His son, Desmond Thomas Doss Jr., had become an Army medic — the same role his father had filled, in a different war — and then a firefighter and paramedic, carrying forward the family commitment to emergency care in a civilian context. There is something precise about this lineage: the father who had refused to carry a weapon and insisted on saving lives had a son who built a career around saving lives in situations where, by civilian custom, the first responder carries no weapon either.
When Doss died, he was identified as the last surviving World War II combat medic to have received the Medal of Honor. The designation acknowledges both the specificity of the honor and the passage of time that had moved his cohort — the men who had served as combat medics in the Pacific and in Europe and in the Mediterranean — into history.
He was buried on April 3, 2006, at Chattanooga National Cemetery in Tennessee, Section P, Site 6399-A. Frances was buried there after her death on February 3, 2009. The cemetery is a federal facility that interred veterans from the Civil War forward; Section P is one of the sections that holds veterans of twentieth-century conflicts.
The grave is marked in the standard military fashion, which distinguishes it from nothing except its location. The man who refused to be standard in one specific and documented way — who would not carry a rifle, who would not be discharged for his faith, who would not leave the wounded men at the top of the escarpment — is recorded in the same format as every other veteran buried there.