The knot he used — learned in West Virginia before the war — allowed him to manage the rope against the tree stump anchor in a way that controlled the rate of descent. Without control of the descent rate, the improvised lowering system would not have worked; a patient dropping too fast or swinging against the cliff face would have sustained additional injuries and potentially pulled the system apart. The knot was not incidental; it was the technical detail that made the rest possible.
Medical treatment under fire also required Doss to move wounded men to positions where he could work on them without being immediately shot. The accounts of his actions at the Japanese cave on approximately May 4, where he treated four men within eight yards of an active enemy position, describe him making four separate trips into a position exposed to direct fire from the cave. The phrase that describes this in battle accounts — ‘under fire’ — is worth unpacking: it means there were people actively trying to kill him while he worked.
## The 307th Infantry and the 77th Division
Desmond Doss served with a specific unit within a specific division, and the character of that unit shaped his experience of the war.
The 77th Infantry Division was originally a New York National Guard formation that had served in World War I. It was reactivated in 1942 as a regular Army division for World War II, drawing primarily on draftees rather than National Guard volunteers. The unit’s nickname — the Statue of Liberty Division — came from the torch-and-statue patch its soldiers wore.