A Young Soldier was among Colonel Herman Dietrich's men at Tanis in 1936.
Biography
In 1936, during the Third Reich's attempt to locate and find the Ark of the Covenant, a young soldier accompanied his fellow Nazis to accompany Colonel Herman Dietrich and archaeologist René Emile Belloq to the Well of the Souls, where Belloq's rival Indiana Jones had found the Ark.
It contains information cut from the final release of an Indiana Jones medium, or otherwise unpublished. Everything said in this section and not elsewhere did not happen in the "proper" Indiana Jones continuity.
Following the capture of the Ark, Dietrich assigned the task of executing Jones' accomplice Sallah Mohammed Faisel el-Kahir to the young soldier, who took Sallah away to a secluded spot and prepared to shoot him. However, he was unable to bring himself to kill Sallah, and let him go.
Behind the scenes
The Young Soldier in his deleted scene.
The Young Soldier was played by Martin Kreidt in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Kreidt was a German youth vacationing in Tunisia at the time of Raiders' filming.
The scene involving the Young Soldier's inability to murder Sallah was cut from the film, despite David Wisniewitz and Karen Allen (Marion Ravenwood) calling it the greatest moment since the film began. However, Kreidt still can be seen amongst the soldiers standing around the entrance to the Well of the Souls.
In the Raiders comic book adaptation, Sallah instead explains to Indiana Jones and Marion that he was able to escape punishment by convincing Dietrich that he and the other diggers were tricked into believing Jones was a German.
Appearances
- Raiders of the Lost Ark (First appearance)