From: Ryan Gill (rmgill@mindspring.com)
Date: Wed Jul 20 2005 - 10:54:06 PDT
D-Day Veteran James Doohan, 85, died today.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/TV/07/20/obit.doohan.ap/index.html
From http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/features/specials/article/6527.html
Lt. Doohan successfully led his Canadian troop onto the beach and
pushed inland to establish the best possible gun position (along the
way Doohan shot two German snipers, never knowing whether he killed
them). A field was secured and command posts were established, but
not all Germans between the beach and their position had been
captured. That night about 11:30, Doohan and another officer were
walking between command posts when machine gun fire broke out. Doohan
was hit; he fell into a shell hole, looked at his hand and saw blood.
Three bullets struck the one finger. Never losing consciousness, he
actually walked to the regimental aid post, unaware he also took four
bullets in the leg.
There was an eighth bullet, and it was nothing less than a miracle
that he's still with us today. It hit his chest, four inches from his
heart. But it ricocheted off the sterling silver cigarette case in
his pocket, the one his brother had given him for being best man at
his wedding. It's like a trite plot twist, he acknowledges - his
brother saved his life from thousands of miles away. Jimmy pushed the
dent out of the cigarette case and continued using it until he quit
smoking years later. He stayed in the military, learned to fly and
came to be known as the "craziest pilot in the Canadian Air Forces."
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