He averaged approximately one rescue per ten minutes over the course of the approximately five-hour sequence, according to accounts that have tried to estimate the timeline. This pace would require both physical endurance and a degree of systematic efficiency — moving from one man to the next without the kind of exhausted hesitation that five hours of sustained work under stress would normally produce.
The tree stump at the cliff’s edge served as a point around which he could wrap the rope and control the descent. The mechanics were improvised; the knowledge behind them was not.
## The Unit’s Response
Something happened to the relationship between Desmond Doss and his unit between the time his fellow soldiers were calling him “Holy Joe” and throwing shoes at him at Fort Jackson, and the time they were carefully searching the Maeda Escarpment for his lost Bible.
The specific turning point is not cleanly documented, but the pattern across multiple accounts is consistent: Doss earned the respect of the men around him by being reliably present when they needed a medic. On Guam, on Leyte, and on Okinawa, when a soldier was hit and the cry for a medic went up, Doss came. He came under mortar fire. He came across open ground. He came when it was dangerous to move in any direction.
The men who had mocked his faith and his vegetarianism came, over two years of Pacific service, to regard him differently. Captain Glover, who had initially pushed for Doss’s discharge, later credited him with having saved his life. Multiple accounts note that before the assault on the Maeda Escarpment on April 29, when Doss asked the men of Company B to pray together before the attack, they prayed with him.