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War and Savior · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.
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  Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
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  Speaker 2: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
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  Speaker 2: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
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  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Nobody is just one thing.
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  Speaker 2: For example, an accountant is more than someone who crunches
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  Speaker 2: numbers all day. They might be a mother, or a father,
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  Speaker 2: or a sibling. They may play the guitar or volunteer
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  Speaker 2: in a soup kitchen on the weekends. People contain multitudes,
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  Speaker 2: and we don't always know a person entirely, even someone
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  Speaker 2: we may see every day, like Anthony. Anthony was born
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  Speaker 2: in August of nineteen twenty six in Queens, New York.
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  Speaker 2: Unlike the Billy Joel song, it wasn't Anthony who worked
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  Speaker 2: in a grocery store. It was his father, an Italian
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  Speaker 2: immigrant who had come to the United States in nineteen
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  Speaker 2: oh six. His mother, Anna, was a seamstress, born in
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  Speaker 2: the US to parents from the Calabria region of Italy.
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  Speaker 2: Anthony grew up in poverty, but he found solace in music.
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  Speaker 2: He loved listening to singers like Judy Garland and Bing Crosby,
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  Speaker 2: and he even had a tap dancing uncle on the
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  Speaker 2: vaudeville circuit. That introduction to show business lit a fire
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  Speaker 2: in him and inspired him to pursue his passion singing. Unfortunately,
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  Speaker 2: Anthony's foray into performing would have to wait. He was
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  Speaker 2: drafted into the army in nineteen forty four, where he
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  Speaker 2: became an infantry rifleman. But fighting for his country wasn't
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  Speaker 2: all guts and glory for an eighteen year old Italian
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  Speaker 2: kid from New York. He was faced with a heavy
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  Speaker 2: dose of racism, especially from a sergeant who put him
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  Speaker 2: on KP duty whenever he could, simply because of his ethnicity. Anthony, though,
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  Speaker 2: eventually made his way to France in January of nineteen
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  Speaker 2: forty five, where he was placed with the sixty third
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  Speaker 2: Infantry Division. The Allies had suffered considerable losses in the
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  Speaker 2: Battle of the Bulge, and Anthony's battalion had been brought
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  Speaker 2: into help. He then traveled from France to Germany, where
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  Speaker 2: he got a close look at the horrors of war.
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  Speaker 2: He would later call it a front row seat in hell.
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  Speaker 2: But the fight raged on until Anthony pressed into Bavaria.
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  Speaker 2: He was one of the many soldiers who helped liberate
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  Speaker 2: the Coaufering Concentration Camp, a subcamp of Dachau. One of
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  Speaker 2: the first things that he and his men did was
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  Speaker 2: get food and water to the people being held captive,
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  Speaker 2: but they had been beaten down so severely that they
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  Speaker 2: didn't think the Allies were there to help. Sadly, the
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  Speaker 2: troops had arrived just a bit too late. Anthony learned
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  Speaker 2: that all of the women and children had been killed already,
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  Speaker 2: and half of the surviving captives had already been shot.
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  Speaker 2: The experience changed him and turned him into a staunch
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  Speaker 2: passivist for the rest of his life. But once he
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  Speaker 2: got home, he enrolled at the American Theater Wing, a
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  Speaker 2: New York based nonprofit that helped him reade discover his
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  Speaker 2: love of music. Anthony soon found work as a singing waiter,
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  Speaker 2: a job that he'd had before joining the army. He
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  Speaker 2: even cut a few records, but didn't find much success,
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  Speaker 2: not until nineteen fifty when he was signed to Columbia
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  Speaker 2: Records by big time record producer Mitch Miller. Miller had
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  Speaker 2: worked with the likes of Doris Day and Dinah Shore,
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  Speaker 2: and he heard something in Anthony, a voice that could
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  Speaker 2: croon with the best of them. Except there was already
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  Speaker 2: another big star already at Columbia, a guy named Frank Sinatra.
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  Speaker 2: But Old Blue Eyes had hit a slump and his
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  Speaker 2: last few albums had fallen short. He was leaving for
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  Speaker 2: Capitol Records, so Anthony found himself in the unique position
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  Speaker 2: to pick up where Sinatra had left off. He began
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  Speaker 2: by singing popular songs of the era, and his first
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  Speaker 2: big hit came in nineteen fifty one with his rendition
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  Speaker 2: of the nineteen forty song Because of You. It sat
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  Speaker 2: at number one of the Billboard charts for ten weeks
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  Speaker 2: and sold a million copies. Over the next few years,
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  Speaker 2: he covered countries, became a teen heart throb, and established
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  Speaker 2: himself as the pre eminent singer of the Great American songbook.
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  Speaker 2: But perhaps his best known hits was recorded in nineteen
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  Speaker 2: sixty two. It was a song that followed him throughout
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  Speaker 2: his whole career. Originally written by George Corey and Douglas
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  Speaker 2: Cross in nineteen fifty three as a love letter to
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  Speaker 2: their hometown. They'd come from New York to California, where
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  Speaker 2: feeling homesick, they had penned a little ditty about their city.
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  Speaker 2: By the bay I left my Heart in San Francisco
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  Speaker 2: became the signature song of World War II hero Anthony
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  Speaker 2: Dominic Benedetto, better known to audiences today as the late
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  Speaker 2: Great Tony Bennett. Heroism can be measured in a number
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  Speaker 2: of ways, whether someone is stopping a robbery or running
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  Speaker 2: into a burn building to save a child. As the
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  Speaker 2: saying goes, not all heroes wear capes, but sometimes a
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  Speaker 2: hero is someone who chooses a different path. They use
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  Speaker 2: their words instead of their fists. They speak up when
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  Speaker 2: no one else will. For Desmond Doss, hero is a
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  Speaker 2: meant fighting for his country in World War Two without
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  Speaker 2: ever touching a gun. Doss was born in Lynchburg, Virginia,
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  Speaker 2: in nineteen nineteen. His father worked as a carpenter, while
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  Speaker 2: his mother worked in a shoe factory when she wasn't
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  Speaker 2: tending to the home. Desmond was raised as a Seventh
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  Speaker 2: day Adventist, a denomination of Christianity that observed the Sabbath
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  Speaker 2: on Saturday, but Dos took things a step further. He
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  Speaker 2: was also a vegetarian and a pacifist, refusing to turn
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  Speaker 2: to violence in any situation. He was working at a
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  Speaker 2: shipyard in Newport News, Virginia when the attack on Pearl
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  Speaker 2: Harbor occurred. His job granted him the option to request
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  Speaker 2: a deferment rather than to serve, but something compelled him
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  Speaker 2: to do more. He didn't just want to sit out
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  Speaker 2: while others were off doing their part. In listed with
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  Speaker 2: the Army, he had hoped that being a conscientious objector
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  Speaker 2: would be his ticket to a position as an Army
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  Speaker 2: combat medic. He had no interest in picking up a gun. Instead,
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  Speaker 2: he was.
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  Speaker 1: Made a rifleman with the seventy seventh Infantry Division, but
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  Speaker 1: Dos was a firm believer in not killing any other
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  Speaker 1: living soul. He refused to carry a rifle even when
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  Speaker 1: ordered to. One fellow soldier, who saw him as a
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  Speaker 1: misfit and a coward, threatened to make sure he didn't
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  Speaker 1: come back from the front lines alive. Others tried to
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  Speaker 1: have him court martialed, but nothing worked. Dos continued to
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  Speaker 1: serve while being bullied and beaten by the men in
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  Speaker 1: his platoon, and he never let it get to him
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  Speaker 1: during his entire military career. Then, in April of nineteen
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  Speaker 1: forty five, Dos and his battalion were summoned to Okinawa.
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  Speaker 1: Their mission was to ascend and capture a massive four
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  Speaker 1: hundred foot tall cliff known as Hacksaw Ridge. They eventually
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  Speaker 1: reached the top, only to be faced with thousands of
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  Speaker 1: Japanese soldiers hiding in nearby caves waiting for them. A
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  Speaker 1: retreat was ordered and the men scrambled to make it
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  Speaker 1: back down the cliff safely, but the Japanese soldiers prevented
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  Speaker 1: many of them from getting away. A fraction of Allied
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  Speaker 1: soldiers were actually able to climb back down, with many
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  Speaker 1: being killed or wounded in the process, but Dos refused
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  Speaker 1: to flee. He saw his fellow soldiers, the ones who
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  Speaker 1: had insulted him and made his life a living hell,
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  Speaker 1: dying in enemy territory, and he couldn't just leave them there.
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  Speaker 1: He ran back toward the fight, spending hours dragging men
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  Speaker 1: to the edge of the cliff and lowering them down
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  Speaker 1: a makeshift rope sling that he had fashioned together himself.
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  Speaker 1: The army believed his bravery has saved the lives of
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  Speaker 1: one hundred soldiers, but Doss claimed that he had only
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  Speaker 1: managed to rescue fifty. The army split the difference and
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  Speaker 1: noted the final number at seventy five, and that wasn't
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  Speaker 1: the end of his heroic feats. Days after the events
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  Speaker 1: at Hacksaw Ridge, the young Seventh Day Adventist was wounded
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  Speaker 1: by shrapnel from a Japanese grenade. It embedded itself in
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  Speaker 1: his legs and hip, but not wanting to bring another
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  Speaker 1: medic into danger, he dressed the wounds himself as best
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  Speaker 1: he could. He then crawled to safety, only to find
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  Speaker 1: himself in a sniper's crosshairs. The bullet from the rifle
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  Speaker 1: shattered the bones in DOS's arm, but when several of
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  Speaker 1: his fellow soldiers tried to haul him away on a stretcher,
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  Speaker 1: he gave it up so that they could take another
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  Speaker 1: man who was in worse shape. Until the bitter end,
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  Speaker 1: Desmond Doss put others above himself. Surprisingly, despite his severe wounds,
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  Speaker 1: Dos survived the war. He received the Medal of Honor
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  Speaker 1: for his bravery and for saving the lives of dozens
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  Speaker 1: of men. He passed away in two thousand and six
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  Speaker 1: at the age of eighty seven. Desmond Doss had demonstrated
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  Speaker 1: true heroism during World War II by picking up a
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  Speaker 1: bandage and a rope instead of a rifle. I hope
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  Speaker 1: you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
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  Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
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  Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how
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  Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
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  Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and
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  Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at Theworldoflore dot com.
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  Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.