Today’s audio version of this post is free for everyone.
James Doohan was born in Vancouver, Canada. The Scottish accent was fake, but his heroics were real. On TV’s Star Trek, “Scotty” saved the Enterprise innumerable times, but on D-Day he was part of saving Europe from the fucking Nazis. Doohan landed on Juno Beach in Normandy and personally killed two German snipers. Later that evening a nervous Canadian sentry shot the future actor six times.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: June 6, 1944--
Unlike a certain country that needed its paradise island to be bombed before they decided yeah fascists are bad let’s make some war, Canada committed to World War II right from the beginning. And Scotty said fuck yeah Nazis suck and volunteered for the Royal Canadian Artillery. Only 20 years old, he was commissioned as a Lieutenant and sent to England in 1940 to spend the next four years training to fuck Nazi shit up. By the time D-Day arrived, he held the rank of Captain.
On June 6, 1944, James Doohan and 14,000 screaming Canadians assaulted Juno Beach while Germans rained hell down upon them. Doohan was in one of the first waves to set foot on Juno, leading a group of men onto a beach filled with anti-tank mines while machine gunners and snipers cut them down. Canadian casualties were heavy, but you know how Scotty was always good about keeping his head in a crisis and saving everyone’s ass? So was Captain Doohan. While Germans were doing their best to kill him and his men, Doohan shot and killed two snipers. If you don’t realize that a guy who is not a sniper killing two snipers is a big deal, well, it’s a big fucking deal.
Unlike certain latecomers to the war at Utah and Omaha beaches, and also unlike the British at Gold and Sword beaches, the Canadians were the only ones to achieve all of their D-Day objectives. Doohan led his men to high ground to dig in for the night, but then there was the small matter of some twitchy fucking sentry.
Scotty went for a smoke, and when he returned a comrade thought “Fucking Nazi!” and shot him four times in the leg, blew off his middle finger, and also got him in the chest. He didn’t die because the bullet to the chest deflected off a silver cigarette case—a gift from his brother—that he’d just placed back in his jacket.
Doohan recovered from his wounds then trained as an observer pilot to spot for artillery so he could radio in coordinates to blow Nazis to hell. He was still a Canadian Artillery Officer, and not technically a member of the air force, but it didn’t stop him from earning the label of the “craziest pilot in the Canadian Air Force.”
They called him that because he said hold my beer and slalomed his plane around some telephone poles “to prove it could be done.” Yeah, his superiors weren’t real impressed, but I bet Sulu would have been.
Support keeping this daily column free and get access to subscriber only content:
You can also:
Get the book On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down.