The Tough Sergeant was one of the Nazi soldiers serving under the command of Colonel Herman Dietrich in 1936.
Biography
The Sergeant 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, overpowered 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 windshield. Finding himself in a situation much like Indy's, the Sergeant tried to follow the same steps, but the truck's grille had been damaged by this time and could not hold his weight. The sergeant eventually lost his grip on the grille and the truck ran him over, killing him.
Behind the scenes
The Tough Sergeant was portrayed uncredited by the late stuntman Sergio Mioni in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
In the third draft of the film's script, written by Lawrence Kasdan, instead of taking control of the truck, the Sergeant is shot by an armed guard in the pursuing staff car on the orders of Dietrich, then named Shliemann, who fears that if the Sergeant kills Jones the Ark will be damaged in the crash. However, Dietrich indeed shoots the Sergeant in the film's storybook.
The Raiders novelization doesn't feature him, but includes a scene wherein two soldiers climb on top of the truck, but the aforementioned armed guard in the staff car blows the scheme, allowing Indy to stop the truck sending the two soldiers flying off the car.