Howling Commandos (Earth-199999)
The Howling Commandos were a ragtag group of Allied soldiers in World War II loosely led by Captain America.
History
In October 1943, a group of soldiers from different Allied nations were taken prisoner by Hydra and put to work in a weapons facility in Krausberg, Austria. They were put in a cell together as a means of turning their mutual xenophobias against each other and neutralize their means of fighting back against Hydra. These soldiers included Americans Bucky Barnes, Dum Dum Dugan, and Gabriel Jones; Jacques Dernier of France; and Englishman James Montgomery Falsworth. At first, Hydra's plan worked, as tensions between the men's different nationalities flared. However, Barnes was soon afflicted with pneumonia, making the slave work that Hydra gave him utterly debilitating. Jones determined that another day of work would surely kill Barnes. The soldiers put their differences aside and banded together to outsmart the Hydra guards, using machinery to kill their cruel Hydra overseer and make it look like an accident.[1] Some time later, Barnes was taken to the facility's isolation ward.
The following month, Dugan, Jones, Dernier, Falsworth, and the other prisoners were released by a strange costumed man calling himself Captain America. He encouraged them to escape and meet him outside the camp while he looked for Barnes. In truth, Captain America was Steve Rogers, a lifelong friend of Barnes who had recently been enhanced by super-soldier serum. Another escapee, Japanese American Jim Morita, allied himself with Dugan and the others. Cap found Barnes strapped to an operating table, delusional and weakened but essentially alright. The two escaped as Hydra leader Red Skull self-destructed the base and made his own getaway. Cap, Barnes, and the others met up outside the camp and returned to the nearest Allied camp in Italy. Colonel Chester Phillips, having been stubbornly skeptical of Captain America until then, changed his tune upon seeing the number of men he had singlehandedly saved. Phillips tasked Captain America with taking down the other Hydra weapons bases—and Cap said he would need a team, and quickly settled on the men from the 107th. The team would come to be known as the Howling Commandos.
Over the next several months, Captain America led the Commandos across Europe, dealing blow after blow to the Hydra manufacturing line. By 1945, they had crippled Hydra's war effort. They intercepted a train in the snowy Alps that carried leading Hydra scientist Arnim Zola, and Cap, Barnes, and Jones boarded the train in an attempt to abduct him. Barnes fell from the train into the mountains, ostensibly to his death.[note 1] Jones was able to infiltrate the train's leading car and subdue Zola. Col. Phillips interrogated Zola, and gained vital information about Red Skull's plans. Red Skull had become obsessed with divine power, and planned on destroying major cities across the world, including much of the United States, to demonstrate his might. Hydra's final base was in the Alps, embedded within one of the mountains—Captain America's plan of attack was essentially a simple, full-fledged frontal assault. He went alone on motorcycle straight to the front door of the base and got himself captured, allowing the other Commandos to burst in some time later and begin the attack proper, followed by an infantry unit led by Phillips and Agent Peggy Carter. While the Commandos and others did battle on the ground, Cap chased Red Skull to his Valkyrie bomber, fighting him in the cockpit of the plane. Red Skull was defeated by his own Tesseract, which sucked him into space and effectively neutralized him. Cap was forced to crash the Valkyrie into the icy north Atlantic to prevent it from causing catastrophic damage at any of its metropolitan targets. The defeat of Red Skull meant the end of the war, and at a victory celebration soon after, the Commandos raised a toast to the memory of Captain America.[2]
Members
- Captain America
- James "Bucky" Barnes
- Timothy "Dum Dum" Dugan
- Gabriel Jones
- Jacques Dernier
- James Montgomery Falsworth
- Jim Morita
Notes
- ↑ Barnes in fact survived due to Zola's experiments on him in Krausberg; see his article for more details.
See also
References
- ↑ Captain America: First Vengeance #7. Van Lente, Fred (w), Ross, Luke (art), Isanove, Richard (col), Cowles, Clayton (let).
- ↑ Captain America: The First Avenger. Dir. Johnston, Joe. Perf. Chris Evans, Tommy Lee Jones, Hugo Weaving, Hayley Atwell, Sebastian Stan, Dominic Cooper, Neal McDonough, Derek Luke, and Stanley Tucci. Paramount Pictures, 2011.