Skeptics Dismiss Mel Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge as Overblown

Desmond atop Hacksaw Ridge

I watched Hacksaw Ridge again this afternoon and was blown away by the miracle of what Desmond Doss did that day. The man had angels at his shoulder. The picture to the left is of Desmond standing atop Hacksaw Ridge at the spot where he lowered 75 to 100 wounded men down off the escarpment. When they strung up the cargo net they used for climbing the cliff, Doss was one of three men who offered to test it by climbing up first. During the time alone at the top of the cliff that he lowered the wounded from with his double bowline knot that he learned in the Adventist Pathfinder club as a kid, Doss often stood erect as he worked while snipers tried to shoot him.

After the war, Doss toured Japan and after one speech a Japanese man approached him and told Doss he'd been a sniper on Hacksaw that day. "I tried to shoot you," he told Doss, "But my gun refused to fire. It had never done that before or after." Angels certainly stood at Desmond's shoulder that day.

As I was reading some YouTube reviews of the movie today, it was disheartening to see the way this movie was dismissed by know-it-all young people who kept calling the movie "unrealistic", overblown,  and exaggerated. They knowing claimed that Mel Gibson embellished Doss's heroism the way he did William Wallace's in Braveheart. It was hard to tell by some of the caustic comments whether they held a grudge against Gibson or against a religious man of principle like Doss being held up as a hero.

The truth is Gibson left out a lot of stuff Doss did that day because he thought no one would believe it. At the end where Doss kicked a hand grenade and was wounded was real. After the closing sequence of the movie where he was being lowered on a stretcher, a lot more happened that Gibson chose not to show because nobody would have believed it. 

On the way to the field hospital, Doss saw a wounded man he believed in more danger than he was and rolled off the litter and told the stretcher bearers to take the other guy. On the way to the hospital, Doss was wounded by sniper fire, dressed his own wound and crawled the rest of the way to the field hospital on his own. 

There are not many people who believe in that level of miracle anymore, nor do they believe a principled religious man could do anything that heroic without opening fire with a machine gun leaving a pile of bodies behind. The part of the movie that got to me was Doss carrying out another wounded man, praying out loud, "God help me get just one more!" 

Doss rescued 50 by his count, 100 by the count of the men at the bottom of the cliff and the compromise count of the medal of honor citation was 75. And you have to remember Doss had already won medals in two island campaigns and talked the medics corps into letting him go into battle with his unit instead of staying back at the field hospital. God only knows how many lives he saved.

It's sad that our young people feel such a powerful need to disparage acts of courage, faithfulness, unselfish love and honor. In our sad little world heroism is too often about acts of violence. Love is too often entirely about sex. Acts of mercy have ulterior motives and nothing decent gets done without someone asking, "What's in it for me?"

If you watch Hacksaw Ridge again, remember this. The man depicted in the film did more than what was shown in those couple of days on Okinawa and you're only being shown a part of the story and what you do see is the truth about this decent and brave man.

There are heroes out there folk that are real and don't wear capes and tights.

© 2021 by Tom King