No Bloody A, B, C or D…
James Doohan, the actor who played Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott of Star Trek, has passed away. He was one of the original series cast who loved attending cons and interacting with fans. Reading his obituary, I have to say that I was pretty amazed by these paragraphs.
At 19, James escaped the turmoil at home by joining the Canadian army, becoming a lieutenant in artillery. He was among the Canadian forces that landed on Juno Beach on D-Day. “The sea was rough,” he recalled. “We were more afraid of drowning than the Germans.”
The Canadians crossed a minefield laid for tanks; the soldiers weren’t heavy enough to detonate the bombs. At 11:30 that night, he was machine-gunned, taking six hits: one that took off his middle right finger (he managed to hide the missing finger on screen), four in his leg and one in the chest. Fortunately the chest bullet was stopped by his silver cigarette case.
Six hits. He was as much a trooper in life as he was in a fictional TV show.
You will be missed, Jimmy.
Posted Thursday July 21, 2005 in News by Khairul Hisham
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Huh. That’s another ‘saved by cigarettes’ story. My grandfather was spared by his own metal cigarette case in Russia… only to, ironically, die of smoking induced emphysema decades later.
By Pete on July 21, 2005 at 03:56pm link