Desmond T. Doss Took the High Way
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Desmond T. Doss Took the High Way. Plenty of room for most TBs, beside a heavily traveled route, with a gravel pullout for parking off the road.
This is also a decent place for a TB Hotel. TBs want to travel. So no need to replace or swap, unless you feel like it.
TB Hotel/Motel definitions vary. This is not a "prison." Just a good place to drop or pick up. Also, the CO is likely to stop and discover, or pick up a TB to move along, if one sits a while.
I've been up and down this Expressway many times, and I eventually looked up the man this section is named after. Now I finally stopped at the pullout and placed this cache. The following are excerpts from an inspiring, unusual, true story.
Desmond T. Doss (February 7, 1919–March 23, 2006) was the first conscientious objector to receive the Medal of Honor and one of only three so honored. He was a Corporal (at the time of his Medal of Honor heroics) in the U.S. Army. Desmond Doss refused to kill, or carry a weapon into combat, because of his personal beliefs as a Seventh-day Adventist. He thus became a medic, and by serving in the Pacific theatre of World War II helped his country by saving the lives of his comrades, while also adhering to his religious convictions. His Medal of Honor was earned by the risks he took to save the lives of many comrades. He is the subject of the award-winning documentary, The Conscientious Objector.
(Above excerpts taken from Wikipedia, October 3, 2010)
Mr. Doss, a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, was guided all through his years by a framed poster of the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer that his father bought at an auction when he was growing up in Lynchburg, Va. That poster depicted Cain holding a club with the slain Abel beneath him. "
"And when I looked at that picture, I came to the Sixth Commandment, 'Thou shalt not kill,' " Mr. Doss told Larry Smith in "Beyond Glory," an oral history of Medal of Honor winners. "I wondered, how in the world could a brother do such a thing? It put a horror in my heart of just killing, and as a result I took it personally: 'Desmond, if you love me, you won't kill.' "
He became a medic, the only way he could adhere to the Sixth Commandment as well as the Fourth Commandment, to honor the Sabbath. Seventh-day Adventists consider Saturday the Sabbath, but Mr. Doss felt he could serve as a medic seven days a week since, as he put it, "Christ healed on the Sabbath."
After engaging in additional rescue efforts under fire over the next two weeks, Private Doss was wounded by a grenade that riddled him with shrapnel. He cared for his injuries alone for five hours, rather than have another medic emerge from cover to help him. While he was finally being carried off on a litter, he spotted a soldier who seemed worse off. He leaped off the litter, directing his aid men to help the other soldier.
Soon after that, Japanese fire hit him, and he suffered a compound arm fracture. He bound a rifle stock to his shattered arm as a splint, evidently the closest he ever came to handling a weapon, and crawled 300 yards to an aid station.
President Harry S. Truman presented him with the Medal of Honor on Oct. 12, 1945, for his actions on Okinawa. The citation credited him with saving 75 soldiers on that ridge, but he later said that the number was probably closer to 50.
Mr. Doss spent more than five years in hospitals being treated for his wounds and lost a lung to tuberculosis. Because of his infirmities, he was unable to seek steady work. He devoted himself to his religion and worked with young people in church-sponsored programs, living for many years in Rising Fawn, Ga., before moving to Alabama.
(Above excerpts taken from NY Times obituary, dated March 26, 2006)
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