Fight Card: Irish Dukes

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.