John McKenna

1st Sgt. John McKenna is a squad leader in Able Company. He is portrayed by Richard X. Slattery.

McKenna is tall, blonde-haired and solidly built. He has a grizzled, tough appearance and persona. He is a dedicated sergeant, dependable and competent. He is gruff in demeanor and has low tolerance for slip-ups or behavior he considers lackadaisical.

Much of what we learn about McKenna's background comes from the episodes "Signals for an End Run" and "One Puka Puka." Unlike many of the Able Company men, McKenna is a career soldier, not a draftee or wartime volunteer. His first known job was in a textile factory in his hometown, Fall River, Massachusetts. McKenna joined the Army in 1933. He moved around to various posts, making it hard for him to find a steady romantic interest. At one point before his deployment to Italy, McKenna oversaw a battalion motor pool. In 1937 McKenna was stationed in the Philippines, where he served with Maj. Jergens ("The Ninety-Eight Cent Man").

He was based at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in the summer of 1941, about six months before the infamous attack ("One Puka Puka"). There he worked along with or near Hawaiians and Nisei, second-generation Japanese Americans. Turned off by their laid-back style and cleaned out of $600 by gambling with them, McKenna becomes distrustful of Asian-Americans. The bitterness resurfaces when he encounters members of the Nisei 100th Infantry Battalion in Italy in 1944. By the end of an eventful day with them, though, McKenna learns to appreciate their unorthodox practices and decisive results.

Though not as lighthearted as Hanson or as overtly libidinous as D'Angelo, McKenna possesses puckish and romantic facets. In "Next of Kin," he manages to instigate an argument between Hanson and Lucavich so they won't notice he's dancing with a woman both men fancied. He is seen buttering up a potential date in a bar in "Tommy," though he loses the woman of his interest to a French soldier.

McKenna gets a meatier romantic storyline in "Signals for an End Run," in which he falls for an Italian partisan named Dina. As their brief but emotionally sincere fling ends, McKenna pledges to return to Dina after the war. Because the series was cancelled before the war's end could be depicted, the fate of their relationship is left unresolved.

Despite his tough exterior, McKenna also harbors an optimistic philosophical streak. In "And the End of Evil Things," Benedict tells McKenna they should spend time together after the war ends, an offer the sergeant accepts with warmth and happiness. In the same conversation McKenna expresses the belief that a world capable of creating appalling injustices such as slavery and war can also support people of good will who work for peace.