Milestone: Appears to Fall to His Death
James "Bucky" Barnes is Steve Rogers' oldest friend, a confident young sergeant shipping out with the 107th while the frail Steve keeps failing his enlistment physicals. He looks out for Steve in the streets of Brooklyn, pulling him out of back-alley fights and trying to show him a good time before the war takes him overseas. Never quite believing his scrappy friend belongs on a battlefield, he ships out alone and leaves Steve behind.
The war reunites them in a role reversal neither expected. Captured by Hydra and strapped to a table in a factory, Bucky is rescued by a Steve now transformed into Captain America. The sergeant follows his made-over friend back into the fight rather than run from it, joining Steve's team of commandos and fighting at his side across Europe. Then a mission aboard a Hydra train goes wrong. Struck by enemy fire, Bucky is left clinging to the outside of the speeding train, and when his grip fails he falls into the frozen ravine below as Steve reaches for him too late.
