There are some misguided and misinformed people who believe a very tasteful and proper Medal of Honor Heritage Memorial Center would detract from the original purpose of our Coolidge Park. There are also some naïve wanderers who claim the 4,000-square-foot building will detract from a 2 ½ acre plot of land, as though there aren’t hundreds of thousands of larger homes that look magnificent on quite smaller tracts.
It should happen. It ought to happen. And if I am any soothsayer, I can tell you the cheers and cries we could barely hear from Venice, Italy, Sunday night all but assure the people of Chattanooga and Hamilton County will vote any politician immediately out of office who opposes the project at the very land that honors our beloved Medal of Honor winner, Charles Coolidge.
The 73rd Venice Film Festival opened Sunday and the blockbuster “Hacksaw Ridge” debuted to rave reviews. Directed by Mel Gibson, whose last winner was “Brave Heart,” the story is that of Desmond Doss, the first conscientious objector to ever receive the most coveted award given by our nation, The Medal of Honor.
Private First Class Doss, who lived on Lookout Mountain as it stretches into Alabama, is buried in Chattanooga’s National Cemetery and steadfastly refused to fire a weapon in the war due to his deep religious convictions. He was horribly bullied and hazed from the moment he enlisted, but he had an urgent want to be part of the United States war effort.
MOVIE LINE: “I can’t stay here while all of them go fight for me.”
And so it was on Hacksaw Ridge in the Battle of Okinawa where he ventured unarmed into live enemy fire to carry 75 wounded American soldiers – one by one – to safety. Oh, the movie will rip your heart out – the way our nation treated this man – but the critics are already calling Gibson’s movie “a masterpiece” and, while indeed you will cry, you are going to adore the film.
MOVIE LINE: “With the world so set on tearing itself apart, it don’t seem like a bad thing to me if I try to put a little of it back together.”
After you see it – it will be released nationwide in the United States on Nov. 4 – I double-dare you to object to the Medal of Honor Heritage Center because right now Desmond Doss’ medal is in some closet of a display at Northgate Mall. The movie will prove Desmond Doss deserves far better than any fool who bites for the anti-military stance yet breathes the air of freedom that enables them to totally embarrass themselves.
MOVIE LINE: “While everybody else is trying to take lives, I’ll be trying to save them. That’s gonna’ be my way to serve.”
Mr. Doss was wounded three times, and the tuberculosis he contacted as a medic in the war cost him a lung. It took five years for him to recover from what he went through for his country and its people. Much like Mr. Coolidge, I remember him as kind and gentle and so unassuming you quickly realized what a true giant the slight and somewhat shy hero really was. He died in 2006 of lung disease.
MOVIE LINE: “Please, Lord … help me get one more … help me get one more …”
The actor Andrew Garfield is cast as Mr. Doss while Vince Vaughn plays Sgt. Howell, the character who was assigned to train the soldiers and treated Doss so horribly. The film was shot in New South Wales, starting on Sept. 21 last year, and Australian officials believe that $26 million was paid in production costs.
So just you wait … when Chattanooga sees Mel Gibson’s newest hit, there is no way the people in this patriotic town will sit still until architect Pat Neuhoff’s magnificent design of the Charles H. Coolidge Medal of Honor Heritage Center becomes one of Chattanooga’s most worthy shrines.
The first six Medals of Honor were presented by President Lincoln to members of Andrew Raiders, after eight Union soldiers who were “hanged until dead” and who are buried at the National Cemetery. The heroics of World War I hero Alvin York will also be prominently displayed but “Hacksaw Ridge” will stay in your mind’s eye like no other movie because Mr. Doss is “one of us.”
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DESMOND DOSS: MEDAL OF HONOR CITATION
(As read by President Harry Truman)
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 machine gun 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 all 75 casualties one-by-one 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 May 2, 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 two days later he treated four men who had been cut down while assaulting a strongly defended cave, advancing through a shower of grenades to within eight yards of enemy forces in a cave's mouth, where he dressed his comrades' wounds before making four separate trips under fire to evacuate them to safety.
On May 5, 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 May 21, 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 five 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, by a sniper bullet while being carried off the field by a comrade, this time suffering a compound fracture of one 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. Desmond 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.
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