The institutional pressure was more formally dangerous. His commanding officer initiated paperwork for a Section 8 discharge — the military’s procedure for separating soldiers deemed mentally or emotionally unfit for service. A Section 8 carried a significant stigma; it implied that the person being discharged had some kind of psychological deficiency.
Doss attended the hearing and refused the discharge. He reportedly stated that he would be a poor Christian if he accepted a discharge that implied he was mentally unstable because of his religious beliefs. The section 8 attempt failed.
The harassment continued by other means. One officer, Captain Cunningham, forced a rifle into Doss’s hands during a training exercise. Doss let it fall. Another officer intervened and Cunningham backed down. Cunningham later denied Doss passes to visit his wife and refused him a two-week furlough to see his brother Harold before Harold’s ship deployed. Cunningham’s hostility was consistent and persistent.
Captain Solomon Statman threatened Doss with a court-martial over his Saturday church passes — the Sabbath observance that Doss insisted on maintaining throughout his training. The threat of court-martial was serious. It could have ended his military service with a criminal record.
The Army’s position was, on paper, that Doss needed to carry a rifle or leave. Doss’s position was that he would serve fully and capably as a medic, and that a medic’s job was to save lives, which he was prepared to do under any circumstances. The standoff continued through training.
His father, William Doss, contacted Carlyle B. Haynes, the chairman of the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s War Service Commission — the organization that had been negotiating with the military on behalf of Adventist servicemen. Haynes got Doss a three-day pass, which temporarily eased the immediate pressure. But the fundamental conflict between Doss’s faith and the Army’s expectations was not resolved by institutional intervention. It was eventually resolved by Doss himself making the case through his actions.