from small arms fire and, while artillery and mortar shells fell close by, painstakingly administered plasma. Later that day, when an American was severely wounded by fire from a cave, Pfc. Doss crawled to him where he had fallen 25 feet from the enemy position, rendered aid, and carried him 100 yards to safety while continually exposed to enemy fire. On 21 May, in a night attack on high ground near Shuri, he remained in exposed territory while the rest of his company took cover, fearlessly risking the chance that he would be mistaken for an infiltrating Japanese and giving aid to the injured until he was himself seriously wounded in the legs by the explosion of a grenade. Rather than call another aid man from cover, he cared for his own injuries and waited 5 hours before litter bearers reached him and started carrying him to cover. The trio was caught in an enemy tank attack and Pfc. Doss, seeing a more critically wounded man nearby, crawled off the litter; and directed the bearers to give their first attention to the other man. Awaiting the litter bearers’ return, he was again struck, this time suffering a compound fracture of 1 arm. With magnificent fortitude he bound a rifle stock to his shattered arm as a splint and then crawled 300 yards over rough terrain to the aid station. Through his outstanding bravery and unflinching determination in the face of desperately dangerous conditions Pfc. Doss saved the lives of many soldiers. His name became a symbol throughout the 77th Infantry Division for outstanding gallantry far above and beyond the call of duty.

I must tell a brief story from my first visit to Mr. Doss. One of my aunts (I honestly can’t remember which) was visiting our family in Wildwood, GA, and wanted to see this war hero. We contacted him and were invited up for a visit. She wanted to get a picture and so he came out to the porch where there was better light. Suddenly he said something. My aunt heard, “I’m going to go call my half.” She understood this as “better half” and assumed he was going to call his wife to be with him. She said, “Oh, I was hoping you’d do that. He came back with a comb in hand straightening out his hair. What he had said was “comb my hair.” After much laughter as my aunt explained her error, he went and called his “better half” and my aunt got her pictures.

My father did not face combat. Nonetheless, despite the Canadian government’s decision not to make him a medic, he later became a physician and served as a missionary, where he had opportunity to prove that even men with guns were not sufficient to deter him from what he believed was his duty. And even when those men with guns threatened his life and his family, he refused to bear arms.

I think of Desmond Doss and of my father when we’re feeling patriotic, and I honor their choices as well as my own. I believe they were both men of courage and integrity. They, and those like them, deserve to be honored.