Yes, Hacksaw Ridge is based on a true story, and the source material for the same has been derived from Terry Benedict's novel, The Conscientious Objector. Desmond Doss is a real-life hero and a combat medic during World War II who served his country without carrying a weapon.
Summary. Real-life hero Desmond Doss saved 75 soldiers in WWII without firing a shot, as depicted in the 2016 biographical war film Hacksaw Ridge, directed by Mel Gibson. Despite some minor changes to the story, Hacksaw Ridge was praised by Doss's son for its historical accuracy.
None of the trainees in Basic Training have the proper haircut. Tom Doss never asked his former commander to write a letter that stopped Desmond T. Doss from being court-martialed.
On May 4, 1945, Doss spent 12 hours single-handedly retrieving and lowering wounded soldiers from the battlefield to safety, down the edge of the cliff at Hacksaw Ridge. He tried to rescue both American and Japanese soldiers, though no Japanese soldiers survived.
The film switches to real photos and footage showing that Desmond was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Harry S. Truman for rescuing 75 soldiers at Hacksaw Ridge, as well as real-life footage of Desmond just before his death, recounting his experiences during the war.
The True Story of The Soldier Who Never Carried A Gun (Real Story of Hacksaw Ridge) | Our History
How many people did Desmond Doss actually save?
Doss saved 75 men — including his captain, Jack Glover — over a 12-hour period. The same soldiers who had shamed him now praised him. “He was one of the bravest persons alive,” Glover says in the documentary. “And then to have him end up saving my life was the irony of the whole thing.”
The Japanese liked to target corpsmen and Army medics, as well as doctors. They knew if they hurt or killed someone with medical training, they wouldn't be able to help other wounded Marines or soldiers.
This question has been answered in a documentary starring the actual Desmond Doss. The japanese didn't cut the rope because that was the only entrance to the battlefield.
On November 17, 1991, Dorothy died in a car accident that occurred while Desmond was driving her to the hospital for cancer treatment. Doss remarried on July 1, 1993, to Frances May Duman. After being hospitalized for difficulty breathing, Doss died on March 23, 2006, at his home in Piedmont, Alabama.
Desmond Doss is credited with saving 75 soldiers during one of the bloodiest battles of World War II in the Pacific — and he did it without ever carrying a weapon.
Using cargo nets, Doss' battalion was tasked with climbing a treacherous, 400-foot-high jagged cliff, nicknamed Hacksaw Ridge, to get to a plateau. Waiting for them were thousands of heavily armed Japanese soldiers entrenched in hidden caves and holes.
At around the halfway mark, the fighting comes, and the film explodes into a kaleidoscope of horrors. To put it bluntly, Hacksaw Ridge contains some of the most gruesome and brutally violent mass battle scenes I've ever seen on the big screen.
There was hand-to-hand combat on Hacksaw Ridge, but not the way it was depicted in the film. In the film, American and Japanese troops charge at each other with bayonets, knives, and the like as if they were on a medieval battlefield, and did not have accurate high powered rifles and machineguns at their disposal.
"[Mel Gibson and I] were very accurate with Desmond and what happened to him," veteran producer Bill Mechanic tells PEOPLE. But, he admits "we were not accurate on some of the details around it," like the exact backstory of Doss's father, or the chronological details of his marriage to his wife, Dorothy.
In the film, Desmond's marriage to Dorothy coincides with his being imprisoned ahead of Desmond's court marshal, causing him to miss his wedding. However, in real life, Desmond was not court marshaled and was married to Dorothy before leaving for active service.
About 2,500 Americans lost their lives and nearly twice as many Japanese troops. In the movie Hacksaw Ridge, they show Japanese soldiers killing wounded American soldiers.
Maeda Escarpment, a.k.a. “Hacksaw Ridge,” is now commonly recognized as part of Urasoe Castle Ruin. Urasoe City Office's website says that since the movie was released, many people have come to see the actual site where Pfc. Desmond Doss rescued 75 or more people May 5, 1945.
At the age of 87, Corporal Desmond Thomas Doss died on March 23, 2006, after being hospitalized with difficulty breathing. He is buried in the National Cemetery, Chattanooga, Tennessee.
“Hacksaw Ridge,” a box-office hit with more than $150 million worldwide, had already shown its strength with Screen Actors Guild, Producers Guild of America and Golden Globe nominations, and it was deemed a stealth contender from the moment it premiered to a standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival in the fall.
In doing so, the Allied forces had a foothold for the planned invasion of mainland Japan. However, the development of the atomic bomb led to the surrender of Japan, meaning the war ended only a few months after the successful capture of Hacksaw Ridge.
After Doss and his unit scale a ridge, they come upon a field full of body parts and corpses, some with intestines hanging out, others being eaten by rats. Then the bullets and explosives start flying. “You want to wreak havoc with a lot of blood to emphasize the courage of the character,” says Gibson.
From the collection of The National Liberation Museum, Netherlands, #094.117. If you watch a World War II movie like Band of Brothers, you'll see medics sprinkling a yellow powder on wounds—that's sulfa powder, or sulfanilimade. The ubiquitous bandage packs given to soldiers in the war years were coated in it.
The POWs suffered frequent beatings and mistreatment from their Japanese guards, food was the barest minimum, and disease and injuries went untreated. Although the POWs finally received Red Cross packages in January 1944, the Japanese had removed all the drugs and medical supplies.
