Doss: Conscientious Objector, Medic, Medal of Honor Winner

from the TIME Review by Eliza Berman:

"Doss, a Seventh-Day Adventist who refused to bear arms but enlisted as a medic in the U.S. army, is on the battlefield on Okinawa in the spring of 1945."

"Armed with nothing but a bible, he’s carrying his wounded comrades to safety, one by one, through enemy fire,
repeatedly beseeching God to “help me get one more.”

http://time.com/4539373/hacksaw-ridge-movie-true-story/


'He would spend more than five years after the war being treated for his wounds, losing a lung to tuberculosis. Because of his injuries, he was never able to work full-time, and he devoted the rest of his life to working with his church."

--

Thanks to ALL the veterans who sought to protect and save
those who were oppressed,
and especially the young men who wouldn't kill,
but who rescued
and saved as many of the suffering that they could.

The conscientious objector and medic Desmond Doss was one of these protectors.

He refused to kill, became a medic and rescued many wounded Americans, including 50-100 off a tall cliff.

And our hearts go out to the millions of young men who have been sent off
to wrong wars,
to unjust wars,
caught between bad politics
and moral questions.



In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

In Memory of My Father

My father died 2 years ago, 3 days after his 90th birthday.
So he did get to live a long, fairly positive life.

And during the last year--despite many dangerous and damaging illnesses--
my normally serious dad suddenly gained a funny sense of the absurd,
even throwing out a few puns like his son.

In memory of him, I am posting this true story he and my mother experienced.
I wrote down their narrative of an unusual experience
in 3 million-plus Orange County, California.

It's like nature brought back to my aged father his early experiences
on the edge of Orland in northern California
and then

growing up on a small farm in southeastern Nebraska
at the start of the Great Depression.

From my Father's point of view:


The Possibility of the Suburbs

Clearing out our rags and boxes
In the cluttered corner of our
Potted-plant patio on Edinger,
I jumped; something moved.

Eyeballing a dark, pudgy furness,
I exclamation-pointed
To my ‘utterly’ surprised mate.
Oh the possibilities...

A large possum mothering
Her 4 little infants scrunched
Under our old Persian rug
By the many green succulents.

My laughing wife handed me
Our long-poled ‘litter’ picker.
I snatched each scrawny brown tot
Up by the neck and delivered it

Into the aluminum trash dumpster
And then up-zooed their mother
By grabbing her long ratty tail.
Oh the possibilities...

We pulled a large board on the bin
And later drove our wild ones
Over to a drainage ditch where
Those runts climbed on their mother’s back

And disappeared into dense brush
In the crowded midst of 3 million
Humans twilight-zoned with another
Odd question for their creator:

How was it possible for us
Oldsters to hike countless wild trails
In wild Yellowstone Park last year
Oh the possibilities...

Through forests and rushing rivers
Yet never see one such critter?
This sidekick of them all,
With wily fellow travelers--

Oh the ‘possumbility’ of nature!


-Daniel Wilcox
First pub. in Abandoned Towers
in different form


In the Light-hearted memory of my father,

Daniel Wilcox