Chapter 7
Denied enlistment due to poor health as well as being a woman, Stephanie rogers refused to give up. She was determined to serve her country, and was chosen for a program unique in the annals of American warfare. One that would transform her into the world’s first super soldier.
Battle-tested, Captain America and her Howling Commandos quickly earned their stripes. Their mission: taking down HYDRA, the Nazi rogue science division.
Best friends since childhood, Bucky Barnes and Stevie Rogers were inseparable on both schoolyard and battlefield. Barnes is the only Howling Commando to give her life in service of her country.
The narrator’s voice stopped, and Bucky looked at a video of a woman with a british accent, Peggy Carter.
“That was a difficult winter,” Peggy Carter told the camera, “a blizzard had trapped half our battalion behind the German line. Stevie, uh, Captain Rogers, she fought her way through a HYDRA blockade that had pinned our allies down for months. She saved over a thousand soldiers. Including the man who would become my husband, as it turned out. Even after she dies, Stevie is still changing my life.”
Bucky moved past the video of Peggy Carter to look at a picture of Sergeant Barnes. It was like a mirror, only different. The person Bucky was looking at had confidence, a general air that she knew what she was doing. A slight smile on her courageous face. Her long, dark hair was well-groomed and pulled back into a mostly-intact bun on the top of her head. The few loose strands of hair were blowing in a wind that presumably had been present at the time the photo was taken. She wore a military uniform in the black and white picture. That woman clearly knew who she was. The Bucky standing in the museum was less sure. She read the text next to her face:
Sergeant Jamie Becky “Bucky” Barnes was the childhood best friend of Stephanie Rogers. When the two were thirteen, Bucky protected Stevie from bullies, and they were friends from that moment forward. In an art class years later, the two heard that America had joined the Second World War. Over the next two weeks, Bucky trained Stevie at Goldie’s Boxing Gym. Together, they visited a US Recruiting and Induction Center in New York where both were initially rejected due to being women. Stevie, however, would not give up, so neither would Bucky.
The two visited a second Recruitment center, where they met Peggy Carter. Miss Carter helped them to enlist in the army despite them being women, due to Carter’s position at an army boot camp. Stevie was classified as 4F and rejected from service once more, but Bucky was accepted into the army, attaining the title of Sgt. Barnes of the 107th. A year later, the 107th was captured by HYDRA, and saved by none other than Stephanie Rogers, Captain America.
From that point on, Stevie, Bucky, and a select few others from the 107th became the Howling Commandos, serving their nation by going on special missions that targeted HYDRA bases and wiped them out. On one of these missions, Sergeant Barnes fell off a train into an icy ravine. To this day, Barnes remains the only Howling Commando to give her life.