#mission report: 1945

[iwasmadetobeasoldier]

Mission Report: 1945, April 30th

AN: I understand the timeline is inconsistent with Bucky's capture and mind wipe, but I think the concept is interesting and wanted to write.

Hope you enjoy!

Warnings: none, all ages

____________

Of all the missions H.Y.D.R.A. forced me on, not many stay detailed in my mind.

All except one.

Date: April 30th, 1945

Target location: Berlin, Germany

Name: Adolf Hitler

I was taken out of cryo-freeze a week before the day. They shoved all the info about the mission they could into the programming. Then I was dropped off at the borders of Berlin at sunrise, the Allies were to march on Berlin that midday.

Yes, history said that he committed suicide, but history has been changed for the better. H.Y.D.R.A. had more power than even the Axis powers.

But- anyway, there was an agent in the room, peeking out the glass-less window through binoculars, confirming wind speed, direction and distance. My footfalls were almost silent but he turned at my approach, nodding in greeting.

I did not return the gesture but started to set up the M1892/30 Mosin Nagant bolt-action sniper rifle. Russian made.

Crude and bulky but accurate.

I could hit anything as long as the weapon was accurate.

The agent left after alerting me of the stats, closing the door behind him. I was alone. My mission one thing: to kill the Allies', and most of the Axis' powers, worst enemy. That-..that they knew of.

Resting the gun on my left arm, I watched through the scope, the target pacing back and forth in his room. His mistress trying to comfort him.

I waited, and waited. That one moment was almost here, I watched him put a pistol, most likely a German Ruger, to her head.

There was a shot.

She fell to the ground.

Another shot.

His expression was almost cold as his dog yipped loudly before it died.

Nearly there...

The firing pin to his pistol should have been dust by now, the H.Y.D.R.A. agents had set this all up.

I watched as he put it to his head and squeezed the trigger...

--------

Well, then it was back home. Home as in the compound, as Zola called it. And soon what Zemo would call it.

And now you know what really happened.

Just-...Don't let it leak out

[vivalas-vega]

fine line / part three

whoopie here I am - one more to go - sorry to my followers who don't care about marvel fics :( enjoy and please please please let me know what you think!

fine line / mcu x reader / part three

part one / part two

summary: Three kids from Brooklyn. A war that asks too much. And a woman with secrets stitched into every seam.

to be tagged in future works, please turn on post notifications for @vegaslibrary

word count: 1.2k

warnings: (not specific to this part, but for the series as a whole. this fic is 18+, you are responsible for your own media consumption). language, angst, drinking, smut, violence, references (and descriptions) of bucky's abuse within hydra, canon-typical situations - this is the mcu y'all, shit will get a little crazy, and a little devastating

1943-1945, in pieces

Brooklyn was still asleep when you crossed the bridge with a single suitcase and a coat full of secrets. By the time the sun rose you were just another silhouette in the airport, someone who looked like they were traveling for business… and you were, but probably not the business most people would have suspected. You were heading east, toward Europe, towards smoke and ghosts and names you would never keep for long. 

It all started with thread. Favors for friends, a hem that carried a cipher, a lining that held blueprints. Your hands were steady, stitches clean, and no one ever looked too closely at the girl who spent most of her time in the backroom of her mother’s seamstress shop. Secrets you traded had made their way through checkpoints stitched into collars, devices passed all security into political offices in silk. You weren’t just a courier, you were an asset. A ghost within the war that did more than most of the highest-ranking officers, but the recognition never mattered to you. Recognition would make your entire world fall apart, and it would probably take your life with it.

In Lisbon you posed as a translator for the British consulate, though your real work happened in backrooms and lamplit corridors. In Geneva you were Margot, a nurse by day and ghost by night. In Warsaw you had no name at all. Thread had gotten you in, but it was the knowledge of the difference you were making that kept you going.

Every once in a while a letter would find you, if you could even call it a letter. They were just folded scraps of paper, passed hand to hand, left in hollowed out books or coat pockets in prearranged drop spots, and they often came weeks or months after being written. Outdated, but still a lifeline. One had found you in a train station… passed to the right person at the right time, who found you just before you moved, bumped you so casually it seemed to be an accident, but when he left there was a piece of paper in your palm.

We slept in an old barn last night. I thought I heard you laughing, but it was just a crow in the rafters. Don’t laugh at that, you’ll wake the chickens. Stay warm, you always forget your gloves. 

You’d read it twice, smiling despite yourself. He could always make you laugh in places you shouldn’t, like on a train headed to your next mission. You’d talk about chickens in another life… how you’d retire to the countryside and live off your own land, never needing anyone but each other again, and maybe some chickens, just to keep things from getting too quiet. He was still planning a future with you, even if neither of you knew what it would look like. He was still looking out for you, because your hands were cold. You had forgotten your gloves, and you shoved the note clutched in your fist into the pocket of your coat, willing his words to warm your icy fingers.

Another had arrived scrawled in pencil across the back of a supply report.

Steve ate something called ‘boiled blood sausage’ and told me it tasted like ambition. I told him you’d punch him for that. He misses you. So do I. Yours, always.

They’d found each other, through all the mess. You’d heard it briefly, someone you trusted, who knew what they meant to you and did their best to keep you informed with what they knew. You tried not to focus on how they had found each other… where Bucky had been when Steve rescued him. Every time you did your hands shook and you wanted to run right to him, pull him out of this world and take him to that farm in the countryside you always talked about.

You instead focused on the message, and you let yourself laugh, a real one, in a hidden storage closet. It brought back a sense of normalcy, strange meals and dumb jokes, Steve’s endless search for poetry in misery. Blood sausage… even you can’t make that sound appealing, Steve, you had thought.

You wrote back, but never much. Scraps, half-sentences, veiled statements.

The sun sets later here. I hate it. Too much time to think about the chickens.

You’d hate the coffee. I made a friend who reminds me of you. She’s reckless, loud, and thinks she’s always right. I like her.

If you ever see a white scarf with red fringe, follow it. Someone told me it’s good luck.

They meant nothing to anyone else, but to him they said everything. You had your own secret language, full of just enough context to get the true meaning across. A scarf with red fringe wasn’t just fabric–it meant I’m near. I’m alive. They’re my contact, they’ll have a note. There was no friend, you couldn’t make them in this world, you just wanted to tell him you were thinking of all the things that made him him. 

Another scrap found you, dated weeks earlier, in the lining of a courier bag. A smirk tugged at the corners of your lips- messages received the way you used to send them. The corners were worn, the handwriting a little rougher.

You’d love it here. Fresh bread every morning, stars so bright it hurts. I try to pretend you’re beside me. Sometimes, it works.

Bread and stars, such simple things. But he knew how hungry you were for softness, and somehow, in that one sentence, he gave it to you. You traced the words with a thumb and folded the paper into your boot, each message tucked into pieces of your clothing, always close… always a part of you just like he was.

You didn’t miss him in the loud, desperate way you’d expected. It was quieter than that, like a stitch pulled too tight beneath your skin. You saw his face in every street brawler, you heard Steve’s voice every time someone doubted you. Sometimes you awoke in the middle of the night with Bucky’s name on your lips, longing for the nights you used to share, the love and passion that spread out all around you. Others, you woke up with Steve’s voice in your mind, always so earnest and encouraging. Sometimes you hated both of them, in a loud, desperate way. You hated them for finding each other, for having each other in all of this… but then you’d hate yourself for even thinking it. This was all you’d ever wanted. Steve and Bucky following their dreams. It wasn’t their fault yours happened to be so lonely.

You danced once, in Prague, with a Czech agent that didn’t speak your language in a dark tavern filled with smoke. He’d spun you gently, and you almost forgot, for just a moment. But when his hand slid to the small of your back you flinched, and you remembered it all too well. You felt the itch of longing and anger, guilt for letting hands that didn’t belong to him touch you, even as innocently as this, and you disappeared in that way you’d become so good at.

You didn’t think of yourself as a soldier, not yet, but you were becoming something sharp. The seamstress from Brooklyn was still in there somewhere, buried beneath aliases and field reports, beneath the taste of gunpowder and ash. Each new mission, each new target, was a way to bury the ache of missing him. But it never worked.

How could it?

How could anything ease the ache when it came from missing Bucky? 

He wasn’t a man easily outrun. The memory of his eyes, his laugh, his touch, and that broken groan meant only for you, couldn’t disappear as easily as you did.

prev / next

[mariacallous]

With U.S. President Donald Trump, many high-tech titans have decided that now—after their coffers overflowing—Americans don’t need much government. Leading the charge to dismantle it is Elon Musk. His role is especially jarring because Silicon Valley was built on the government’s largesse. A booming high-tech sector—one of the signature achievements of the modern economy—wouldn’t have happened without the administrative state that Trump is seeking to root out.

The history of Silicon Valley exposes the grave dangers posed by the war on government. The hazard is that as a result of this push, Trump succeeds in breaking apart the marriage between Washington and the technology industry that has helped make America great.

The road to high tech really started to be built during World War II. In 1945, Vannevar Bush, who had directed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development during the war, captured the zeitgeist of the era when he published “Science: The Endless Frontier,” which offered a declaration of principle for the government supporting scientific education. The report, submitted to President Harry Truman, explained why government support for research was so important to national security and the economic well-being of the nation. “The pioneer spirit is still vigorous within this nation,” Bush wrote in the letter that accompanied the report. “Science offers a largely unexplored hinterland for the pioneer who has the tools for his task. The rewards of such exploration both for the Nation and the individual are great. Scientific progress is one essential key to our security as a nation, to our better health, to more jobs, to a higher standard of living, and to our cultural progress.”

Much of the development of large mainframe computing systems was born of defense needs. While mainframe systems were being built in the early 1930s, during the war, the U.S. Army and several other defense units developed the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) under the direction of Maj. Gen. Gladeon Barnes. Congress devoted massive resources (today’s equivalent of millions in current) dollars to the construction of what would become the first general-use computer. The most important initial function of ENIAC, which was completed in 1946 by University of Pennsylvania scholars John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, was its ability to provide cutting-edge calculations about the trajectories of weapons. Before the project ended, the government discovered ways to use ENIAC for a wide range of jobs, including advanced weather prediction and wind tunnel design. With funding from the Census Bureau, Mauchly and Eckert next worked on the Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC), resulting in a digital computer allowing for data processing and storage methods that were new and extremely beneficial to industry. With CBS anchor Walter Cronkite standing by, UNIVAC, which weighed a whopping 16,000 pounds, famously predicted early on election evening in 1952 that Dwight Eisenhower would defeat Adlai Stevenson by a landslide. A computer star was born. The machine would even appear on the cover of a Superman comic book.

Throughout the early Cold War in the 1940s and 1950s, the federal government poured resources into the production of knowledge. The GI Bill of Rights (1944) vastly expanded the student body by covering the cost of enrollment and more for veterans, many of whom were first-generation students. In 1950, Truman signed legislation creating the National Science Foundation, an institution that complemented the National Institutes of Health by aiding nonmedical science and engineering. Their shared mission was to “promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity and welfare; and to secure the national defense.” Eisenhower, a Republican, worked with congressional Democrats such as Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson to respond to the Soviet Union’s successful launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957 by building on this precedent. The National Defense Education Act (1958) financed student loans, graduate fellowships, and research funds. By the early 1960s, with substantial help from the government, U.S. universities were booming and considered to be among the finest institutions of learning anywhere in the world. As the Cold War kept heating up, one area where Americans were clearly ahead was on the campus.

Without the government-industry connection that emerged from this era, there would be no internet. While there may still be people debating whether former Vice President Al Gore invented the internet, there is no dispute that the federal government did. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), established in 1958, undertook high-risk, large-scale research, cooperating with private firms, that had the potential to produce enormous payoffs. DARPA was central to the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) in the late 1960s, which constituted the first advanced computer network. Much of the drive for the military had been the desire for a functional network that could survive a nuclear attack. ARPANET was the basis for the modern internet. The National Science Foundation announced a distinct section, called NSFNET, in 1986. The foundation connected five supercomputer centers and granted academic network’s access. The project was considered to have been the “backbone” for the creation of the commercial internet. Other notable computer innovations also grew out of this operation. DARPA dollars facilitated the Stanford Research Institute’s making of the mouse, a technology that made it easier for an individual without great technical expertise to interface with computers. In 1991, Congress passed the High-Performance Computing Act—legislation that Gore helped move—which funded a team of programmers at the University of Illinois’s National Center for Supercomputing Applications that helped vastly expand the internet. Marc Andreessen, one of the engineers who co-created Mosaic and Netscape, acknowledged in 2000, “If it had been left to private industry, it wouldn’t have happened, at least, not until years later.”

Indeed, Silicon Valley would not have become what it is today without the government. The DARPA-Stanford research partnership, as the historian Margaret O’Mara has brilliantly recounted in Cities of Knowledge and The Code, is a big reason why the university emerged as such a powerhouse in high-tech education and research. Government money fueled the transformation of a formerly sleepy region, which O’Mara reminds us would have once been improbable to imagine as a hub of big inventions and money. A series of Stanford leaders, including provost Frederick Terman, opened their arms to the federal coffers and shepherded the Stanford Research Park into its current incarnation.

Not only was Stanford built up with government monies, but many of the companies that have littered the landscape in northern California had Washington to thank. Fairchild Semiconductor, established in San Jose in 1957, took form with Air Force and NASA contracts. NASA’s ongoing investment in the integrated circuits that it and other companies produced allowed costs to become accessible and for the semiconductor industry to emerge. Federal dollars during the 1980s and 1990s that were tied to programs such as President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative—a massive laser missile shield that would protect the United States from nuclear attack, which critics derided as “Star Wars”—resulted in all sorts of computer innovations not envisioned by the administration’s plan. Though stories about Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak working out of a garage capture our entrepreneurial imaginations, the role of the administrative state continues to loom large over the entire region. “From the marble halls of Washington and the concrete canyons of Wall Street,” O’Mara writes in The Code, Silicon Valley was made by many hands. Other “cities of knowledge,” including Cambridge, Massachusetts; Philadelphia; and Atlanta, were similar beneficiaries of government.

The federal government has helped high tech in many other ways besides policies directly related to computers and the internet. Immigration reforms, for instance, that opened the doors to high-skilled foreign-born immigrants resulted in the arrival of people who helped build the computing products that the entire world depends on today. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society helped a young Sergey Brin and his family obtain a visa to emigrate from the Soviet Union in 1979. With that, Google was born. Musk was able to finish his education at the University of Pennsylvania with a student visa and stay in the United States because of an H1-B visa. Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang immigrated with his family from Taiwan in 1978. The Small Business Investment Incentive Act (1980) provided valuable dollars to Silicon Valley firms as they struggled to make a name for themselves.

Indeed, Musk’s company Tesla benefited from government assistance. In 2009, a critical moment for the company, Tesla received $465 million in low-interest loans from the U.S. Energy Department that it used to construct the Model S. Electric vehicle tax credits have grown consumer demand for his and other vehicles. Federal research grants played a role in the different components that make up these cars.

The federal government and the high-tech industry have stood side by side for decades. And the high-tech story has happened many times over, often in some of what have become the country’s most conservative areas. In From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt, historian Bruce J. Schulman traces how the revitalization of the South and Southwest, ground zero for the modern conservative movement of the post-1960s era, was built on defense contracts and military bases. Reagan’s presidency, which pushed politics rightward, derived electoral profits from massive congressional investments made over the decades after the war.

While many agree on the importance of markets, the hand of government—sometimes hidden from view—has been equally essential to economic success. The history of high tech has revolved around a genuine partnership between markets and government, not one or the other. To destroy the partnership threatens to destroy what has made the U.S. economy great. Every American will be forced to pay the cost.

[usafphantom2]

17th August 1943. The most ambitious attack planned by the USAAF’s Eighth Air Force to date was launched against the Messerschmitt factory at Regensburg and the vital ball bearing plants at Schweinfurt. Over 370 aircraft were to take part. 146 would bomb Regensburg before flying on to North Africa in the first ‘shuttle mission’ of its type, while the rest would strike Schweinfurt and return to base, There was to be a half hour interval between the two groups, not enough time for Luftwaffe defences to regroup.

However, the British weather was to play havoc with this complex plan from the outset. Thick cloud delayed the takeoff of the Regensburg force, while the bombers bound for Schweinfurt then waited several hours longer. This meant that instead of having to counter two simultaneous raids, Luftwaffe fighters could strike one formation, then refuel and rearm before engaging the next. The consequences would be severe.

Though the Regensburg formation was accompanied by P-47 Thunderbolts and RAF Spitfires, they were relatively few in number and had to turn back at the German frontier, the limit of their range at the time. Losses to Luftwaffe fighters and flak soon mounted, with 24 of the 139 bombers which crossed the Dutch coast being lost. On reaching North Africa, 55 more were found to be too badly damaged for immediate repair by the limited facilities available and were left behind; many never flew again.

The experience of the Schweinfurt force was no less painful. Though some Bomb Groups escaped relatively unscathed, others were badly mauled, in one case losing 50 percent of its strength. Escort fighters fought hard to protect their charges, but again had to turn back at the German frontier. Attacks by Luftwaffe aircraft continued throughout the inbound and outbound legs. 36 B-17s of the 230 on the Schweinfurt mission were shot down, while a number of other aircraft were written off on return to base.

The attack on Regensburg was judged a success, with the first bombs being particularly accurately placed. Many factory buildings were severely affected, while an unknown consequence was the damaging of construction jigs for the Me 262 jet fighter. At Schweinfurt, the bombing had been less concentrated, though German reports still showed a substantial drop in ball bearing production. Nonetheless, in both cases production swiftly recovered, while efforts to disperse factories to less vulnerable locations were accelerated.

Armaments minister Albert Speer later stated that immediate follow-up attacks would have had far greater consequences, but this didn’t happen. The loss of so many aircraft - and 600 trained aircrew killed, missing or captured - meant that no deep penetration raids were flown until early September. It was becoming clear that the USAAF’s faith in self-defending bomber formations was badly misplaced, and long-range escort fighters were desperately needed. Yet it would take a further devastating mission against Schweinfurt in October to bring about a pause in Eighth Air Force operations against Germany.

Pictured:

1) Smoke rising from the Messerschmitt factory at Regensburg on 17th August.

📷 American Air Museum FRE 7719

2) B-17s of the 379th Bomb Group over Schweinfurt.

📷 American Air Museum UPL 19606

3) B-17 of the 100th Bomb Group, force landed near Dübendorf, Switzerland, on 17th August. The aircraft had fallen out of formation on the run in to bomb Regensburg with two engines damaged by fighter attack. The entire crew were interned for the rest of the war. More than 70 B-17s and B-24s would land or crash in Switzerland by April 1945.

📷 American Air Museum FRE 4095

4) Airmen of the 385th Bomb Group meet civilians in front of B-17 Flying Fortress nicknamed "Shack Bunny" at Telerghma airfield, Algeria, following the Regensburg raid. Serviceable bombers later flew back to Britain, conducting an attack on Bordeaux airfield en route.

📷 American Air Museum FRE 1345

@JamieMctrusty via X

[multiverse-aesthetic]

A/n : the pic is edited by Me , you can't copy my work , if you share any parts of my fanfic on any kind of applications please give credit ..

Chapter 2 : thirty years of silence

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

Elena Shaw .

Her house sat in the quiet outskirts of a small town, hidden from the noise of the world. It wasn’t much—just a single-story home with green shutters, a small porch, and a backyard that stretched into thick woods. Safe. Peaceful. A place where no one was looking for her.

Inside, the house was cozy but filled with signs of life. Books stacked haphazardly on shelves, old coffee mugs on the counter, and a faint smell of cinnamon from the candle burning in the kitchen.

Milo, her golden retriever mix, was sprawled out on the couch, his tail thumping lazily as Elena grabbed her morning coffee. She wore black leggings, an oversized sweatshirt, and thick socks—the kind of comfortable clothing she never used to wear.

This life? This was new.

She grabbed the mail from the small wooden table near the door, flipping through the usual bills and junk until her fingers stilled.

An envelope. Unmarked.

Her stomach twisted.

She set her coffee down and ran her fingers along the paper, feeling the weight of it. Thick. Too thick for a letter.

There was no sender, but she already knew.

Steve.

She carefully tore it open, and a small note fell onto the table.

I need you to read this. All of it. Then we’ll talk. - Steve

Elena frowned as she placed the folder on the counter, then pulled out the contents. A thick, yellowed file.

Stamped across the front, in bold red ink, were the words:

PROJECT: WINTER SOLDIER

ASSET FILE - JAMES BUCHANAN BARNES

Her breath caught in her throat.

She hesitated. Part of her didn’t want to read it. Didn’t want to know.

But she flipped the file open anyway.

The first few pages were basic description

Name: James Buchanan Barnes.

D.O.B.: March 10, 1917.

Place of Birth: Brooklyn, NY.

Military Service: 107th Infantry, Sergeant. Declared KIA: 1945.

Then the reports changed.

Captured: 1945. Subject sustained critical injuries following a fall from a HYDRA train. Retrieved by Soviet operatives. Experimental procedures conducted.

Elena’s eyes narrowed as she turned the page. Images.

One of them was Bucky—before. Young, bright-eyed, human. Standing next to Steve, both of them grinning like idiots.

Then the next image—Bucky restrained on a metal slab, eyes hollow, metal arm gleaming under harsh fluorescent light. The Winter Soldier.

Her stomach churned , she read on.

"Subject exhibited extreme resistance to reprogramming. Initial attempts unsuccessful. Additional conditioning required."

Below it, another document.

THE WINTER SOLDIER INITIATIVE

"Methods: Electroshock therapy, sensory deprivation, chemical sedation. Subject exhibited violent responses to memory erasure—required multiple reapplications of Winter Soldier Protocol."

Elena clenched her jaw. Memory erasure.

They wiped him. Over and over and over again , she closed her eyes at the thought before She flipped the page.

A report from 1984.

"Asset successfully deployed. Mission execution: flawless. Subject does not question orders. No memory recall detected."

The list went on. Assassination orders. Targets eliminated. Some names she recognized. Some she didn’t want to recognize.

Thirty years.

Thirty years of being their weapon.

Elena closed the file, her fingers pressing into the worn edges of the paper , letting out a shaky breath.

She had seen a lot in her lifetime. Done things she didn’t talk about.

But this?

This was something else.

The quiet in her house suddenly felt suffocating.

Her phone buzzed against the coffee table.

She snatched it up, still staring at the file, and pressed answer.

“Elena.” Steve’s voice was low. Tired.

She swallowed, gripping the phone tighter.

“Steve. What the hell did you just drop on my doorstep?”

A long pause. Then, quietly:

“You read it.”

“You left it in my house. What was I supposed to do—ignore it?”

“I needed you to see it for yourself.”

She closed her eyes, frustration simmering beneath her skin.

“Steve, I need you to talk to me. Right now. Start from the beginning.”

She heard him exhale.

“I found him in Bucharest,” Steve said. “I’ve been tracking sightings for months—off-the-grid places, places he wouldn’t think I’d look.” A pause.

“I almost lost him twice.”

Elena glanced at the Winter Soldier file, flipping it open with her free hand. So many places. So many missions.

She exhaled slowly. “And?”

“…He doesn’t trust me,” Steve admitted. “I don’t blame him.”

Something about the way he said it made her stomach twist.

“He ran.” Steve’s voice was softer now, careful. “And when I caught up to him, he was—he was ready to fight me, Elena.”

Her grip tightened on the phone.

“But I told him…” Steve hesitated. “I told him I knew who he was. That I wasn’t going to turn him in. That I just—I just wanted to talk.”

Elena didn’t say anything.

Because that must have killed him. Steve wasn’t a man who hesitated, but when it came to Bucky—this ghost from his past, this man Hydra had turned into a machine—he wasn’t just fighting against an enemy.

He was fighting to get his best friend back.

And Bucky… Bucky didn’t know him.

Steve continued, voice heavy. “I told him he wasn’t safe out there, not with people still hunting him. And I said—I said I had a place for him to go. Someone I trusted.”

Elena’s throat went dry

,“…Me?” she manges to whisper out

“Yeah.” Steve said quietly , she sighs

“Steve, this isn’t just some old war buddy who needs a place to crash. This is—”

“I know.” His voice was steady, but there was something behind it. A quiet urgency. “And I also know he needs help. Real help. I can’t keep dragging him from place to place hoping no one finds him. He needs somewhere safe.”

She swallowed, staring at the closed file.

“If I say yes,” she asked, “how long are we talking?”

“I don’t know.” Steve’s voice was careful. “Maybe a while. Maybe not. Depends on him.”

Him.

The man who had once been James Buchanan Barnes.

The man who had once been nothing but a ghost with a metal arm and a kill order.

“I’m not asking you to fix him.” Steve sighs , Her throat tightened.

“I’m asking you to help him.” He added quietly

She exhaled slowly, her fingers curling over the edge of the file “Call me when you know.”

Then Steve sighed, and she could practically hear the relief in his voice.

“Thank you, Elena.”

She ran a hand through her hair. “Yeah. Just don’t get yourself killed.”

He chuckled lightly, but there was a heaviness to it.

“I’ll be in touch.”

The line went dead.

Elena slowly lowered the phone.

Milo stretched out on the couch, tail thumping lazily.

She looked at the file one last time, the words Winter Soldier still glaring back at her.

[gasgasdaily]

Today, we're not talking about cars itself but a man of legend and myth, the "American Cobra" himself, Carroll Shelby.

Carroll Shelby was born on 11th Jan, 1923 in Leeburg, Texas. By 7, his parents realized that he had difficulty breathing and would often pass out after running whilst playing and upon sending him for checks, then did they realize that he had a valve pressure leakage near his heart which rendered him unable to do strenuous activities but for speed junkie, Shelby didn't care. When his family moved to Dallas, he would often ride his bike to the dirt track to watch races and by his teens, he was proficient enough to tinker on his father's Ford truck (pickup). He would then be enrolled into the Georgia Institute of Technology for the aeronautics department. However by 1941, everything changed.

Japan bombed Pearl Harbour in 1942 and in that instant, US was embroiled into WWII and needed people to join the war effort, fast. Shelby who always liked the trill of speed, decided to enlist in 1941 but there's a massive problem, his medical. Knowing that he would be rejected if the Army Air Force (Yes, it didn't become known as the USAF till near the end of the war in 1945) knew about his heart condition thus he faked his health reports to be enlisted as a cadet pilot. Rumour was that to bend the rule, he enlisted as a paratrooper and upon passing the tests, he then switched to being a pilot but regardless rumours or not, he did eventually pass his cadet pilot courses and officially became a second lieutenant by 1942, just in time for the war albeit with difficulty. Initially, his CO apparently managed to get his original medical report and was determined to fail him due to the health risk he impose but then he pleaded with the CO that his condition isn't as serious as stated and he can fly a plane without his medical issues impeding him nor the mission. The CO then relented and let him try the course out and if he passes, he passes but if any time in the middle he faints or causes serious issues during training, he'll be booted out of the course. Eventually, he passed. He had wanted to be a frontline pilot of either being a fighter pilot or a bomber but his CO, yet again worried for his health, intervened and instead assigned him to be a flight trainer for bombers across Texas thus throughout the war, he went across all the military airfields in Texas to train bomber squadrons and he was rather good at it and flew multiple different bombers like the B-18 Bolo, B-25 Mitchell, B-17 Flying Fortress and even the B-29 Super Fortress after being moved to Denver, Colorado right before the war ended.

Discharged after the armistice, he went on to work in various lines of jobs including being a tech for an oil rig company somewhere in 1946 till he saved enough money and with his military pension, opened a poultry farm in 1950 but the farm failed and would cause him to declare bankruptcy in 1953. Despite being bankrupt, he would continue chasing his passion, racing and from 1951-1953, he would race in multiple events and won quite a few till he eventually caught the eye on an European that would bridge his horizon into the top league and that's Aston Martin's team principal for their motorsport division, John Wyer.

Shelby was racing in Argentina in 1954 for the SCCA where he met Wyer who then asked him to join the team to race for them at the 12hrs of Sebring which, Shelby quickly agreed. However, Shelby's car snapped an axle thus rendering him out of the race but his pace was electrifying. This gave him even more favours with the team and Wyer himself who would ask Shelby to retain in the team and race for them even more. Shelby would then race for the Aston Martin team with their DBR3 at Monza and Silverstone which received great results. After that, Shelby would jump around teams and race for them as long as they paid him which, he did good enough but he met with a serious accident in 1957 during his race at Riverside International Raceway which left him out of action for 2 months after severely destroying his nose which required plastic surgery and also 72 stitches across his cheeks. This didn't stop him as once he recovered, he went back to racing immediately. He would race for multiple teams still but would still race mainly for Aston Martin of they called and his luck shined in 1959. Wyer called him up to race in that year's Le Mans with the new DBR1 and the team, with Shelby's help, won the race. That would be Shelby's racing glory but also his bane and "alarm clock".

During that race, Shelby had actually nearly blacked out due to his health issues but he forced himself to be awake and persevere thru the pain and took the win. However, he knew his time was nearly up and went for a check to find out that his heart was totally strained to the maximum and if he was to race that strenuously again, he would die from a cardiac arrest. Undeterred, he continued but each time, the bout of attacks from his heart was getting longer and stronger thus by 1960, he caved and hung his racing boots but, he wasn't done STILL.

After hanging up his racing boot, he would open an advanced driving school just beside Riverside International Raceway with the racing legends of the time, Pete Brock whilst also opening a tuner shop in LA called "Shelby American". His trip racing across Europe had also taught him that the US itself had a severe lack of sports cars and in his eyes, muscle cars were not "sports cars" thus he decided to merge them two together to produce his own ideal of an "American sports car" but no one in America had the know-how except the Europeans so he went to England and eventually, he set eyes on a company, AC Cars. AC Cars were a part of the Bristol Aeroplane Company and they've stopped building car engines thus Shelby found the AC Ace to be a great doner chassis . After acquiring the rights to import the chassis into the US, he then went to Ford and brokered a deal to get them to supply him with their V8s and transmission. Combined, it became the AC Cobra and a total of 100 units were built and sold by 1963.

Shelby's team would take the AC Cobras to various racing events across America and despite it doing well, Shelby also realized that the roadster platform of the AC Cobra was not suitable for high speed tracks thus he decided that to beat the likes of Ferrari and Porsches who by now were all using enclosed coupe-style designs for their racecars, he needed to follow suit and he did with the Daytona Coupe. Car debuted in 1964 where it performed extremely well that it even won Le Mans for its class and even won the overall manufacturers International GT championship.

With his name now solidified in the tuning, production, tuning and racing world, their old pal, Ford, came knocking. Ford had in early 1963 tried to buy the failing Ferrari business but after Henry Ford II (aka "The Deuce") was ridiculed by Enzo Ferrari bad, he ordered the Ford engineers to make a car with no budgets set just to beat Ferrari but Ford, who hasn't been officially racing with a factory team in the US for a long time, needed an outside source for help and having ties to Ford, Shelby became one of the top choices to work with and Lee Ioccoca became the bridging gap between the two companies which would become the GT40 project.

Ford would buy the Lola chassis to work with as they simply did not have the time to create a new one and with Shelby's know-how to endurance racing and race car tuning, they were supposed to be ready to race and perform well in 1964. However, the car performed horribly with the Mk.1 as whatever Shelby and his test driver and friend he met during Shelby's days racing in the SCCA fold, Ken Miles, had proposed was vetoed by the Ford execs. This caused the car to be extremely unreliable and the same car, despite upgrades, was still shit in the 1965 season. So for 1966, "The Deuce" gave Shelby free reign to do what he wants to ensure a clear victory against Ferrari and Shelby got to work with the Mk.II, this time without bureaucracy bullshit and, it worked. He widened the rear abit to fit in the bigger 427ci (7L) V8 and with the widening of the rears, it also allowed a slightly larger tire to give it better stability and it shows as the car performed well across the entire season winning in Sebring, Daytona and eventually, the race "The Deuce" wanna beat Ferrari at, Le Mans by clocking 1-2-3, an all-kill. By 1966, Ford had decided to design and build the upgrade of the shell for the new Ford GT40 themselves and they made it with a honeycomb structure and named it the Mk.IV. Shelby would then work on the engineering and mechanical side of things like he always does but upon testing, the car crashed which took Ken Miles with it and killed him instantly. Shelby would then quit making race cars outright after reworking the Mk.IV to perform.

In the meantime of helping Ford in building race cars, his early performance also gifted him the chance to tinker with Ford road-going product and just nice that in 1965, Ford launched the Mustang and he straight got to work. He managed to make the GT350 then the GT500 afterwards where these cars would be lethal weapons on the roads and streets. The GT350 would even be famous to have been bought in bulks by Hertz Rental for weekend drivers who wanted to have fun and can rent it from them.

However, after years of working with Ford, the situation soured by the late 70s and thus after a dispute falling out, Shelby stopped working with Ford products. Meanwhile, the one that got Shelby involved with the GT40 project in the first place, Lee Ioccoca had also left Ford and became the chief of Chrysler. Chrysler was in a very bad shape back then and needing to bring in new blood to revitalize the brand after the fuel crisis of the 70s Ioccoca immediately got Shelby to work with him after learning that he had abandoned Ford. Thus, Shelby across the 80s went on to work on Dodge & Chrysler stuff with special and mystical models like the Omni GLH and the GLH-S ("Goes like Hell"/"Goes Like Hell Somemore"). He would later on also be one of the advisors for the Dodge Viper R/T during its development.

After the launch of the Viper and the step down of Lee Ioccoca, Shelby left the partnership with Chrysler also and continued doing stuff on his own with his own company and even made a purpose built machine with its own chassis and body panels all designed in-house mated to an Oldsmobile 4L V8 making 350hp and the whole car was called the "Shelby Series 1", Shelby American's first self-built car. Due to the high costs, Shelby had to sell stakes in his company to bring in funds to complete the dream thus he sold parts of his company to a firm called Venture Corporation who bought the rights to not just Shelby American itself but also the rights to produce the Series 1. However, the company went bust in 2004 and prior to that, a total of 249 were built of from the proposed 500 models. Because he had lost his company too in the process of the sale and bankruptcy of the company that bought his up, he had to recreate another company, Shelby Automobiles Inc. to continue in doing his works.

Right after he set up his new company, Ford came knocking on his doors again for a collab which he readily agreed by designing a new retro-restyled Cobra concept with modern parts which was the rage in the 2000s. He would eventually stuck with working on Fords that by 2005, he was back in tuning the Mustangs that another GT500 was made, a gap of 34 years since the partnership fizzled out in 1971.

Shelby and his new firm would continue working on Fords since 2006 till the time of his death in 2012 aged 89. Despite that, Shelby's name still carries "performance" till this date and he himself made multiple legendary cars fit to be called "holy grails" of American automobiles.

[thankssaragorn]

[mission report] bucky barnes 1945-2015

my musical meta for the winter soldier strap in this is super long

[i, carrion by hozier] the rest of my pre-death stevebucky thesis is that a week before the alps mission they're all stressed the fuck out and having the worst time and so steve and bucky hook up in a tent in the woods and then don't talk about it ever again its so awkward and they spend the next week pretending so hard like nothing happened but also like wondering if it meant anything or if it was just sex and then bucky dies. (and then in the future bucky is like "hey so did we fuck in a tent in switzerland or did hydra like implant that memory or what" and steve is staring at the wall like "don't ever speak to me ever again".) separate from this, the night before the alps mission they're on watch and they have group delusion time and talk about what they're going to do after the war and steve is like "whatever we do we do it together" and bucky is like "i am going to die soon" and its great its so them.

[the fall] - [no hard feelings by the avett brothers], which is bucky lying in the snow and making peace with his death and also being like "steve i don't blame you for this it's okay" even though he knows steve will carry this for the rest of his life. [you'll never walk alone covered by marcus mumford], which i scalped from a fanfic (the hundred year playlist by girlbookwrm) and gives me crazy huge feelings like i envision a hazy camera hovering over bucky lying in the snow with his arm torn off and the snow falling on his blue coat like its a vibes song. "though your dreams be tossed and blown" like shut upp okay rodgers and hammerstein when i catch you... [in a week by hozier & karen cowley] which is bucky thinking about dying and being like "yeah this won't be so bad, at least i'll see my family again eventually" and then hearing boots crunch towards him and seeing russians and thinking he has been saved.

[doomsday by lizzie mcalpine] this is like when he's in a cell in a base somewhere and they're keeping him alive like they wont let him die, and he doesn't really want to die but he also doesn't want to be tortured so. also he's convinced that steve is going to come and rescue him because last time he was in a hydra prison steve came to rescue him. and as time passes he gets angrier and angrier at steve for not coming to rescue him and a part of him breaks a little.

[sun bleached flies by ethel cain] okay i waffle on this one because mostly i think it's a steve song but there is some bucky stuff here to work with like in the context of him kinda realizing that steve is not coming to rescue him. and karpov & the russians keep him alive but he's mostly just sitting in a dark room with his thoughts and he starts thinking about every bad thing he's ever done in his entire life and wondering if this is like punishment for that time he stole from the grocer or that time he sat and watched while a fellow soldier bled out and he didn't call for a medic or do anything he just watched or that time he fucked steve in a tent in switzerland. and he kinda just decides that this is how things are meant to be and another part of him breaks a little.

[flowers by anais mitchell] and then one day karpov comes into his cell with a stack of newspapers and they all have the headline "captain america dead" and he leaves bucky with the stack of papers and bucky is so bored and upset and he doesn't want to read them because if he reads them then they're real but he does anyway he sits and reads all of them and he knows now why steve hasn't come to rescue him and this is when another part of him breaks a little. this song is from a musical called hadestown and it's the part where eurydice has signed her life away to hades and shes so angry at herself for choosing safety over freedom and she remembers orpheus, the one she left behind, and all of the sunshine and joy that he brought to her and how its all gone now that she's given her life to hades. and im not making an orpheus/eurydice parallel here because first of all bucky is orpheus and second of all i don't have time. so bucky's just like lying in his cell thinking about steve being dead and i think after this he doesn't really want to live anymore because when he fell he accepted his death right, and now that acceptance is being taken from him. "you, the one i left behind, if you ever walk this way / come and find me lying in the bed i made"

[the phoenix by fall out boy] so this is a montage of all the years they spend laying the trigger words. because in my world they do old fashioned brainwashing before the machines because they don't have the tech for it. and it like takes a couple of years to do all ten words and i imagine each of them has a specific purpose but im not creative enough for that. i do think that the fic 'the hundred year playlist' linked above does a really good job with this there's a beautifully written chapter about the trigger words so go read that and listen to this song and you'll catch my vibe sorry all i do is glaze this fic i just really love it.

[ptolemaea by ethel cain] to me this is like hydra figuring out the mind wiping machine and like maybe they test it on him a bunch of times before it works sorry that's literally so terrible i'm done with this one no more meta.

[timefigher by lucy dacus] so this is a montage spanning like the 60s-80s ish. like years passing through cryo, wake up, wipe, trigger words, mission, wipe, sleep. like the routine we see in the beginning of cacw but every time it happens it's like its happening for the first time but also like it's always happened. and sometimes he's awake enough to start remembering that things aren't as they seem but he's never awake long enough to really like be aware of who he is. "I fought time, it won in a landslide / i'm just as good as anybody, i'm just as bad as anybody"

[s/c/a/r/e/c/r/o/w by my chemical romance] so i did make a post about this song already. but this is my training the widows song, like in a deeply sad way. just go read the post i already made that sums it up nicely.

[us and them by pink floyd] this is for that time that the fanon decided bucky gets away for a few weeks in new york in the 70s and lives on the streets and starts to remember a bit but not enough. like he goes to where he used to live and where he used to work and its different, but he doesn't know why he's going there he just knows he's supposed to. and maybe he sees his sisters like at the store or something and he's like i know im missing something but idk what im missing. and i kinda love that i think it's horrible that he gets so close but not really. also i know the times are wonky because he probably trained the widows in the 90s but this flows better musically.

[sleep by my chemical romance] and then this is when he's moved to the united states but the russians don't give pierce the book with the trigger words so they have to drug him really heavy to get him to comply. and its just wake, drug, wipe, kill, drug, wipe, freeze, repeat. and the drugs aren't as effective as the trigger words so it's less like he's a blank slate and more like he's trapped behind a wall and he's piloting his body but not really. idk if that makes any sense.

[lovefms]

cheers  rang  out  across  the  launch  grounds  yesterday  as  the  orpheus,  humanity’s  most  ambitious  spacecraft,  ascended  into  the  night  sky.  the  international  coalition  for  human  preservation  (ICHP)  hailed  the  departure  of  project  39  as  “the  greatest  act  of  hope  in  an  age  of  uncertainty.” led  by  captain  elias  rowe,  a  decorated  war  hero,  the  crew  of  20  set  forth  to  find  a  new  home  for  humankind,  should  the  fires  of  war  consume  the  earth.  experts  predict  the  orpheus  will  complete  its  mission  and  return  within  a  year,  bringing  news  of  new  worlds  and  brighter  futures.

JANUARY  2,  1941 “PROJECT  39  OVERDUE:  WHERE  ARE  OUR  EXPLORERS?”

WASHINGTON,  D.C.  —  one  year  since  the  expected  return  of  project  39’s  brave  explorers,  anxious  loved  ones  and  officials  await  news.  although  ICHP  scientists  maintain  that  minor  delays  are  possible  due  to  unforeseen  spaceflight  conditions,  internal  documents  reveal  growing  concern.  rumours  suggest  the  orpheus  may  have  experienced  navigational  errors  or  communication  failures.

NOVEMBER  7,  1945 “FIVE  YEARS  LATER:  THE  GHOSTS  OF  PROJECT  39”

BOSTON,  MASSACHUSETTS  —  as  the  world  rebuilds  in  the  aftermath  of  the  second  world  war,  the  fate  of  project  39  weighs  heavily  on  surviving  family  members.  once  celebrated  as  heroes,  the  20  volunteers  are  now  quietly  mourned.  no  signals  have  been  received,  no  sightings  reported. a  small  memorial  service  was  held  yesterday  at  the  original  launch  site. the  speaker’s  words  were  brief:  “we  sent  them  to  the  stars.  may  they  rest  among  them.”

AUGUST  12,  1969 “30  YEARS  GONE:  THE  SILENCE  OF  THE  ORPHEUS”

a  generation  has  grown  up  since  the  launch  of  project  39.  some  historians  argue  the  mission  was  a  well-intentioned  tragedy.  declassified  documents  suggest  officials  knew  greater  temporal  risks  were  possible  than  publicly  disclosed. families  of  the  lost  continue  to  advocate  for  official  recognition  and  compensation. “history  must  remember  them,”  said  a  granddaughter  of  one  missing  explorer.  “they  gave  their  futures  so  we  might  have  ours.”

MARCH  29,  2039 “STRANGERS  FROM  THE  PAST:  ORPHEUS  RETURNS”

in  an  event  no  historian  could  have  predicted,  long-lost  spacecraft  orpheus  re-entered  earth’s  atmosphere  yesterday.  intact,  alive,  and  carrying  its  original  crew. to  the  astonishment  of  all,  the  crew  has  aged  barely  a  year.  to  them,  it  has  been  mere  months.  to  earth,  it  has  been  a  century.  government  officials  have  confirmed  that  survivors  of  project  39  will  be  offered  asylum  and  support.  but  questions  remain:  where  do  they  belong  now?

[owlclawstudios]

ink demonth day 17th : sailor

tw : mentions of uss indianapolis, ww2 and mention of the shark attacks on the uss indiapolis survivors.

march 8th 1942 the us had entered ww2 a few months ago after the bombing of pearl harbor henry was skimming through the mail he grabbed a letter and opened it,

it was a letter from the us navy.

Henry read carefully for a moment before he realized what the letter was. He had been drafted into the Navy. His stomach dropped to the floor as he read the words. Join the US Navy today!

"I'm being sent to war..." he whispered to himself as he sat down at their kitchen table, letter still in his hands, staring at it blankly. Linda walked in to see him. "What's wrong Henry?" She asked.

henry spoke quietly, his voice betraying his

feelings. "The Navy's drafted me." He muttered, looking back down at the letter.

Henry put the letter down with a shaky breath. "They want me to report at the base tomorrow morning.." he said.

-the next morning, henry put on his navy sailor uniform that was sent to him through the mail, he

Henry packed a small bag and, after giving a final hug and kiss to Linda.

he spoke lovingly.

" i'lll be back as soon as i could....i love you very much...."

linda looked up holding back tears.

" i love you too sweetie... i'll be here waiting for you " linda said.

henry soon got on

headed to the base, leaving her at home.

He had to do his duty, even if that did mean fighting in a deadly war .

Henry reported to the base and soon began his training. He learned how to use and maintain equipment, how to respond quickly to orders and various other things that came with the job. He began to bond with the other navy men around him as he went through the training.

soon Henry was assigned to the USS Indianapolis, a heavy cruiser with a great reputation for her service. He was sent to this ship with many of the men who went through training with him.

linda would work in a factory during ww2 to not only help with the war effort but help pay the bills, henry would write to linda as much as he could

Henry would sit and write in his bunk, on his bed with other sleeping men around him. He would write letters to Linda almost every night, telling her of what had happened each day and how much he missed her and hoped to return to her soon.

he would list the many battles and missions the Indianapolis had been in, detailing all the events that went on. He explained how he and his comrades had formed a strong bond and looked after one another, and just how difficult the battles could be.

soon on july 16th 1945, the USS Indianapolis and Henry we’re on a vital mission. They were transporting an important element for the construction of an atomic bomb, which would be used later in the war

The whole ship’s crew was on high alert, the job was extremely important and there could be no mistakes. it was carrying cargo and This cargo was a classified secret, as the atomic bomb had not been announced and used at that point. The Indianapolis would travel to Leyte Gulf and begin preparing to deliver the cargo, unknown to the crew of the Indianapolis as to what exactly the cargo was.

-Once arriving at Leyte Gulf, the crew spent most of the time working on and off the ship to make any last minute preparations to deliver the important cargo, with many not understanding the true importance of this specific cargo.

-By the time August was already a few days underway,

but then... Linda had not received a letter since july 27 . This worried her, but she could only hope that he was fine and that he had been unable to find any time to write.

By the time the 15th of August rolled around, she had not received any letters from Henry, and would read the news paper and learn of the Indianapolis's sinking, her eyes widening in horror.

she soon got a letter,

Linda's heart skipped a beat as she read the letter. Henry had survived, but was badly injured, with several issues that he was being treated for. She was thankful for the fact that he was alive, but at the same time worried about the severity of his injuries.

henry was hospitilized at the

Naval Base Hospital No. 20 in Peleliu,

henry had suffered deyhydration, salt water poisoning, starvation and inffected wounds, and shark bites, The letters described the struggles that Henry faced, including the many times that he'd nearly been killed by the sharks that attacked him. He had tried to fight back, punching and kicking at the sharks' gills to try and get them to release him, but he had suffered many injuries in the process, though he still managed to survive.

-Henry spent 11 days in the hospital, being fed and given fluids to help with his dehydration. His wounds from the sharks' bites and the sharp metal pieces that had injured him were cleaned and bandaged, and he was given medical care to help him recover properly.

once he was declared well enough, Henry was discharged from the hospital and the Navy. He was awarded the Purple Heart for his bravery and for his efforts in saving the other sailors from the sharks' attacks.

With his time in the Navy now over, Henry finally returned home to Linda.

but Henry found himself suffering from the effects of the ship being torpedoed, the ship sinking and the five days spent floating in the shark-infested water. the shark attacks He was plagued with PTSD, trauma, and many other issues from the incident.

Henry's experiences had left him with numerous phobias, including a fear of sharks galeophobia, a fear of deep bodies of water thalassophobia and a fear of explosions ekrixiphobia, He also developed a fear of loud noises phonophobia as well, The memories and the sounds of the other sailors screaming, thrashing in the water and being pulled under by the sharks were seared into Henry's mind. The image of the torn and bloodstained life jacket bubbling to the surface remained a vivid reminder of the horrors he had endured. -Due to his phobia of sharks, Henry found it very difficult to visit aquariums, especially those with large shark exhibits. The sight of a shark would trigger strong negative reactions and memories of the traumatic experience he had endured.

Linda would comfort Henry whenever he struggled with the memories and phobias that his experience had left him with. She would do what she could to calm him down and make him feel relaxed and at ease, helping him cope with the traumatic memories that still plagued him.

In January of 1949, Linda discovered that she was pregnant with their first child. The news brought joy and excitement to the couple, who had been looking forward to starting a family together, soon in october of that year their only daughter, jacqueline was born, which brought joy and happiness to both of them especially henry, Henry saw his wife and newborn daughter as a source of comfort and healing from the trauma he had endured. The sight of his family and the love they shared helped to soothe his memories and fears, reminding him of the good things in life and giving him a reason to keep moving forward.

[bablake]

Bablake and VE Day

I strongly encourage you to put time aside over the next few weeks to read this year’s Wheatleyan. The student and staff team behind the magazine have done fantastic job and it is superb record of the previous year. I am very grateful for their efforts and I hope you enjoy it has much as I did.

The annual school magazine has been called The Wheatleyan since 1915 and over the last 110 years has documented how Bablake has responded to both local and national events. In recent years, I was particularly proud of the edition that covered how we responded to Covid. It had a striking cover with a picture of a pupil wearing a face covering and I wonder what those in the future will make of it.

Given the 80th anniversary of VE day, I looked back in the Wheatleyan to see how the School responded to the end of the war in Europe. The article started with a quote from Disraeli, “What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expect generally happens” and continued that during the long, sleepless nights of 1940 and the subsequent evacuation of the School to Lincoln, few would have dreamt that the end would come. Pupils had questioned if they would ever come home and, if they did, would there would be anything to come back to.

On Monday, May 7th, the School was anticipating an announcement and pupils were brought back from the playing fields ready to hear the news. However, the end of school came and nothing had been said so everyone went home and was told to return the next day. Later that evening, it was announced that the Prime Minister would broadcast the following day, May 8th, and that it would be a national holiday.

I am sure that everyone was very excited and looking forward to spending time with friends and family; however, I have sympathy for the staff and senior pupils who had planned the celebration at School. In expectation of the event, the flag pole on the tower, which this week has been flying our Remembrance flag, had been repaired. As The Wheatleyan reports, “All our carefully laid plans went by the board; and the caretaker went up to hoist the flag with as little ceremony as if it were a routine occasion.”

When May 8th arrived, some had not understood that a national holiday meant the School was closed and, in the morning, the caretaker’s wife, Mrs Green, stood at the gates turning people away. On hearing this, the Headmaster at the time, Mr Seaborne, was furious and promptly tore off his gown and said to her, “you might as well wear this!”.

The magazine continues, “So the Second German War ended very much as it had begun. In 1939 the country had waited for two days wondering if war were really going to be declared. In 1945 it was in a similar state of tension waiting for the announcement of peace. In 1940 we often used to remark that the bombs were falling before the alert had been heard. Perhaps, therefore if was not inappropriate that in 1945 we should begin the peace before we had been officially told of the end of hostilities.”

The Wheatleyan article wonders how history will judge the War and if it had built a stable peace. It finishes with the following poem, written by a pupil.

Year by year the endless ages run,

And generations die without a word

Though deeds to shock eternity are done

Gainst which within us mighty depths are stirred

Will future heirs to centuries of strife

At last enjoy the sweetest fruits of life

During World War Two, over 700 former pupils and staff had served, with 98 being killed. We owe it to them to Remember and to continue with our and this city’s mission to promote Peace and Reconciliation.

[comicsart3]

Joan Mason, Reporter was a tougher version of Brenda Starr and a contemporary of Lois Lane when she was still a serious investigative journalist before her deterioration into the Superman-obsessed ditz she became by the 1960s. Joan, like Lois, also had a super hero love interest, in the Blue Beetle, but unlike the DC heroine, Joan’s real boyfriend was police officer Dan Garret, Blue Beetle’s alter ego, and she had no idea of Dan’s alternative identity. As demonstrated in the page featured, Joan was a fearless “girl reporter”, always clad in red, who specialised in crime and had no compunction about delving into the underworld in order to get her scoop. As much hardboiled detective as reporter, she frequently helped bring the baddies to justice in the process. What also distinguished Joan - at least in her own series - was her resilience and, despite frequently ending up in peril, she often got herself out of scrapes and did not continually require rescue, by a hunky male which makes her something of a proto-feminist character too.

Apart from her own series which appear in four issues of the bi-annual comic All Great Comics, together with several issues of Mystery Men Comics she also appeared regularly in Blue Beetle, aiding and abetting the hero and sometimes dating Dan Garret at the same time. Joan was a regular feature of the Golden Age comics universe between 1940 and 1952. The excellent Gwandaland have collated all Joan’s appearances across multiple titles in a single bumper volume which is worth getting hold of if you can.

The page featured is from the Joan Mason Reporter story, A Mission Of Death, published in All Great Comics (1945 Part 2).

Sources: comicbookplus and Public Domain Super Heroes

[justforbooks]

Daniel Ellsberg, a US government analyst who became one of the most famous whistleblowers in world politics when he leaked the Pentagon Papers, exposing US government knowledge of the futility of the Vietnam war, has died. He was 92. His death was confirmed by his family on Friday.

In March, Ellsberg announced that he had inoperable pancreatic cancer. Saying he had been given three to six months to live, he said he had chosen not to undergo chemotherapy and had been assured of hospice care.

“I am not in any physical pain,” he wrote, adding: “My cardiologist has given me license to abandon my salt-free diet of the last six years. This has improved my life dramatically: the pleasure of eating my favourite foods!”

On Friday, the family said Ellsberg “was not in pain” when he died. He spent his final months eating “hot chocolate, croissants, cake, poppy-seed bagels and lox” and enjoying “several viewings of his all-time favourite [movie], Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”, the family statement added.

“In his final days, surrounded by so much love from so many people, Daniel joked, ‘If I had known dying would be like this, I would have done it sooner …’

“Thank you, everyone, for your outpouring of love, appreciation and well-wishes. It all warmed his heart at the end of his life.”

Tributes were swift and many.

Alan Rusbridger, the former editor-in-chief of the Guardian, said Ellsberg “was widely, and rightly, acclaimed as a great and significant figure. But not by Richard Nixon, who wanted him locked up. He’s why the national interest should never be confused with the interest of whoever’s in power.”

The Pulitzer-winning journalist Wesley Lowery wrote: “It was an honor knowing Daniel … I’ll remain inspired by his commitment to a mission bigger than himself.”

The writer and political commentator Molly Jong-Fast said: “One of the few really brave people on this earth has left it.”

The MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan said: “Huge loss for this country. An inspiring, brave, and patriotic American. Rest in power, Dan, rest in power.”

The Pentagon Papers covered US policy in Vietnam between 1945 and 1967 and showed that successive administrations were aware the US could not win.

By the end of the war in 1975, more than 58,000 Americans were dead and 304,000 were wounded. Nearly 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers were killed, as were about 1 million North Vietnamese soldiers and Viet Cong guerillas and more than 2 million civilians in North and South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

The Pentagon Papers caused a sensation in 1971, when they were published – first by the New York Times and then by the Washington Post and other papers – after the supreme court overruled the Nixon administration on whether publication threatened national security.

In 2017, the story was retold in The Post, an Oscar-nominated film directed by Steven Spielberg in which Ellsberg was played by the British actor Matthew Rhys.

Ellsberg served in the US Marine Corps in the 1950s but went to Vietnam in the mid-60s as a civilian analyst for the defense department, conducting a study of counter-insurgency tactics. When he leaked the Pentagon Papers, he was working for the Rand Corporation.

In 2021, a half-century after he blew the whistle, he told the Guardian: “By two years in Vietnam, I was reporting very strongly that there was no prospect of progress of any kind so the war should not be continued. And that came to be the majority view of the American people before the Pentagon Papers came out.

“By ’68 with the Tet offensive, by ’69, most Americans already thought it was immoral to continue but that had no effect on Nixon. He thought he was going to try to win it and they would be happy once he’d won it, however long it took.”

In 1973, Ellsberg was put on trial. Charges of espionage, conspiracy and stealing government property adding up to a possible 115-year sentence were dismissed due to gross governmental misconduct, including a break-in at the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, part of the gathering scandal which led to Nixon’s resignation in 1974.

Born in Chicago on 7 April 1931, Ellsberg was educated at Harvard and Cambridge, completing his PhD after serving as a marine. He was married twice and had two sons and a daughter.

After the end of the Vietnam war he became by his own description “a lecturer, scholar, writer and activist on the dangers of the nuclear era, wrongful US interventions and the urgent need for patriotic whistleblowing”.

Ellsberg contributed to publications including the Guardian and published four books, among them an autobiography, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, and most recently The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner.

In recent years, he publicly supported Chelsea Manning, the US soldier who leaked records of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, who published Manning’s leaks, and Edward Snowden, who leaked records concerning surveillance by the National Security Agency.

On Friday, the journalist Glenn Greenwald, one of the Guardian team which published the Snowden leaks in 2013, winning a Pulitzer prize, called Ellsberg “a true American hero” and “the most vocal defender” of Assange, Snowden, Manning and “others who followed in his brave footsteps”.

Steven Donziger, an attorney who represented Indigenous people in the Amazon rainforest against the oil giant Chevron, a case that led to his own house arrest, said: “Today the world lost a singularly brave voice who spoke truth about the US military machine in Vietnam and risked his life in the process. I drew deep inspiration from the courage of Daniel Ellsberg and was deeply honored to have his support.”

In 2018, in a joint Guardian interview with Snowden, Ellsberg paid tribute to those who refused to be drafted to fight in Vietnam.

“I would not have thought of doing what I did,” he said, “which I knew would risk prison for life, without the public example of young Americans going to prison to make a strong statement that the Vietnam war was wrong and they would not participate, even at the cost of their own freedom.

“Without them, there would have been no Pentagon Papers. Courage is contagious.”

Three years later, in an interview to mark 50 years since the publication of the Pentagon Papers, he said he “never regretted for a moment” his decision to leak.

His one regret, he said, was “that I didn’t release those documents much earlier when I think they would have been much more effective.

“I’ve often said to whistleblowers, ‘Don’t do what I did, don’t wait years till the bombs are falling and people have been dying.’”

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[usafphantom2]

A Flight of Four Mustangs Celebrates WWII Fighter Pilot’s 100th Birthday

March 20, 2024 Vintage Aviation News Warbirds News 0

The formation of four Mustangs flying over Lake Lanier, north of Atlanta.

United Fuel Cells

Mission accomplished! On Tuesday, March 19, World War II pilot Paul Crawford fulfilled his dream of flying in a P-51 Mustang like the one he commanded 79 years ago in China, where he flew 29 missions until he was shot down in 1945. Now 100, Buckhead resident Crawford was delighted when the Liberty Foundation and Inspire Aviation Foundation took him up in a TF-51D on a perfect blue-sky day for flying.

TF-51 “E Pluribus Unum” piloted by owner Bob Bull with Paul Crawford in the back leads the formation over Lake Lanier. The camera ship was a Bonanza piloted by long time Liberty Foundation’s pilot Cullen Underwood.

For the occasion, four P-51 Mustangs landed at the Dekalb-Peachtree Airport and parked at Atlantic Aviation, the FBO that supported this unique event. Mr. Crawford lovingly touched the nose and wing of one of the Mustangs when he first walked up to it, reuniting after a 79-year separation. LtCol Ray Fowler, Liberty Foundation Chief Pilot, and pilot Bob Bull helped Crawford into the back seat of the TF-51 and gave him an exhilarating 30-minute ride.

The organizers envisioned the participation of only one P-51, but a quick round of calls sparked the interest of other owners who enthusiastically decided to participate in the event. Bob Bull, Steve Maher, and Rodney Allison flew their Mustangs to Atlanta bringing the total number to four:

P-51D “Old Crow” (N451MG) – Pilot Ray Fowler – Liberty Foundation P-51D “Rebel” (N3BB) – Pilot Rodney Allison P-51 “E Pluribus Unum” (N351B) – Pilot Bob Bull – P-51 “Ain’t Missbehavin” (N51K) – Pilot Steve Maher

The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and Paul graduated six months later, during which time Congress passed the law to draft 18-year-olds. “I knew that I was going to be drafted so I went to Atlanta to talk with the Army Air Corps [sic] and the Navy about flying,” shared Mr. Crawford. ”The Navy said they would accept me for flight training but wanted me to go right then to their Great Lakes training center. The Air Corps told me they would accept me, but to go on back to college and they would notify me when to report.” said Crawford. Paul went back to Americus, entered Georgia Southwestern College, and shortly thereafter he received his draft notice to report to Fort McPherson in Atlanta on January 2, 1942.

Paul Crawford in his P-51 ‘Little Rebel’ ( photo by Paul Crawford Collection)

Paul had an older brother, Tim, who had gone into the Air Corps before Pearl Harbor and was flying B-26s, a medium bomber. He ended up flying combat in the B-17 Flying Fortress out of North Africa. The older brother influenced Paul’s choice, convincing him that the Air Corps had better aircraft, “I thought the water was, as they say, too deep and too wide to swim!” said Mr. Crawford.

With about 100 hours on the P-51 and 250-275 hours total, Mr. Crawford was sent off to Chengtu, China assigned to the 311th Fighter Group, 529th Fighter Squadron protecting the B-29 bases. As these B-29s transferred to the Pacific Theater, his squadron was transferred to Hsian headed for combat. At the time, Mr. Crawford was estimated to have only accumulated another 60 hours of flying time.

On his 29th mission, Mr. Crawford was shot down by ground fire while strafing a small railroad facility. After getting hit, he bailed out and was picked up by Chinese Communist guerillas. A few days earlier one of his housemates had been shot down and captured by the Japanese who cut his head off and put it up on a gate post. After a 200-mile-long walk, chased by the Japanese a couple of times, yet still evading capture, Mr. Crawford ended up at a compound owned by a wealthy family. A few miles from the compound was an airstrip where the OSS (U.S. Office of Strategic Services) brought downed airmen out. After the flight, Mr. Crawford talked about his experience: “When I recall my time in World War II, I always start by saying, I was not a hero! I was just there! That is not false modesty because it is the way I have always felt. I flew the P-51 Mustang.”

Mr. Crawford who has time in P-40, P-47, A-24, and P-51C, believes that the P-51 was the best fighter plane of its day. “There’s nothing in the world like that airplane,” Crawford said. “I loved doing the maneuvers again.” Paul Crawford was surrounded by several friends, his son-in-law, Tommy, and dozens of Liberty Foundation and Inspire Aviation Foundation members eager to have their pictures taken with him, shake his hand, and thank him for his service.

Ezoic

After serving in WWII, Paul Crawford finished college at Georgia Tech with a degree in Industrial Management. That’s also where he met his wife, Jean. They had a daughter and were married for sixty-one years when Jean passed away. Paul worked in the paper industry and for the U.S. Envelope Company until he retired in 1988. Paul currently lives in Atlanta and participates in aviation and historical WWII events.

This special event was made possible thanks to the support of Bob Bull, Ray Fowler Chief Pilot of The Liberty Foundation, Steve Maher, Atlantic Aviation FBO, Cullen Underwood with Vintage Flights, and Inspire Aviation Foundation.

Paul Crawford after the successful flight with (L to R), Cullen Underwood (Camera ship pilot), Bob Bull, Ray Fowler, and Rodney Allison.

[zimwy]

working out some timelines (because i am autistic and will fuss if i dont put down numbers):

george barnes is born in 1899 to a maksim parnes, a russian jewish immigrant to america.

winnifred (whose maiden name i have not decided on) is born in 1902.

in 1917, george enlists to serve in ww1 after the zimmerman telegram, at 18 years old. he serves for a year in active combat, but remains on-and-off as a military man for many years after.

in 1922, he meets winnie.

bucky is born on march 20th, 1925, as james buchanan barnes.

rebecca is born in august of 1929.

bucky meets steve in 1933. he is 8, steve is 11-12, but because of steve's stunted growth and slight frame, they look closer to the same age.

george is killed in an accident during training at camp lehigh in 1937. this is when bucky loses contact with steve.

bucky is taken in as the 'camp mascot', but more appropriately, a child with massive potential as a future soldier or weapon in 1938. he spends the next two years making money selling non-requisitioned supplies--candy, cigarettes, etcetera. a lot of it was things he stole.

in 1940, he's sent off to england for SAS training. he sees captain america on moving picture reels and becomes infatuated, determined to study his every combat movement and emulate it.

later the same year, he and steve reconnect when he's introduced to him as captain america, post-serum. bucky did not recognize him at first.

in 1941, when the US enters the war front, the invaders are personally formed and named by winston churchill.

in the summer of 1945, some months before the end of the war, bucky and steve have an encounter with baron zemo that they fail to gain the upper hand in. this is the event that leads to bucky and steve's "deaths"; uniform snagged in zemo's drone plane, bucky cannot jump from the plane in time to save his body from injury. the plane explodes, ripping his left arm off, alongside some of his trapezius muscle and pectoral muscle. this event also leads to a brain injury that eliminates the majority of his memories as bucky. he is recovered from the english channel by russian operatives.

the winter soldier assassinates itsu, logan's wife, in 1946. it's first mission is before this, but it was still in it's 'trial' phase.

fitted with prosthetic arm in 1954.

began training the widows between 1955-1962.

1958, first indication of dissent occurred. this incident--a poorly performed assassination where the winter soldier refused to kill a child in order to shoot through her and kill her father--is what caused the soldiers handlers to begin keeping it in stasis after missions and begin repetitive brain washing.

assassinated president john f. kennedy in 1963.

likely performed assassinations and extractions during the vietnam war.

attempted to capture two nazi scientists, mila and peter hitzig, in 1966, but due to repeated electric shocks, head trauma, and telepathic intervention by a hydra agent, briefly regains his sense of self and attempts to aid then-shield agent ran shen. recovered by russians and wiped yet again.

after a mission in 1973, did not report back. wandered off and found his way back to a flophouse in new york city (where namor also happened to be, but they both didnt remember each other at the time). heavily wiped, security and monitoring increased, and put in and out of stasis much more often after this event.

kills linus tarasova in 1983 before being assigned to karpov.

1983 to 1988, assigned to perform a bodyguard and escort role for vasily karpov until his death. vasily karpov is the same man who oversaw the winter soldier's early manipulation, and also met cap and bucky during the war.

march 15th, year unspecified, probably late 80s or very early 90s: assassinates howard and maria stark. i'm a comic blog so, again, not fond of the reason given in the mcu; in the 616, it is purely because killing the founder stark would seed chaos and allow certain russian agencies to gain capital.

late 1990s: placed in storage indefinitely (aside from when desired for use) under aleksander lukin (vasily karpov's protege) some years after the collapse of the ussr, though performed many more jobs as lukin built the kronas oil corporation. it was considered vastly unstable at this point and required a thorough re-conditioning, something lukin just never got around to.

2000-something (like mid 2000s): the winter soldier is dispatched to sin-cong, where it saves the lives of benn grimm and reed richards.

past this point, everything is a sliding scale. i dont care what year it takes place is what im saying, and can adapt to 2010s-2020s as needed.

2010s: reactivated completely in order to assassinate the red skull, though lukin and the soldier both do not realize the red skull has transferred his essence into lukin already. assassinates nomad, frames the red skull for it, firebombs philadelphia, takes place over the course of several months. (haunts the absolute fuck out of steve. teehee.)

given the cosmic cube to store in a nuclear safe in west virginia, apprehended by steve mid route. after fighting with him (and, personally headcanoned, struggling with fragments of memories and deep feelings), the winter soldier's memories and identity is restored through the use of the cosmic cube. bucky, enraged at what all this has done to him, rips the cube out of steve's hands and shatters it. he is teleported states away, and makes it his mission to kill lukin and the red skull, completely unaware they're the same person now.

2010s: is confronted by wolverine in serbia, helps steve destroy a robot but is far too ashamed to face him yet and immediately flees, gives himself to nick fury as his personal spy and operative as some kind of effort at redemption. meets the young avengers (partially) on a mission for nick where he has to get them to leave a hydra base alone for the purpose of allowing that base to feed nick information, reconciles with namor over thomas / toro's grave, and pays logan back for what he did to itsu by helping him wrangle his wayward son.

emerges during civil war after steve's death, and, believing tony is at fault, punches him in the cock (and fights him to a standstill. only stops because it's revealed to him steve wants him to be cap.)

mantles captain america until steve is brought back to the present. tries to give up being cap--doesnt really WANT to keep being cap--but steve insists he keeps the mantle, so he keeps it.

became an official avenger after the registration act was overturned. likely mid 2010s.

helmut zemo (the original zemo's son or grandson i guess lmao) reveals bucky's past as the winter soldier to the general public around 2019. bucky is thrown in a russian gulag despite court proceedings and exonerations. highly publicized. escapes that gulag after tangling with former students (wolf spider, kgb agents).

beat to shit by skadi within an inch of his life, saved by nick fury via infinity serum, bucky uses the opportunity to give up the identity of captain america, become legally dead, and return to spy work. only some people know he's alive (fury and some shield agents, nat, hawkeye, wolverine, probably sharon, and eventually daredevil when bucky attacks him lmao)

nat loses her memories of him in the same year.

man on the wall and thunderbolts occurs between 2020-2024 ish to me.

the revolution and devils reign is 2025 to me.

generally it is about 5 years out since bucky was acquitted / exonerated for the majority of his war crimes at any given time. i am fine moving these dates around if theyre in the 2000s+, but the 1925-2000 timeline is pretty stiff.

[lboogie1906]

Alexandre Biyidi Awala (June 30, 1932 – October 8, 2001) known as Mongo Beti or Eza Boto, was a Cameroonian writer.

He spent much of his life in France, studying at the Sorbonne and becoming a professor at Lycée Pierre Corneille.

The son of Oscar Awala and Régine Alomo, he was born in Akométan, Cameroon. He was influenced by the currents of rebellion sweeping Africa in the wake of WWII. His father drowned when he was seven, and he was raised by his mother and extended family. In 1945 he entered the lycée Leclerc in Yaoundé. He came to France to continue his higher education in literature, first at Aix-en-Provence, then at the Sorbonne in Paris.

He turned to writing as a vehicle of protest. He wrote regularly for the journal Présence Africaine; among his pieces was a review “Afrique noire, littérature rose” about Camara Laye’s novel The Dark Child. “He takes Laye to task for pandering to French metropolitan readers with false images of Africa that efface colonial injustice.” He began his career in fiction with the short story “Sans haine et sans amour” (“Without hatred or love”), published in the periodical Présence Africaine, edited by Alioune Diop, in 1953. Beti’s first novel Ville Cruelle (“Cruel City”), under the pseudonym “Eza Boto”, followed in 1954, published over several editions of Présence Africaine.

In 1956, he gained a widespread reputation; the publication of the novel Le pauvre Christ de Bomba created a scandal because of its satirical and biting description of the missionary and colonial world. This was followed by Mission terminée, 1957 (winner of the Prix Sainte Beuve 1958), and Le Roi miraculé, 1958. He worked during this time for the review Preuves, for which he reported from Africa. He worked as a substitute teacher at the lycée of Rambouillet.

In 1959, he was named certified professor at the lycée Henri Avril in Lamballe. He took the Agrégation de Lettres classiques in 1966 and taught at the Lycée Pierre Corneille in Rouen until 1994. Following Nyobe’s assassination by French forces in 1958, he fell silent as a writer for more than a decade, remaining in exile from his homeland. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[centurymanbucky]

"Hi. I'm Bucky."

James Buchanan Barnes;

Also known as Bucky, James was born March 10, 1917, to Winnie and George Barnes. He was the oldest and only son with three younger sisters. He was closest with his youngest sister, Rebecca, and not much is known about his other sisters from the history books. In 1930, Bucky met Steve Rogers, who was being bullied by some larger boys. Bucky helped Steve out of that jam and the two quickly bonded, becoming inseparable almost immediately. In 1936, when Steve's mother passed away, Bucky and Steve moved in together, finding out easier to take care of each other when they shared a place than it was to take care of themselves alone. In December of 1941, Bucky was drafted for the Second World War. History books would state he enlisted, and that is what he would have many believe, including Steve, but Bucky had been hesitant and not actually enlisted, a fact which he kept from Steve for several years out of shame. He was deployed as a Sergeant with the 107th in June of 1943, and shortly after was captured by Hydra, along with his squad, in October of the same year. In November of that year, the survivors, as well as Bucky, were rescued by Captain America, who turned it to be Steve Rogers after some experimental serum that turned him into a super soldier. In 1944, Bucky and Steve created the Howling Commandos and set to take down every Nazi and Hydra faction they could. In January of 1945, however, Bucky's life was cut short when he was reported killed in action during a mission where he fell from a train high above the Alps, not to be seen or heard from again.

The Winter Soldier;

The American soldier, Bucky Barnes, was saved from death by Hydra's version of the super soldier serum and brought back to full health, with the replacement of his severed left arm with a metal prosthesis. Hydra brainwashed and trained Bucky to become the Winter Soldier and used him over the course of the next 70 years to carry out various assassinations and missions many to further their attempts to create a world they deemed more suitable. In 2014, the Winter Soldier would run into Captain America once more, this thing on opposite sides of the battlefield, where Steve found himself fighting to bring his friend back to the surface. He was successful, in the end, though Bucky went into hiding for two years, only to be found after being framed for the death of the Wakandan king by Baron Zemo in 2016. After finally clearing his name and retreating to Wakanda, Bucky was freed of the trigger phrase that activated the Winter Soldier Program, giving him the chance to live as a free agent once more.

Bucky Once More;

In 2018, Bucky was lost to the Blip along with half of existing life thanks to Thanos. Five years in a void later, he returned to help vanquish Thanos once and for all, arriving just in time to help Tony Stark by taking on half the power of the Infinity Stones, granting Tony the ability to survive his own version of the snap and continue life as Iron Man, while Bucky continues to push for a life outside his Winter Soldier days. He works alongside Sam Wilson, the new Captain America, and frequently travels back to Wakanda to visit his friends there. He is a firm advocate for human rights, all across the spectrum, and can often be found on a picket line or sabotaging anti-homeless architecture. He is a firm believer in freedom and equal rights for all, regardless of race, religion, gender, sexuality, or income. And he will make his voice heard.

Don't forget Alpine

Alpine is Bucky's closest friend. A ball of energy and fire, she refuses to be left behind and will frequently fight just as fiercely as her Soldier. Alpine will never say no to a fresh can of tuna and her favorite place to get scritches is right under her chin, though very few outside of Bucky are allowed to get that close to her.