I don't really know where else to put my thinky thoughts
This isn't meta. I haven't had enough time to work these things out for this to even be the rough draft of meta. It's just me thinking out loud because for most of my life I have had strong feelings about World War 2 and I have recently (that is to say in the past month or so) developed a lot of very, very strong feelings regarding the Marvel cinematic universe. Specifically, I have feelings about Bucky Barnes, but I also have very strong feelings about Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff and a good deal of, though much less anguished, feelings about Sam Wilson.
I haven't read a lot of meta about these characters because I'm in the middle of writing what was supposed to be short but has turned into an epic "This Is Bucky's Life" thing.
It was supposed to just be a short kind of funny, kind of heartbreaking story about Bucky in war. Because the thing is, you didn't just get to be a sergeant without seeing combat. Unlike the rank of captain, which denotes an officer, sergeants are enlisted men and they have to earn their way up the ranks. Steve making captain without ever seeing combat is actually entirely possible - my father was a captain before he even landed in Vietnam because of his medical training and advanced degrees - but enlisted men don't get promoted like that.
Bucky enlisted shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. After basic training, he would have been a private. It usually takes a year or so to get promoted from private to private first class unless you're recommended for promotion by a commanding officer. Somehow from the spring of 1942, when he'd finished training, and June 1943 when he was in New York and took Steve to the World Expo, Bucky had gone from Private to Private First Class to Corporal to Sergeant. How'd he do that? He couldn't have been fighting in Europe - the Allied invasion wouldn't start until August of 1943.
He could have very easily been somewhere that Americans don't talk much about. He could have been on the Pacific Front. I think we ignore the Pacific Theatre of War for a lot of reasons. The narrative of WW2 in the US has overwhelmingly become one of good versus evil, which means America versus the Nazis, and the lines aren't nearly as cut and dried when it comes to the Japanese. We also have to face our own racism, which was so overwhelming and so horrible that it cannot be explained away by the typical, "Those were different times," bullshit. We have to face the things we did to our own citizens, our systematic and blatant violation of their Constitutional and human rights. We have to acknowledge that America did not win the war on our own, no matter how many times that's what the narrative tells us. The contributions of Australia and New Zealand, significant on any front, were absolutely essential in the Pacific Theatre and not only because they were fighting to keep their own countries from being invaded. And eventually, we have to face the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and even before that, the firebombing of Tokyo and over sixty other Japanese cities, and, well. Regardless of any justification, looking at the results of those atrocities makes you see what war does to human beings and it's ugly and it's awful so we turn our heads away.
Anyway, that was a tangent. We don't talk a lot about the Pacific front and I assumed it was just kind of leisurely. I had two grandfathers in the war. My maternal grandfather had been in the Navy and he talked about it with fondness, how much fun he and his friends had in Melbourne on leave, fighting a submarine that snuck into Sydney harbor, the thrill of fighting out on the open sea. He said some things that are disturbing in hindsight, like how if they'd sunk a Japanese ship that was close enough, they'd take their rifles and pick off the survivors. Like how they knew they'd gotten a good hit with a submarine if entrails floated to the surface. He had a box of souvenirs that we were allowed to play with as long as we were careful; a Japanese knife, red enameled Nazi buttons he'd gotten in trade from a buddy who'd been in Europe, a piece of drab green cloth with a narrow red patch sewn on it with two gold stars. Later I'd realize it was part of a collar of a Japanese military uniform. Later I'd realize all those souvenirs came from dead bodies. Before I thought about that, though, I took him at his word. He'd had a good old time and the war had been an adventure for both him and my grandmother, who'd moved to Los Angeles to be closer to him and lived in an apartment with three other Navy wives and worked the front counter in a diner and cleaned up on tips because she was one of the prettiest women you'd ever see besides being a damn hard worker who'd never let your coffee get cold.
My paternal grandfather came back from the war traumatized. He'd been a pilot with the Army Air Corps, flying cargo and troop transport planes and watching all of his friends die. He very, very rarely talked about it, but we knew it had been bad because my father and my uncle had never learned to hunt because my grandfather had been unable to pick up a gun ever again after coming home. I remember one time he told me that he'd learned not to make friends because that way he didn't have the pain of losing them when they died. I remember him telling my brother that war was 100 planes going out, sixteen coming back in, and two coming back without bullet holes. He had nightmares and anxiety and looking back on it with hindsight and adult eyes, he had PTSD that was never treated. His story went along the more familiar story of WW2 in America, of the soldier who fought and suffered in Europe in order to save the world from the evil of the Nazi regime.
Anyway, that's sort of where my brain was even as I was deciding that, hey, if Bucky made sergeant in combat, he'd have to do it in the Pacific so maybe I should do some research and see what details I could pick out.
My vague notion that the battles in the Pacific were somehow less horrific than the ones in Europe was so very wrong. Dear fucking Lord, so fucking wrong. It was horrible for everyone. Everyone suffered. Everyone died in awful ways. Everyone who survived endured things that I can read about but can never understand even with my extremely vivid imagination and overactive empathy.
I won't go into the details here, I don't think. There's a miniseries called The Pacific that was very good even though they changed details and history around to make it flow better in the format and they sanitized a lot of the details because the reality is too awful for TV. It's based on two books written by American Marines, Helmet for My Pillow by Robert Leckie and With The Old Breed: at Peleliu and Okinawa by Eugene Sledge. They're both good, but With The Old Breed is astonishing. It's one of the best memoirs I've ever read, easily in the top five along with Angela's Ashes and Elie Wiesel's Night.
And it's these horrible battles that Bucky would have lived through to earn the rank of Sergeant. He already would have seen more death and suffering than Steve could even imagine. He already would have killed at long range and close quarters, he would have watched his best friends die, would have been terrified for his own life over and over again. And this is before he even comes back to the United States and takes Steve out on a double date to the World Expo. This is before he's experimented on by Zola. This is before he falls, before Hydra turns him into the Winter Soldier. Even before all that, he's been battle hardened and traumatized and has stopped believing in Truth or Justice or Righteousness and all those meaningless words he's told to fight for and all he believes in fighting for are the men at his side. Because like any infantryman, he's realized that he's expendable. He realizes that losses are expected and acceptable and that if he doesn't come back, no one but the men at his side are going to give a damn.
In The First Avenger, after Bucky shouts, "Let's hear it for Captain America!" his eyes fill with tears. Why? Is he disappointed that he no longer has to take care of Steve? No. Steve's the captain, and Bucky knows damn well that without their NCOs, officers can't do shit. He's still going to be looking out for Steve even though Steve outranks him. But Steve's a green soldier. He's never really seen combat because the raid on the warehouse? That wasn't combat. That wasn't the constant grind of machine gun fire, the constant terror of artillery shells bursting around you for hours on end until you almost wish one would hit you because you're about to lose your mind. I think Bucky's hurt because Steve's going to find out first hand what war really is, and it's ugly, and it's awful, and he'd wanted Steve safe and untouched by the horrors Bucky's seen and it's really fucking unfair, goddamnit. All he'd wanted was to know Steve was safe, and war took even that from him.
In conclusion, which isn't much of a conclusion because I didn't really make any supporting points, my Bucky Barnes feelings are as big as the entire world.
This entry was originally posted at http://janesays.dreamwidth.org/27372.html. Comment wherever you'd like.
I haven't read a lot of meta about these characters because I'm in the middle of writing what was supposed to be short but has turned into an epic "This Is Bucky's Life" thing.
It was supposed to just be a short kind of funny, kind of heartbreaking story about Bucky in war. Because the thing is, you didn't just get to be a sergeant without seeing combat. Unlike the rank of captain, which denotes an officer, sergeants are enlisted men and they have to earn their way up the ranks. Steve making captain without ever seeing combat is actually entirely possible - my father was a captain before he even landed in Vietnam because of his medical training and advanced degrees - but enlisted men don't get promoted like that.
Bucky enlisted shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. After basic training, he would have been a private. It usually takes a year or so to get promoted from private to private first class unless you're recommended for promotion by a commanding officer. Somehow from the spring of 1942, when he'd finished training, and June 1943 when he was in New York and took Steve to the World Expo, Bucky had gone from Private to Private First Class to Corporal to Sergeant. How'd he do that? He couldn't have been fighting in Europe - the Allied invasion wouldn't start until August of 1943.
He could have very easily been somewhere that Americans don't talk much about. He could have been on the Pacific Front. I think we ignore the Pacific Theatre of War for a lot of reasons. The narrative of WW2 in the US has overwhelmingly become one of good versus evil, which means America versus the Nazis, and the lines aren't nearly as cut and dried when it comes to the Japanese. We also have to face our own racism, which was so overwhelming and so horrible that it cannot be explained away by the typical, "Those were different times," bullshit. We have to face the things we did to our own citizens, our systematic and blatant violation of their Constitutional and human rights. We have to acknowledge that America did not win the war on our own, no matter how many times that's what the narrative tells us. The contributions of Australia and New Zealand, significant on any front, were absolutely essential in the Pacific Theatre and not only because they were fighting to keep their own countries from being invaded. And eventually, we have to face the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and even before that, the firebombing of Tokyo and over sixty other Japanese cities, and, well. Regardless of any justification, looking at the results of those atrocities makes you see what war does to human beings and it's ugly and it's awful so we turn our heads away.
Anyway, that was a tangent. We don't talk a lot about the Pacific front and I assumed it was just kind of leisurely. I had two grandfathers in the war. My maternal grandfather had been in the Navy and he talked about it with fondness, how much fun he and his friends had in Melbourne on leave, fighting a submarine that snuck into Sydney harbor, the thrill of fighting out on the open sea. He said some things that are disturbing in hindsight, like how if they'd sunk a Japanese ship that was close enough, they'd take their rifles and pick off the survivors. Like how they knew they'd gotten a good hit with a submarine if entrails floated to the surface. He had a box of souvenirs that we were allowed to play with as long as we were careful; a Japanese knife, red enameled Nazi buttons he'd gotten in trade from a buddy who'd been in Europe, a piece of drab green cloth with a narrow red patch sewn on it with two gold stars. Later I'd realize it was part of a collar of a Japanese military uniform. Later I'd realize all those souvenirs came from dead bodies. Before I thought about that, though, I took him at his word. He'd had a good old time and the war had been an adventure for both him and my grandmother, who'd moved to Los Angeles to be closer to him and lived in an apartment with three other Navy wives and worked the front counter in a diner and cleaned up on tips because she was one of the prettiest women you'd ever see besides being a damn hard worker who'd never let your coffee get cold.
My paternal grandfather came back from the war traumatized. He'd been a pilot with the Army Air Corps, flying cargo and troop transport planes and watching all of his friends die. He very, very rarely talked about it, but we knew it had been bad because my father and my uncle had never learned to hunt because my grandfather had been unable to pick up a gun ever again after coming home. I remember one time he told me that he'd learned not to make friends because that way he didn't have the pain of losing them when they died. I remember him telling my brother that war was 100 planes going out, sixteen coming back in, and two coming back without bullet holes. He had nightmares and anxiety and looking back on it with hindsight and adult eyes, he had PTSD that was never treated. His story went along the more familiar story of WW2 in America, of the soldier who fought and suffered in Europe in order to save the world from the evil of the Nazi regime.
Anyway, that's sort of where my brain was even as I was deciding that, hey, if Bucky made sergeant in combat, he'd have to do it in the Pacific so maybe I should do some research and see what details I could pick out.
My vague notion that the battles in the Pacific were somehow less horrific than the ones in Europe was so very wrong. Dear fucking Lord, so fucking wrong. It was horrible for everyone. Everyone suffered. Everyone died in awful ways. Everyone who survived endured things that I can read about but can never understand even with my extremely vivid imagination and overactive empathy.
I won't go into the details here, I don't think. There's a miniseries called The Pacific that was very good even though they changed details and history around to make it flow better in the format and they sanitized a lot of the details because the reality is too awful for TV. It's based on two books written by American Marines, Helmet for My Pillow by Robert Leckie and With The Old Breed: at Peleliu and Okinawa by Eugene Sledge. They're both good, but With The Old Breed is astonishing. It's one of the best memoirs I've ever read, easily in the top five along with Angela's Ashes and Elie Wiesel's Night.
And it's these horrible battles that Bucky would have lived through to earn the rank of Sergeant. He already would have seen more death and suffering than Steve could even imagine. He already would have killed at long range and close quarters, he would have watched his best friends die, would have been terrified for his own life over and over again. And this is before he even comes back to the United States and takes Steve out on a double date to the World Expo. This is before he's experimented on by Zola. This is before he falls, before Hydra turns him into the Winter Soldier. Even before all that, he's been battle hardened and traumatized and has stopped believing in Truth or Justice or Righteousness and all those meaningless words he's told to fight for and all he believes in fighting for are the men at his side. Because like any infantryman, he's realized that he's expendable. He realizes that losses are expected and acceptable and that if he doesn't come back, no one but the men at his side are going to give a damn.
In The First Avenger, after Bucky shouts, "Let's hear it for Captain America!" his eyes fill with tears. Why? Is he disappointed that he no longer has to take care of Steve? No. Steve's the captain, and Bucky knows damn well that without their NCOs, officers can't do shit. He's still going to be looking out for Steve even though Steve outranks him. But Steve's a green soldier. He's never really seen combat because the raid on the warehouse? That wasn't combat. That wasn't the constant grind of machine gun fire, the constant terror of artillery shells bursting around you for hours on end until you almost wish one would hit you because you're about to lose your mind. I think Bucky's hurt because Steve's going to find out first hand what war really is, and it's ugly, and it's awful, and he'd wanted Steve safe and untouched by the horrors Bucky's seen and it's really fucking unfair, goddamnit. All he'd wanted was to know Steve was safe, and war took even that from him.
In conclusion, which isn't much of a conclusion because I didn't really make any supporting points, my Bucky Barnes feelings are as big as the entire world.
This entry was originally posted at http://janesays.dreamwidth.org/27372.html. Comment wherever you'd like.