midnightstreet replied to your post “Full medal jacket”
My grandfather received the Purple Heart for volunteering to be subjected to mustard gas testing. I would imagine Steve taking the serum would count the same way.
Ah ha ha ha ::cries:: I KEEP FORGETTING the little matter of Steve volunteering to get injected with mystery goo and put into Howard Stark’s hottie beefcake machine. Like, you’d think that’d be the first thing I’d remember, but no, it never is. :-D
That makes total sense, too—Steve gets the first purple heart for Project Rebirth, then the second one either for an unseen injury at the factory or for meritorious service. He could theoretically have earned it for chasing the Hydra spy, as well. So yeah, he could have racked up for that oak leaf cluster pretty easily, thank you for reminding me.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Steve’s decorations in the MCU—or rather, the lack of them—and especially about Bucky’s medals, which are nonexistent. I’m writing a fic where there’s some discussion about decorations, valor, and the fact that Bucky was a war hero, trying to make sense of the incoherent hack writing of CACW that has the media identifying the “infamous Winter Soldier” as James Buchanan Barnes, but apparently no one seems to also be talking about the fact that this is Howling Commando James Barnes, Captain America’s best friend James Barnes, decorated war hero James Barnes. (laporcupina has a nice examination of this here.)
The first time we see Steve in his Captain’s uniform, he’s wearing these ribbons and badges
Sigh. He’s so dreamy... There’s a few different posts floating around identifying what those ribbons and badges are, but the most important thing is that he’s wearing the ribbons for only two medals: one is the purple heart with an oak leaf cluster, which signifies that he was wounded in action at least twice (once for the original medal, the oak leaves for another award). That one’s interesting because we don’t see him get wounded in the First Avenger; it could mean, though, that the multiple purple hearts were for meritorious service because they were given for that at that time, or for Project Rebirth. He’s also wearing an American Service Defense Medal ribbon, which confuses me, because in the MCU he shouldn’t wear it: they were given for active service from 1939—1941, so he wouldn’t have had this. (In the comics, possibly yes, but not the movies.) I chalk this up to Marvel’s notoriously terrible props department, the folks who gave us a museum display with two different birthdates for Bucky on the SAME DISPLAY, and who used curly quotation marks and apostrophes for feet and inches, when no self-respecting museum would do that. (Those are the tip of the props issues iceberg but my personal pet peeves.)
Now, this shot is presumably in the scene where he blows off Senator Brandt in London, where he’s supposed to receive a “Medal for Valour” which is never specified. And it’s irritating because: which was it? Was it the Medal of Honor, the highest award you can earn? Or was it the Distinguished Service Cross, the second highest award for valor? It could even be the Silver Star, although I feel like that’s unlikely because single-handedly rescuing 400-plus men from a heavily guarded prison camp is a lot more than Silver Star-worthy. My feeling is that it was the DSC, maybe because they figured they’d save the MoH for later since he’d probably be raking in medals as he won the war, although a senator being there for the ceremony might be more in line with the MoH. I can buy him not wearing it right then since the ceremony just happened, but...it’s a stretch.
Then immediately after, we see Steve with the men who will become the Howlies, and no one has any decorations on their uniforms/they’re not in full uniform...and then there’s Bucky. He has no decorations even when we see him in the service uniform at the start of CATFA, and he’s certainly not wearing any in the pub.
The presumption would be that he’s earned at the very least a Combat Infantryman’s Badge (seen on Steve’s uniform, the long narrow one with the musket on the blue background), probably a Distinguished (or Presidential) Unit Citation Badge (on Steve’s uniform, the plain blue one on his right), and possibly a Good Conduct Medal, because I can’t believe he rose to Sergeant without one. (Fandom loves the fanon of Bucky being pulled out in Basic for sniper training and becoming the sniper for his unit, but that wouldn’t have happened, really—in WWII there was no sniper track for the infantry (maaaaybe for the Rangers, maybe, but not for the general infantry); what’s more likely is that someone recognized he was good at shooting, that he was good with people, and pushed him through in specialized training, they were desperate for qualified men as they were shipping people out.)
Of course, he’s messed up when they return to London, and when we see him in the pub he’s totally nonregulation, but it’s strange to me that he has nothing on his jacket still at that point, not even his marksman badge. (There was a POW medal, but it wasn’t put into use until decades later.) I have to handwave this by saying it’s not his own uniform because he was a prisoner and, I dunno, they lost all their stuff... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ He seems quite competent in the deleted scenes of the fighting in Azzano, so it’s hard to believe that his CO never once put him in for anything, not even the basic decorations he should have--he doesn’t even have a goddamn battle star. It’d be easy to say that because he’s been tortured and he’s seen combat, he doesn’t care about decorations, but this is a really modern attitude.
I see it a lot in fic or meta, too, where Steve’s embarrassed by receiving commendations, but I think both Steve and Bucky would have been like most of their generation: very humble about it (”It was nothing, just doing what had to be done”) but very proud of their medals and badges. My dad (14th Armored in WWII) never bragged or even talked about his unless my sister and I asked, but I know how deeply proud of his medals he was, that he’d contributed to something larger than himself, and that was very typical of men at that time. Even as fucked up as Bucky appears in the pub scene, it’s not really in keeping with period typical attitudes to have him disrespect his commendations.
One of the most decorated servicemen of WWII was Audie Murphy, who was very much like Steve in a lot of ways (small, scrappy, illness history, mostly raised by his mom) and like Bucky in some, and who received every combat medal for valor available at the time: Medal of Honor, Distinguished Service Cross, 2 Silver Stars, 2 Bronze Stars, 3 Purple Hearts, and the list goes on. Which is why it’s so weird to me that the next time we see Steve in his service uniform, NOTHING has changed.
And literally no one in that room aside from Col. Phillips has any decorations on their uniforms. This is well over a year after the first time we see Steve in that uniform, but he’s not wearing any other ribbons, any other badges, not even the one that would have given us some clue what that “Medal for Valour” was after the rescue. I am bewildered.
Which brings me back to what I was thinking about at the start of this post: what would, if Marvel weren’t so half-assed, they have earned in recognition of their service? If Steve wasn’t given the MoH for the rescue, it would have been the DSC. I have a hard time believing he didn’t rake in at least as many other medals as Audie Murphy: at least 2 Silver Stars, at least 2 Bronze, and probably many more of those Purple Hearts. He’d have had a European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign medal and that Army Good Conduct (yes, I know, we love to think of him misbehaving, but I guarantee they would have given him one by that point).
Bucky would have had the CIB I mentioned above, absolutely, and I’m positive he would have earned, in the MCU where he’s shown to be a sharpshooter, an Expert-Level Marksman Badge with Rifle Component. He would have had the same Distinguished Unit Citation Steve had, and the GC medal (pretty much everyone got this one unless you were really a shitty soldier at that point in the war, because all you needed was one year of faithful service, not the three you need now). Probably jump wings, like Steve has. I think it’s likely that he earned at least one or two Silver Stars, at least one or two Bronze Stars, possibly more Purple Hearts (so he’d have had that oak leaf cluster on the ribbon). If he didn’t merit a DSC for actions while alive, I have a hard time believing he wasn’t put in for one posthumously, either by Phillips or by Steve in one of his last acts as captain.
Also posthumously, if Steve wasn’t honored with a MoH for the factory rescue, he absolutely would have been for taking a plane loaded with city-destroying bombs into the ice and dying in the course of saving the world. That’s pretty much what the award is designed to honor, so...yeah. But weirdly, we see no sign of that in CATWS in his Smithsonian exhibit. And both of them would have had all the battle stars you could earn, as would the other Howling Commandos in the American Army. (I’m certain Monty should have been more highly decorated than he appears, too.)
I know it’s up to the fans to deal with all of this, because Marvel never will, especially as to how it relates to their bizarre decision to have Bucky’s identity go public yet not acknowledging his important history. Generations of kids would have learned about them and their honors in the decades after the war; when Steve came out of the ice, I’m sure he would have received in person all the posthumous awards, not to mention been invited to foreign countries to receive the honors they also awarded him in death, such as the French Legion of Honor or the Croix de Guerre. I have no faith they’ll address the fact that Bucky’s probably a highly decorated soldier, but man, I wish they would, just so we didn’t have to do all the work.
