Edition #66 | He Carried No Weapon | Memorial Day, May 25, 2026

On Memorial Day we honor those who gave their lives in service to something larger than themselves. There is another kind of courage worth remembering,
the courage to serve with deep conviction, even when the system around you says your beliefs make you less valuable.

This is the story of a young man who walked into one of the most brutal battles of World War II carrying nothing but a medic bag and an unshakable set of principles.

Let's get into it.

In 1942, Desmond Doss was drafted into the U.S. Army. As a Seventh-day Adventist, he took the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" literally. He refused to carry a weapon or even train with one during basic training.

His fellow soldiers mocked him. Officers tried to get him discharged. He was labeled a coward and a liability. Doss refused to quit. He believed he could serve his country without violating his conscience.

In April 1945, his unit was ordered to take a jagged 400-foot cliff on Okinawa known as Hacksaw Ridge. The Japanese were heavily dug in. On the first day, American forces suffered devastating losses and were pushed back. Doss stayed behind.

Over the next several days, while under constant enemy fire, Doss single-handedly rescued an estimated 75 wounded soldiers. He carried them one by one to the edge of the escarpment, lowered them down with a rope, and returned for more. He was wounded multiple times but kept going back into the fight.

When the battle ended, many of the same men who had once ridiculed him carried him off the ridge on a stretcher. Years later, President Truman presented him with the Medal of Honor, the first conscientious objector in American history to receive it.

Desmond Doss entered one of the most violent battles of the war with empty hands and came out having saved more lives than most armed soldiers ever did.

Doss did not just refuse to kill. He repeatedly risked his own life to preserve the lives of others. The verse captures the heart of what he lived out on that ridge. His convictions did not make him less courageous. They shaped the kind of courage he offered.

Albert Schweitzer was a theologian, philosopher, and physician who developed the ethical principle he called "Reverence for Life." He believed the highest form of morality was deep respect for the value of every living being. During World War I, he was imprisoned as an enemy alien even while running a hospital in Africa.

Schweitzer and Doss came from very different worlds, but they reached the same conclusion: true service sometimes requires you to stand apart from the crowd, even when doing so looks like weakness to everyone around you. Doss refused to compromise his reverence for life, yet he still gave more on the battlefield than most men who carried rifles.

This week, talk with the young person in your life about what they would be willing to stand for, even if it made them unpopular or misunderstood.

Not in theory. In real life.

Ask them:

Then help them identify one area where they are currently tempted to compromise just to fit in or avoid conflict.

Desmond Doss did not become a hero by going along with what everyone else was doing. He became one by staying true to his convictions while still serving the people beside him.

That is the kind of strength worth passing on.