What the film gets right is more fundamental than what it changes: a man refused to carry a weapon, was subjected to institutional pressure and personal harassment, served as a combat medic in the Pacific, stayed at the top of a cliff in Okinawa when the rest of his unit descended, lowered a large number of wounded men to safety, and received the Medal of Honor from President Truman. These facts are accurate. The film builds a dramatic structure on top of them, and the structure requires some changes. Understanding where the structure and the record diverge is what allows the viewer to see both what the film accomplished and what the history actually contains.
## The Body in the Chair at Piedmont
By the time Desmond Doss died on March 23, 2006, in Piedmont, Alabama, at the age of 87, his body carried the accumulated record of what it had been through.
He had lost one lung to tuberculosis and the treatment that followed. He had lost five ribs. He carried shrapnel in his body from the grenade on May 21, 1945 — 17 pieces lodged in his legs. His left arm, fractured by the sniper’s bullet that same night and splinted with a rifle stock for the crawl to the aid station, had not regained full function. He had been completely deaf for twelve years, from the antibiotic overdose in 1976 until the cochlear implant in 1988.
He had farmed and built things with his hands at Rising Fawn, Georgia, for decades, doing what his arm and lungs allowed. He had organized a rescue service for Walker County. He had spent more consecutive hours underground than anyone else on the 1966 cavern rescue team. He had attended veteran gatherings and received visitors and, after the 2004 documentary, found himself the subject of renewed public interest. He had buried his wife of forty-nine years and married again and watched Frances, too, precede him.