Tag: the winter soldier

I really liked the drafted theories too but I found out recently that apparently he couldn’t have been because he was a Sergeant, an NCO, and they only come from enlisted ranks apparently? :(

bothhavesharpteeth:

That’s incorrect, there wasn’t a restriction on non-commissioned rank promotions during WWII, the need for officers was too great to restrict it in such a manner.

Also, during WWII ‘enlisted ranks’ stood to mean the entire pool of servicepeople, both drafted and voluntarily enlisted, because during the period from 1940-1947 (under the Selective Service System) nearly 10 million people were drafted into military service.

Bucky could have – and most likely was – accelerated through the ranks because of his skill as a marksman.

The serial number Bucky uses during the scene in Zola’s laboratory in The First Avenger – 32557038 – indicates that he was drafted in New York state after 1942.  However, the Smithsonian exhibit in The Winter Soldier says that Bucky enlisted voluntarily following the attack on Pearl Harbor (December 1941), meaning his serial number should’ve begun with a ‘12’ to show that he was recruited voluntarily from New York state before the military serial number range was extended to 30,000,00.

In the great words of every Marvel fan ever: “Lol, what’s a continuity.”

OP conflated a few things that sorta got brushed over in the explanation?

There are two broad categories of ranks in the military – enlisted and officer. Enlisted within that have NCOs which literally stands for Non Commissioned Officer.  Officers have commissions. (Why this exists the way it doesn’t in ancient military history and all about buying a rank from the local nobility hence the term commission and not really relevant here.)

In the US Army in WW2 the ranks started at Private, then Corporal, then Sergeant (in all the flavors like Sergeant, Technical Sergeant, Sergeant First Class, First Sergeant etc). 

There were at the time two main ways people got into the service – they were drafted or they enlisted (yep, there is that word again and that’s what leads to the confusion). You could be drafted and still enlisted. There was a third way which was that you could commute your jail sentence into military service but people don’t like talking about that one.

It was also possible to jump from enlisted to officer without going to OCS (Officer Candidate School) and that was to either get a college degree and re-enlist or you could get a battlefield commission. 

There is a third class of officers that movies skip over unless they have aviation in them which are warrant officers. These days the only warrant officers left are pilots. Essentially this is the military saying you have an expertise in a skill. The difference between Warrant Officers and Commissioned Officers? Warrants don’t have to run a company of men, they just have to be really, really good at their jobs.

Ranks have evolved over time. For example, technical sergeants don’t exist any more and there used to be a lot of different types of warrant officers. Each US military branch also has its own rank structure so you can’t assume a sergeant on one service is actually the same rank as a sergeant in another.  And of course the minute you add in the mix of services that were in the Howling Commandoes (the movie version) it gets complicated pretty quickly.

bridge-agent:

I think the current kerfuffle in the marvel fandom owes a lot to the fact that most of the fandom hasn’t read the comics. That allowed for the mental creation of a Bucky Barnes that is unrecognizable if one HAS read them–a deeply damaged, non-functional man who doesn’t want to hurt anyone, and is more likely to cringe or weep than fight, so it’s really shocking to those who believe in that model to see Bucky shoot someone at all, let alone at point blank range.

To those who’ve read the comics, that’s not even remotely surprising. They’ve seen it before, especially when it’s people who’re trying to harm Steve. You harm someone he cares about, you die, and the only people who can stop him are those people he cares about.

The Winter Soldier isn’t a separate personality that can be expunged from Bucky. The Winter Soldier is Bucky and Bucky is the Winter Soldier. That doesn’t change. What changes are his goals. His methods, not so much, just degree to which he uses them and with situational checks and balances in mind.

If it WAS someone other than Tony that he was initially aiming at, then Tony is between him and his target, and the only way he knows Tony is as a guy who’s siding with people who are trying to destroy him and Steve. He’s not his friend, he’s an obstacle or an enemy. 

Bucky isn’t fandom. He cares nothing about Tony except stopping him. From his POV, why wouldn’t he shoot him? Something bad has clearly happened and he’s focused on removing a threat. He will do anything to protect Steve, and to a just slightly lesser extent, to survive. The only thing surprising here is that fandom is surprised. You saw the Winter Soldier in action in CA:TWS. 

They were really clear in interviews, and the comics are equally clear–prewar Bucky is gone. He retains elements of his personality, but he’s not the same guy. Not only is Winter Soldier Bucky not a cinnamon roll, he never was. He’s a complex person who makes rash decisions and will risk certain death for the people he wants to protect–like jumping between Steve and a tesseract weapon in CA:TFA.

Thing is, the guy who he is now, he’s awesome, too. He’s an guy who makes mistakes because his heart overrides his head, kills more freely than Steve would like but is very, very good at it, is intensely loyal, and has many lovable qualities. In other words, he’s a guy with both flaws and positive traits, which is WAY more interesting than a perfect cinnamon roll. Fandom just doesn’t know him, yet. Well, except the folks who’ve read the comics.