He turned it down. His reasons were his own, but they were consistent with the character that would define his military service: he did not believe that staying home while other men went to fight was the right thing for him to do. He wanted to serve his country. He simply wanted to do it without carrying a rifle.
He was inducted into the Army on April 1, 1942, at Camp Lee, Virginia. His Army serial number was 33158036. He trained with the reactivated 77th Infantry Division at Fort Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina. He went in expecting, or at least hoping, that the Army would allow him to serve as a combat medic — a role that would put him in the fight without requiring him to kill. What he got instead was a sustained attempt by the institution to make him either pick up a rifle or go home.
## The Training Problem
The Army of World War II was not designed to accommodate the position Doss took. Every soldier was expected to qualify with a rifle. Every soldier was expected to be available for duty seven days a week. Doss would not qualify with a rifle on religious grounds, and he would not work on Saturday on religious grounds. The combination made him, from the perspective of the military system he had just entered, a very large administrative problem.
The harassment that followed was both institutional and personal. Fellow soldiers at Fort Jackson called him “Holy Joe” and “Holy Jesus.” They threw shoes at him while he knelt beside his bunk to pray. Some threatened him directly. One soldier told him he would shoot him when they got into combat — that Doss would not survive the war at the hands of the enemy but at the hands of his own unit. Doss did not fight back. He continued to pray, continued to read his Bible, and continued to refuse the rifle.