Lauded Conscientious Objector Desmond T. Doss Sr.

Desmond T. Doss Sr., 87, an Army medic on Okinawa during World War II who saved more than 75 wounded soldiers at great personal peril and became the first conscientious objector to the receive the Medal of Honor, died March 23 at his home in Piedmont, Ala. He had a respiratory ailment.

Mr. Doss was one of only two conscientious objectors to receive the Medal of Honor. Thomas W. Bennett, who was an Army corporal and medical aidman during the Vietnam War, also received the medal, according to Carol Cepregi, administrative assistant with the Congressional Medal of Honor Society. Bennett died while serving in Vietnam.

Alvin C. York, a World War I sergeant about whom a patriotic movie was made, applied for conscientious objector status but was turned down.

Mr. Doss grew up in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, whose tenets forbid bearing arms. However, when he was called to the draft, the lanky native Virginian declined a religious exemption that would have allowed him to continue working in a shipyard.