“The Court-Martial of Sergeant Fury”
Editor and writer: Stan Lee Art: Jack Kirby (pencils), George Roussos (inks)
The case of The United States Army v. Sergeant Nicholas Fury reconvenes.
The prosecution has rested after presenting an air-tight case against Nick Fury. The testimony of First Lieutenant Spencer Parker established that, while assigned under Parker’s command, Sergeant Fury refused to attack a German ammunition depot, as ordered. Furthermore, Fury then struck Parker, punching the officer in the jaw, and countermanded the order to attack. As a result, the mission failed.
As revealed outside the courtroom, the other members of the First Attack Squad---the Howling Commandos---witnessed Fury’s actions. Their descriptions of the events corroborate Lieutenant Parker’s testimony.
Neither the Howlers, nor Parker, know why Fury did what he did.
Fury cannot even help his own case. An explosion immediately after Fury’s act of insubordination resulted in a concussion which erased his memories of the incident.
“It’s hopeless,” the Howler top-kick despairs. “Parker wouldn’t lie about what happened! I’m guilty! Nothing can change that! If only I could remember why I did it! Why? Why?”
Fury’s defense counsel, Colonel Ballinger, knows they’re up against it. The facts already presented in evidence virtually seal Fury’s conviction. The best Ballinger can hope to do is mitigate Fury’s guilt.
He calls a series of character witnesses. The first to testify on Fury’s behalf is Chaplain Lewis Hargrove, who had been the parish priest in the neighbourhood where Nick grew up. The padre attests to Fury’s innate decency and honesty.
More witnesses take the stand. Lord Peter Hawley and his daughter, Pamela. And Fury’s commanding officer, Captain Sam Sawyer. They all describe Nick Fury in glowing terms.
Ballinger is clutching at straws, though, and the prosecution knows it. At best, the statements of the defense witnesses are immaterial to the facts of the case. At worst, such as with Captain Sawyer, the prosecutor is able to turn things around. Under questioning, Sawyer is forced to admit that he has often sent the hot-headed Fury to the guardhouse.
Painfully aware that he hasn’t put so much as a scratch in the prosecution’s case, Colonel Ballinger rests.
And that’s when Fate takes a huge hand in things.
Before the proceedings can continue, the air-raid siren blares. A swarm of Luftwaffe bombers is attacking the base! The senior officer of the court-martial board orders the courtroom cleared.
The M.P.’s take custody of Fury. He resists. They don’t know what the shrieking whistle that suddenly fills their ears means, but Fury does. The veteran commando dives under a table just as the dropping bomb blasts the courtroom apart.
After the dust clears and the red fog fades from Fury’s eyes, he staggers to his feet. This explosion was as close as the one back at the German ammo dump. His mind clears with sudden awareness.
Fury remembers! Everything!
He dashes outside and tracks down the Howlers, who are tossing all the hot lead they can at the fleeing German planes. Fury gathers his men and gives them a name.
They’ll find the man who wears that name in the prison compound. Go get him, Fury tells the Howlers, and bring him to my lawyer.
The military police catch up to Nick just as the “all clear” sounds. He surrenders peacefully.
In due time, the court-martial reconvenes. The board has deliberated and the senior member stands to issue its verdict. Before it can be announced, Fury’s lawyer requests permission to call one final witness.
It’s highly irregular, but given the seriousness of the charges, the senior board officer allows it. Colonel Ballinger calls Corporal Otto Shmidt to the stand.
Corporal Otto Shmidt---of the German Army!
Ballinger asks Corporal Shmidt what, if anything, he knows about the incident at the German ammo dump. It turns out that the German soldier knows quite a bit . . . .
“That concludes my defense of Sergeant Nick Fury,” says Ballinger.
Lieutenant Parker speaks to the prosecutor, who then rises and addresses the board.
“Sir, Lieutenant Parker informs me that he wishes to drop his charges against Sergeant Fury in light of this new testimony. He realizes that Fury had no alternative but to do what he did!”
“He tried to explain,” says Parker. “But I was too eager---I wouldn’t listen.”
The board adjourns to reconsider its decision, but from the faces of the members, it’s clear that Fury has been vindicated. “The verdict,” Ballinger assures him, “will just be a formality!”
Afterward, Fury and Lieutenant Parker take a private moment to settle their personal score.
Even back in 1964, military courtroom dramas were nothing new. Only a decade before, Hollywood had capitalised on the inherent conflict of trying to apply the law of man to the chaos of war. The Caine Mutiny (Columbia, 1954) and The Rack (MGM, 1956) and Time Limit (United Artists, 1957)---films which had a court-martial as their focus---had all proved to be critical successes.
No, what was unexpected in 1964 was to find such realistic drama in the pages of Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos. “The Court-Martial of Sergeant Fury” was the first story-length effort to rehabilitate the title from its image as pure farce.
It didn’t spring full blown. Stan Lee had planted seeds of respectability three issues earlier. The first twenty pages of Sgt. Fury # 4’s “Lord Ha-Ha’s Last Laugh” were the typical Howler hi-jinks, as they wisecracked their way through another “deadly” mission.
It was on the next-to-last page when the readers got a glass of cold water dashed in their faces. That was when Howler Junior Juniper---the youngster, the freckle-faced kid---got killed.
It came out of nowhere. At the top of the page, the Howlers were making yet another last stand, mowing down German stormtroopers left and right and tossing off one-liners that would have made Henny Youngman groan. But when you got to the bottom, Junior was dead.
And he didn’t die in a blaze of glory. He didn’t sacrifice himself for his buddies or to save a town full of civilians. He didn’t take a platoon of Nazis with him.
Junior simply caught a bullet. He died from being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the same anonymous way that thousands of real-life American servicemen fell in battle. And Junior was a regular member of the cast, too. Not a walk-on or a one-time character created for that particular story.
It was a strikingly true-to-life depiction for a magazine that had almost prided itself on its Coney Island approach to World War II. It made for a downbeat ending, too. No closing shots of the Howlers merrily marching back to England this time. For once, Fury and his men looked upon war for what it really was---something terrible and capricious.
By itself, the death of Junior Juniper wasn’t enough to change the orientation of the series. Fury and the Howlers were still super-commandos, gamboling their way across occupied Europe. But it started things moving in a more serious direction. Perhaps more important, the fans started taking the title seriously, if only just a little. Killing off a regular character informed them that nothing about Sgt. Fury could be taken for granted, anymore.
Lee took another step in changing the tone of the series two issues later, in Sgt. Fury # 6 and “The Fangs of the Desert Fox”. The main plot unfolds with the typical Fury derring-do against Nazi general Erwin Rommel and his Panzer divisions. However, Stan spices things up with a sub-plot involving Private George Stonewell, a temporary-replacement Howler. Stonewell is an undisguised bigot and clashes with the fully integrated squad. While Stonewell proves to be a competent commando in action, his prejudices, particularly toward Izzy and Gabe, endanger the success of the mission more than once.
The Stonewell situation is resolved in a clichéd manner, but it’s still highly satisfying. And in another realistic touch, Stonewell does not emerge from the experience as a changed man. But there are hints that he has started to re-think things. At the same time, the fans were starting to re-think Sgt. Fury. The mail that came in about “The Fangs of the Desert Fox” mentioned the main plot of the story only in passing. The commentary was all about the Stonewell sub-plot, from inspired readers applauding the mature treatment of racism in the otherwise-fanciful series.
I’m guessing that Stan anticipated such a positive reaction, because there was no time for that mail to have arrived before putting “The Court-Martial of Sergeant Fury” into production. Here, for the first time, legitimate wartime drama took centre stage in a Fury script. There were a few broad strokes here and there, but overwhelmingly the plot played things straight.
Something that stands out about “The Court-Martial of Sergeant Fury” is how Lee avoids relying on simple stereotypes to advance the story. Instead, he layers his characters. Rather than depicting Lieutenant Parker as an inexperienced “shavetail”, petty and officious, Lee presents us with a man who, while perhaps possessing a less-than-likeable personality, is capable. As Parker himself admits, he isn’t the “swashbuckling hero” that Fury is; yet, he's shown to be brave and enough of a leader to be put in charge of an independent unit.
This actually intensifies the central dilemma of Fury’s insubordination. Because it’s not so easy to dislike Parker. At least, not after he takes the stand. In fact, a certain amount of sympathy swings his way as a result of his testimony.
The character of German soldier Otto Shmidt was also a striking departure, at least from how the enemy had been presented in Sgt. Fury so far. Up to that point, there had been two kinds of Germans---the Nazi leaders, who were depicted (rightfully so) as treacherous and evil; and the rank-and-file field soldiers, who were played for laughs.
It was a rare thing for any war mag of the day to depict a German soldier as honest and decent, as Corporal Shmidt proved to be. It reminds us---and I think we need reminding sometimes---that, while the Nazis were vile and beneath contempt, the average German soldier of World War II was just a guy shoved into the spears of war and doing the job as best he could. Just as our guys were.
Even the moments in this story that threw back to the “classic Fury” style were handled deftly. There is an over-the-top sequence in which the Howlers learn that Fury’s main rival, Sergeant Bull McGiveney of the Second Attack Squad, is gloating over Fury's imminent conviction. The Howlers deliver a personal response to McGiveney, which leads to a humorous interlude in court . . . .
It’s an appropriate dash of levity in that it momentarily lightens a script that is tightening the tension with each page.
While I was reviewing this story in preparation for this article, I was struck by something when I got to the ending. It occurred to me how different it would have been, most likely, if handled by one of to-day’s comics writers.
Under modern treatment, the character of Lieutenant Parker would probably have been characterised as incompetent and venal. And the exoneration of Nick Fury would have come over Parker’s objection. He would have been left with a petty, simmering hatred of Fury. That version of Parker, no doubt, would have become an occasional character in the series, pulled out whenever the writer wanted to insert some artificial drama into a plot.
Some of you folks might have liked to see it done that way, I don’t know. But I much prefer how Lee handled it. Fury and Parker were two men who didn’t get along, but they found common ground in their professionalism. Fury truly respected the fact that, whether he liked the man or not, Parker was a U.S. Army officer doing his duty. And Parker, as soon as he learnt the reason behind Fury’s actions, dropped the charges without hesitation and without rancor.
It didn’t escape me that in the panel where the two men shake hands, it’s the first time Fury addresses Parker as “sir” without the word being rendered in sarcasm-indicating boldface.
Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos would have a long way to go before it would truly shake off the sitcom approach of its early years and depict World War II with all of its grim reality. That would come later, under other writers such as Roy Thomas and Gary Friedrich. Until then, Dum Dum would still down Messerschmitts with hand grenades and whole regiments of German troops would go belly up if a Howler so much as looked at them. But those episodes would occur less and less often as Lee and Thomas and Friedrich discovered that realistic drama trumps cartoon drama.
It was this story that lighted the way.
“The Court-Martial of Sergeant Fury” is hereby adjourned!
Replies
Good wrap up, Commander. Quite an ending.
Nice, it seems that Stan was always trying to put a little something extra into the stories.
Nice analysis of a story that would have otherwise escaped our attention!
It was amazing to see a German soldier testify for Fury. It's even more amazing that he was believed!
Of course, this all would have been avoided if Fury passed on that information as soon as he got it!
Speaking about the racism aspect, did it come up with Gabe again? He (and Sgt. Rock's Jackie Johnson) were important for the integration and maturing of comics, however implausible historically they were.
Another point, they said in the early issues that Dino Manelli acted under another name. I'm assuming that was quickly dropped.
..." Acted " , as in " a thespian " ?????
Philip Portelli said:
Yes, ED, Dino was a movie star as he was based on Dean Martin. I don't know if Dino sang, too!
Emerkeith Davyjack said:
Philip Portelli said:
I know that smaller slights came Gabe's way here and there throughout the series---I'd have to go through my run of it to pick them out---but nearly all of them came from the Nazis, who, you'll remember, had this thing about "inferior races". I don't recall another prominent instance where Gabe encountered racism from his own countrymen, as he did with George Stonewell. The sort of which would serve as the major plotline or a significant sub-plot.
However, there was one minor-but-very-notable standout.
Sgt. Fury # 44 (Jul., 1967) told the story of "The Howlers' First Mission". This events told here predate "Seven Against the Nazis", in which the Howlers were already working together as a trained, experienced squad. "The Howlers' First Mission" tells of the commandos' first outing after completing their training. It's a long flashback framed by the device of telling the only non-original Howler, Percy Pinkerton, how it all began.
One of the novelties of the tale is that long-time Fury fans are well aware of the inter-relational dynamics among the various Howlers; but here, in Sgt. Fury # 44, they are little more than strangers to each other, except for those the readers knew had preëxisting relationships, such as Fury and Dum Dum and Captain Sawyer.
That's why it's startling when, early into the flashback, during a scene when the Howlers are grabbing some rare relaxation in their barracks, Gabe makes some complaint about Army bunks being too hard---and Reb tells him to stop complaining.
"You're lucky we let you stay here with the rest of us!" Reb says to Gabe.
Ralston only makes comments like this once or twice more, and a major flap doesn't occur, as it did between Gabe and Stonewell. But it's clear that writer Gary Friedrich was going for the classic white Southerner/black man prejudice in Reb and Gabe.
At the end, when the story emerges from flashback, Pinkerton asks how Ralston and Jones overcame their antagonism to become the best of friends that they were now, and the Britisher is told only that it's a story for another time.
Alas, it's also a story that none of the Fury writers ever got around to telling.
It would have been a great story to have told. Even in an annual...
Clearly Dino Martinelli was supposed to be Dean Martin...and about issue #38, there's a mission to go rescue a doctor who will go stateside or back to England to treat Dino. he eventually returns, as I recall. Look for the story "This One's For Dino" and features Fury parachutting on the cover, which is mainly blue, as I recall. (It's one of the first Sgt. Fury books I ever saw on the spinner racks, way back in 1966....)
That's interesting because you would figure that the Howlers may not have all gotten along at first being that they all had such strong personalities.
Also, in Sgt. Fury #6, Fury comes down hard on Stonewell and tells him if he acts up on Gabe and Izzy, he'll come down even harder! So I can't believe that he would have tolerated the same from Reb, though we know Reb is a decent guy but old prejudices die hard.
As for the origin in #44,
1) Did they give a reason why Gabe was assigned to the Howlers? Were the Howlers under British Command at first? Did they have separate/different rules?
2) Was Junior there?
"Did they give a reason why Gabe was assigned to the Howlers?"
Because he proved to "Happy Sam" Sawyer that he had the makings of being a top-notch commando, just like the other six. Other than that, no other reason was given for Gabe's presence in squad.
"Were the Howlers under British Command at first?"
No, the Howlers' chain-of-command was always through the United States military. This, I believe, obviates your follow-on query.
"Was Junior there?"
But of course.
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