On May 5, he treated an artillery officer who had been caught in a shellfire zone. He moved the officer to a covered position and administered plasma. Later on the same day, he crawled approximately 25 feet to reach a severely wounded American soldier who had fallen near an enemy position, treated him, and carried him approximately 100 yards to safety.
Each of these actions was its own discrete act of courage. Each happened on a different day, in a different location, with different tactical circumstances. The Medal of Honor citation’s accounting of them reflects the consistent pattern that the records document: Doss moved toward wounded men when others could not, and he brought them back.
## May 5: The Escarpment
The action on May 5, 1945, which would become the central episode of the Medal of Honor citation, had a specific tactical cause.
Japanese forces launched a major counterattack against the American positions on the Maeda Escarpment. The counterattack was sufficiently powerful to drive the American defenders off the top of the ridge. Of the approximately 155 soldiers of Company B who had been at the top, about 55 were able to retreat unaided. The remaining soldiers — roughly the difference — were wounded and could not move themselves.
The surviving able-bodied soldiers descended the cliff face. The wounded stayed at the top. Doss stayed with the wounded.
What followed was approximately five hours of sustained work by a single unarmed medic on an exposed clifftop that was in or near enemy hands. Doss improvised a system for lowering the wounded men down the cliff face using a rope and a litter. He used a tree stump at the cliff’s edge to manage the rope. He worked through the casualties one at a time — reaching each man, assessing his wounds, preparing him for the descent, lowering him down, and returning for the next.