One More, Lord

On May 5, 1945, American soldiers scrambled to retreat down the four-hundred-foot Maeda Escarpment on Okinawa as Japanese forces overwhelmed their position. Dozens of wounded men lay bleeding on the ridge top with no way down. But Private First Class Desmond Doss, a combat medic with the 77th Infantry Division's 307th Infantry Regiment, refused to leave. A Seventh-day Adventist who had enlisted as a conscientious objector, Doss had never carried a rifle — not in training, not in combat. His fellow soldiers had once mocked him for it. Now he was their only hope.

For twelve hours, under constant gunfire, Doss dragged wounded men to the cliff's edge, tied them into a rope litter, and lowered them one by one to safety. Each time he reached another broken body, he prayed the same five words: "Lord, please let me get one more." By the time darkness fell, he had single-handedly rescued seventy-five men. President Harry Truman later awarded him the Medal of Honor — the first ever given to a conscientious objector.

Paul wrote in Romans 12:21, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." Doss proved that conviction is not weakness disguised as principle — it is strength that refuses to abandon its principles even when the cost is staggering. The world insists you must fight fire with fire. The Gospel insists there is a stronger way. Doss went up that ridge armed only with his faith and a medic's kit, and he conquered what bullets alone could not.