21. Star Trek’s Iconic Engineer Was Shot Six Times by His Own Side
Chaos reigned on the beaches behind Jimmy Doohan and his men. Reinforcements and follow-up units arrived faster than the beach masters, tasked with directing them to their destinations, could handle. Soon, there was a huge snarl on the beaches and throughout much of the ground recently liberated by the Allies, as different units were jammed next to and mixed with each other. It was not just messy, but also dangerous. Without well-defined unit boundaries, jittery troops, many of them experiencing combat for the first time, were liable to shoot up their comrades as they mistook them for Germans. Doohan would experience that firsthand.
Around 11:30 PM on D-Day, as Star Trek’s iconic engineer made his way to a command post, a nervous Canadian sentry opened up on him with a burst from a Bren gun. Doohan was struck by six bullets. Four of them hit his legs, one struck his chest, and another shot off the middle finger of his right hand. It could have been worse: the bullet that hit him in the chest was deflected by a silver cigarette case, a gift from his brother. As Doohan joked about it in later years, smoking had actually saved his life. It was no laughing matter at the time, however, as he writhed in pain while being rushed to a hospital to get his wounds treated.
