The tough Sergeant was one of the soldiers serving under Colonel Dietrich. He and a group of soldiers rode in the cargo truck carrying the Ark to Cairo. After Indiana Jones hurled the driver out the door and got behind the wheel, the Sergeant ordered his men to climb into the cab and shoot him. They all fell off the side of the truck, much to the Sergeant's annoyance, although Indy did get shot in the arm.
The Sergeant climbs over the speeding truck.
The Sergeant decided to take things into his own hands and climbed over the top of the truck and swung into the cab, overpowering Jones by punching his bullet wound, and threw the American through the windshield. At the behest of Dietrich, he attempted to crush Jones, who was clinging to the truck's grille, between his vehicle and Belloq's staff car. Jones had other ideas and crawled underneath the moving truck, climbed into the back and swung into the driver's seat, kicking the Nazi in the face. Infuriated, Jones started smashing the man's face into the dashboard before throwing him through the windsheild. Ironically in the same situation Indy was in, the Sergeant couldn't hack it and lost his grip on the grille, the truck running him over. The sergeant would never know that Jones had unintentionally saved him from a worse fate. Had the sergeant survived, he would have been killed by the Wrath of God at the Tabernacle by getting zapped through the eyes and chest by lightning, a fate certainly worse than getting run over by his own truck.
Behind the scenes
- The Sergeant, called Tough Sergeant in the script, was played by John Rees in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
- He has a different fate in the script like many characters. Instead of taking control of the truck he is actually shot by Shliemann (Dietrich's name in the script) who is afraid that if the Sergeant kills Jones the truck will crash, damaging the Ark.
- The Raiders of the Lost Ark (novel) does not feature him, but includes a scene similar to his. Two soliders climb on top of the truck, but an armed guard in the staff car (that does not exist in the film because Toht rides in his place) blows the scheme allowing Indy to stop the truck sending the two soliders flying off the car.