Uncle Fester Was a WWII Aerial Commando, and Other Celebrities in Wartime

Star Trek’s Scotty Had a Finger Shot Off in WWII

Star Trek’s most iconic phrase is “Beam me up, Scotty“. It instantly conjures up the Enterprise’s miracle worker engineer, who commanded the spaceship and recorded its log when the captain and first officer were absent. The franchise’s second most memorable phrase is probably “I’m giving it all she’s got, captain! She can’nae take any more!“, delivered in a thick Scottish burr by the Enterprise’s engineer. In real life, James Montgomery Doohan (1920 – 2005), the actor who played Montgomery “Scotty” Scott, was not even from Scotland. Instead, Doohan was a Canadian who had earned a reputation as the most versatile voice actor in the business before he was cast for his defining role in Star Trek. Before that, Doohan had been a real life WWII badass who personally killed Nazis in combat, was struck by bullets multiple times on D-Day, and had a middle finger shot off.

Doohan enlisted in the Royal Canadian Artillery in 1939. Shipped to England in 1940, he spent the next four years garrisoning Britain and training for an invasion of Europe. On D-Day, June 6^th, 1944, Doohan finally saw combat. As his unit fought its way from Juno Beach to higher ground inland, he came across and personally killed two German snipers. He escaped harm from the enemy that day, but not from his own side. Late that night, as Doohan made his way to a command post, a nervous Canadian sentry opened up on him with a burst from a Bren gun. He was struck by six bullets, four of them hitting his legs, one striking his chest, and one shooting off the middle finger of his right hand. Upon recovery, he trained to fly an artillery observer aircraft, and became an aerial observer for the rest of the war.