Irish Dukes (Fight Card)
By Jack Tunney (Mike Faricy)
Kindle $2.99
ASIN #B00A6KX8FS
Rating 5-Stars
Buck Sergeant Kevin Crawley is stationed at Templehof, Germany in 1951.
He’s waiting for his transfer to Japan, with a thirty-day leave in between in
Ireland, when Sergeant Major Eugene Taylor throws him in the ring against a big
Russian. He wins the fight for his Division, and Taylor hides two thousand
dollars in his bag. He didn’t know it, but this was going to come in handy very
soon. He heads to Ireland looking for relatives; he had never known his father,
and his mother had died when he was very young, leaving him to be raised in
Father Tim’s Chicago orphanage for boys, where he learned to box. Finding his
grandmother, and a beautiful neighbor named Mary, he discovers the local
landlord is using strong-arm tactics to force renters to pay high prices. After
beating up several of the landlord’s hoodlums, he’s tricked into fighting a
huge killer to take pressure off the renters.
I do have a problem with the military rank in this story. Yes, Sergeant
Major has been a military rank for the last 200 years, however, between 1920
and 1958, the rank was discontinued. So there could not have been a
Sergeant-Major Eugene Taylor. The actual rank in 1951 was Master Sergeant and
Senior Master-Sergeant, both E-7, but depending on their job and position. In
1958, the super E-8s and E-9s were created, bringing back the Sergeant Major
title for the E-9. Buck Sergeant Kevin Crawley was also a problem, as there was
no Buck Sergeants (three stripes) between 1948 and 1955. The rank of E-5 was
just called Sergeant, and it had three stripes, plus a rocker at the bottom;
today, this stripe is an E-6 and called a Staff Sergeant, but in 1951 it was an
E-5 Sergeant. The 3-stripe Buck Sergeant was reinstated in 1955, which then threw
confusion into the Army ranking system for several years until the old ranks
were eliminated.
Regardless of the author’s mistake with the military rank, it doesn’t
harm this interesting little story. In fact, I found it a bit more fun than
some of the previous entries in the Fight Card series. We have a wee bit of
humor, along with some nice fight scenes.
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