22. Scotty Had His Hands Full on D-Day
Jimmy Doohan and his fellow Canadian attackers were temporarily pinned down by intense fire. Their advance came to a halt until they were saved by the timely intervention of a British light cruiser, HMS Ajax. The Ajax’s guns blasted the defenders and wrecked their positions from what amounted to point-blank range for naval fire. She kept at it long enough for the Canadians on the beaches to move inland. Doohan led his men over the wet sands, which were strewn with antitank mines that luckily did not go off because the men did not weigh enough to trigger them.
The future Star Trek star and his unit were ordered to secure the Caen-Bayeux road. They were also tasked with seizing an airport west of Caen, a key city in the path of an Allied advance. Caen’s German defenders would give the Allies serious headaches for a considerable time to come. As Doohan’s unit made its way off Juno Beach and to higher ground inland, he came across and personally killed a pair of German snipers. Despite the early difficulties on the beach that morning, he and his men managed to secure their assigned D-Day objectives by noon on June 6th.
