Tag: winter soldier

The life and times of Sergeant James ‘Bucky’ Barnes

laporcupina:

Okay, so a little self-referential blahblahblah on Bucky’s NCO career, mostly as a follow-up to the Sam Wilson Is Not an Officer stuff.

(1) At the start of Captain America: the First Avenger, Bucky has been a soldier for a while and a very good one. Whether Bucky enlisted or was drafted, he went to basic training and he emerged some flavor of private or, in truly exceptional circumstances, a corporal. Nobody comes out of basic a sergeant, which is an NCO (non-commissioned officer) rank and one of responsibility. When we meet Bucky in the movie, he’s been a soldier for a while, long enough for at least one promotion up to E-5, two or three promotions being much more likely. Which is a lot in a short amount of time – about a year-and-a-half past Pearl Harbor, less time in service assuming Bucky didn’t ship off to basic in 1941. As such, I’ve usually written Bucky as getting a field promotion for valor in combat because things just don’t happen that quickly. It’s still a speedy trip to sergeant, but it’s not completely ridiculous.

Any way you want to play it, when Steve is asking Bucky if he’s gotten his orders, he’s not asking brand-new-soldier Bucky about his first chance to be a ‘real’ soldier. He’s asking probably-home-on-leave Sergeant Barnes where he’s going next.

(2) Bucky has experience leading small units – a team, a squad. He might have already been a platoon sergeant, but no sure thing. Regardless, by the time he’s rescued by Steve, he’s an experienced NCO. He knows how to get things done, both with respect to regular Army crap and the corralling and maintenance of the men in his unit. He understands how the division of labor between CO and NCOIC works out, that he is the sheepdog to the CO’s shepherd when it comes to executing orders and handling the men. He also understands that the relationship between platoon sergeant and platoon commander is a separate thing between them and has a public face, which is united and in which the NCO is proper and respectful of rank, and a private face, which is more informal and generally reflects the fact that the NCO has more life and military experience than the officer and has an obligation to use those experiences to improve the officer and keep everyone from getting killed.

(3) Both points above matter when it comes to Sergeant Barnes and Captain Rogers, especially because the latter was commissioned as a captain and has never had a command position before at any level and truly and completely knows nothing about nothing about leading anyone anywhere to do anything in some form of proper military fashion. Bucky’s instruction necessarily doesn’t begin once he’s team sergeant on the Howling Commandos – it begins during the rescue, the minute he realizes that he’s not having a drug-induced hallucination and Steve really is Captain America and needs all the help that he can get because Steve doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. Even if Steve doesn’t confess that right away, which he probably will, Bucky knows him well enough to tell.

(4) As important as Sergeant Barnes’s experience is to Captain Rogers, it’s possibly even more important to Brooklyn’s Own Bucky Barnes. Who has been through hell on the battlefield, an even worse hell in Zola’s and Schmidt’s lab, and is now presented with a very hard truth: Steve Rogers doesn’t need him anymore. Steve is no longer frail by many metric; he doesn’t need defending or nurturing, he doesn’t need anyone to advertise his virtues or prop up his self-esteem because everyone else now knows exactly how awesome Captain America is. Steve is no longer short of friends or invisible to women or at the mercy of either his ailments or the neighborhood bullies. Every single protective function Bucky has ever filled for Steve out of friendship and brotherhood has now been rendered moot. Thankfully, while Steve may not need him for anything but companionship anymore, Captain Rogers needs him for a hell of a lot. Steve may be quicker in mind and body, but Bucky is the one who knows how to make everything happen. And that won’t change even as Steve learns the ropes; Captain Rogers will always need Sergeant Barnes. And that’s probably a comfort to Bucky at a time when little else is.

 And now the self-referential part, because I’m like that:

 Antediluvian and La Caduta: the former is Bucky’s pre-movie war career and the latter is his imprisonment, where he struggles to be an NCOIC while also being a lab rat, through the rescue and the formation of the Howling Commandos.

 Recursive, which is a Steve(-and-Bucky) story, but mostly about the Howling Commandos and Steve’s CO-NCOIC relationships with both Bucky and Dum Dum Dugan (after Bucky’s fall) matter a lot.

A great follow up on Sergeant Barnes, NCOIC of the Howling Commandos.

Sam Wilson was an NCO, not an officer

laporcupina:

primarybufferpanel:

Have to get this off my chest, because I see Sam called Major a lot.

Pararescueman (Sometimes called Parajumpers or PJs) in the USAF, which we’re told Sam was, is an enlisted position. Sam Wilson was a non-commissioned officer – I’m gonna guess he was at least a Sergeant and given the level of specialised training, probably a Staff Sergeant.

Pararescuemen have officers – they are called Combat Rescue Officers. They have most of the same training (though not all in as much detail) plus officer/strategic training. The idea is that the PJs are the detail guys (concentrating on individual casualties) the CRO keeps a wider, coordinating view, so doesn’t (or at least tries not to) get tied down with his hands stuck in somebody’s guts. I don’t think it is very likely a CRO would be strapping on a wingsuit, but in any case if Sam says he was Pararescue that means by definition that he was an NCO.

(Why does this bother me? Because while I think for most writers it’s a well-meant ‘well he was brave and important, must have been an officer’ that’s ignoring the many highly trained and skilled people who can be found among the NCOs. Making Sam an officer may feel like valueing him up, but it’s also kind of valueing NCOs down)

Yes, this. As a general thing in Hollywood, really, which is probably where a lot of fandom people gets their cues — all military peeps of importance and/or intelligence must be commissioned officers.

It’s overly simplistic to say “he’s a leader, ergo he’s an officer” or “he’s got a college degree, he’s got to be an officer.” You can be a great leader and hold a BA (or Ph.D) while also wearing an NCO’s sword.

Officers, NCOs, and junior enlisteds all have different functions in a military system. NCOs are the glue, the sine qua non of any military — and if you want to know why some RL militaries have trouble being competent, it’s generally because they have no tradition of NCOs. NCOs are the repositories of institutional wisdom and the ones who have learned from experience and the ones who are not only supposed to teach the junior enlisteds what to do, they’re also supposed to provide guidance for officers as well. They are the ones who know how to get shit done while the officers make Powerpoint slides. *g*

(And for the record, I’ve been writing Sam Wilson as a Technical Sergeant, E-6.)

This. Also, Bucky Barnes, platoon sergeant. I have some serious headcanon about that. Dunno what, if any of it, would have survived being the Winter Soldier but Bucky as one of the senior NCOs of the Howling Commandos would have gotten shit done in ways that Steve would have not had a clue about for the first few months.

See also: Band of Brothers, Bastogne ep.

Insert meta here

So I have read quite a bit of Winter Soldier fic since the movie came out and I’ve got a problem with some aspects of it. Let me preface this by saying all viewpoints are valid, especially for something like fan fiction – that’s the point of the thing, to bring your own perspective to it.  But I’m gonna rant anyway.

Bucky Barnes (and Steve Rogers) were soldiers in WWII. They were active duty commandos for something like two years depending on the timeline you choose to follow. Bucky was a sniper. I’ve known snipers, both in my time in the service and afterwards and there is a mindset there about it. While it is happening, it is a job. There isn’t guilt involved or you don’t stay a front line soldier for long. It kills you or gets beaten out of you by the situation. 

And don’t take my word for it. Dig up a copy of the Band of Brothers mini-series. The last episode in particular has some stuff in it that is relevant to this particular point (Bastogne is a great ep if you want to learn more about Bucky being platoon sergeant but that’s a different rant.). 

It is very much a ‘you or them’ situation when you’re out there with a weapon in your hand. Now. Does Bucky have the right to be a vengeful bastard because of HYDRA? Yes. No question. Loss of autonomy is a horrible thing. Is he going to be torn up about the deaths he caused? Maybe. I think he treasures life that any non psychotic person but I suspect he also knows that he can’t change the past and can only go forward from here. There is no doubt in my mind that the Bucky that fell from the train was a soldier and knew what his job was. There was a Winter Soldier in him or they couldn’t have drawn him out and I suspect he is the type of man that will own that.

I don’t think that Bucky is a woobie that thinks his death count means he isn’t worthy of breathing the same air as normal people. And the Steve Rogers we see in Winter Soldier wouldn’t think so either. Steve is a bit of an idealistic idiot but he’s not naive and he wanted all of HYDRA dead at the end of TFA. He had no compuction about killing aliens that were clearly sentient in Avengers and the ‘being Nick Fury’s garbage man’ certainly implies black or at least gray ops to me.

Pierce knows who the asset is and hates Steve Rogers

Yep, more WS meta.

So based on the bank vault scene ‘but I knew him’ it’s clear to both Pierce and the technicians (and Rumlow) that the asset is Bucky Barnes, zombie best friend of Steve Rogers. And having had to put up with Steve’s stubborn ass in SHIELD for the last few years, if only indirectly, I think there is a part of him that definitely wants to break Steve. The showdown scene in Pierce’s office is part pro-forma and part exposition. Schmidt and Zola couldn’t sway Steve Rogers, he has to try.  He tries, knowing he will fail and his ego just can’t handle it.

Pierce’s ego is what drives the earlier timeline in launching the helicarriers. He’s the Red Skull for the 21st century. The bombast saved for a smaller audience.

And using Bucky is the best way to break Steve Rogers. He makes the defeat personal for the final confrontation. He wants Steve to know exactly what they’ve done to Bucky. That they’ve wiped out his best friend and turned him into an enemy. It’s a brilliant bit of mind-fuckery even if in the end it doesn’t work.

More Winter Soldier meta thoughts

Okay, here is another thing.  Based on CA:TWS – The Winter Soldier largely sucks at the job they gave him. The job that HYDRA threw him at.  No, wait hear me out.

It’s not discussed much in the MCU except in very elided terms (yay, movies and narrative) but it’s pretty clear if you fill in the holes from the comics that Bucky’s job is largely sabotage and assasination. They use him as a destabilizer, a ghost. And then they take this weapon and try to use it like a BFG. It’s such an odd choice for a group that’s supposed to be that smart, that they turn around and basically use this extremely expensive and specialized tool as a blunt instrument – and it’s not stupid people that do it, it’s people that are theoretically cunning. 

It makes me want to write the backstory and fill in what tipped Pierce’s hand early enough to essentially throw away a tool like that on what was probably going to be a one time use, maybe twice if the odds end up in his favor.  [Fury wanting to delay Insight is clearly part of it but I’m wondering why after decades of planning what was so critical about that moment that he wasn’t willing to spend a few more years and get around Fury instead of what he did which is force everything forward and did it badly.] [Yes, I know villains are supposed to have Moments of Stupid™ to advance the plot but really?]

So here is my thinking that maybe backs the bad at the job they sent him to do:

1. He’s deployed out against Fury. He blows up the SUV but Fury gets away. It’s broad daylight. It’s uncontrolled space in the middle of an urban center. It’s against a high profile (media profile: you can’t tell me Fury has avoided television with SHIELD going public and that big building on the Potomac) high value target. This is not how you do business, at least not typically. Who were they going to blame it on?

[There is an implied missing scene that I haven’t seen in fic yet. WS tracking Fury to Steve’s apartment. It’s clearly the same day/evening. WS needed Steve to turn on the light (maybe?) to positively site the target because the shot comes seconds later after more talking to define the location.]

2. He’s sent out to shoot Fury and doesn’t kill him – now this one could be argued that this was some kind of plan to draw out Captain America and forward HYDRA’s plans but at least on the surface, he didn’t kill the guy. [This one is complicated because of the double blind of Fury ‘dying’ but not dying.] He almost gets caught by Cap.  This ghost assassin that is a rumor and legend in the intelligence community for 50 years. In an urban environment that is loaded with cameras [yes, we’ll ignore the inconsistency that SHIELD wants all the cameras and twitter to track down Cap in the last third of the movie but they don’t use it to get a positive ID on WS for the rest of the film *handwave*]

3. He’s sent out to stop Cap and the Black Widow on the highway overpass. He gets part of the job done and then the cops/STRIKE team come out and finish it. Again, we have another direct conflict which is such an odd choice. Dude is a sniper, and metal arm notwithstanding close combat skills and distance skills are not things that normally are found in the same person. [Yes, it’s comic books but Cap is the exception to the rule there too – he’s got the Shield for his distance weapon and he’s a brawler. It’s not common.  Extreme short range, short range, long range, extreme long range. These are your archtypes and in real world weapon design this is one of those places where you can’t cheat.] [That said, they gave WS the metal arm which is clearly for short range beat the shit out of things but who else but another ‘super’ is going to even going to be able to compete with that? He can cave in metal, an unaltered human doesn’t stand a chance but why bother getting that close if you have a sniper rifle?] 

Here is where I say that I think they did WS a bit of a disservice and didn’t show us that he’s a tactical thinker like we saw Bucky being in TFA. You can imply it if you squint with him asking for a different weapon and deploying the team a certain way in the overpass battle and if you really squint you might be able to say he planned the Fury attack, chose the sniper secondary attack but we don’t know if he has that much capability/will in the movie. It simply isn’t said in any concrete way at all.

4. He’s sent out to do a head to head battle with Cap to finish it all. To me this really is Pierce writing off WS as a tool and an asset. Even if WS wins the fight and takes Cap down and that is by no means a given, he doesn’t trust the tool not to break given how fast the conditioning was breaking down. 

Pierce is the guy who literally doesn’t care what anything costs. He shoots his housekeeper because she saw the WS. He throws away a tool that’s had hundreds of hours of work and who knows how much money and technology poured into it all to take over the world. Each of the moments with Pierce builds a picture for you about the way he dehumanizes everything around him.

tldr- they took a precision made tool and turned it into the bluntest hammer and set it loose on the highest, nastiest setting they could. It was literally such a waste of resources.

Winter Soldier and the mask

So probably a dumb question but I’ve gotten hung up on it a few times – is the purpose behind the mask and goggles purely for obscuring purposes because he’s out in public?

From a tactical purpose it doesn’t make a lot of sense. No one else on the tac team has the same masks.

And I can’t help but think it isn’t a usual part of his uniform either since most of the time he’s supposed to be ‘the ghost’ and therefore never seen. You know, the cliche of ‘it’s okay that you’ve seen my face because you’re about to die and it won’t matter’.

Is it distancing for the Winter Soldier? Does it keep him mentally even further from thinking his targets are people? Very dehumanizing, etc.