Chester Phillips

"General Patton has said that wars are fought with weapons but are won by men."

- Chester Phillips

Colonel Chester Phillips was Steve Rogers' commanding officer.

Training Rogers to be Captain America
Colonel Chester Phillips was the officer in command of the secret project in the Strategic Scientific Reserve aimed to create a series of super soldiers for the US Army. He was the chief of the training camp in which the candidates were trained. The scientist in charge of the project, Abraham Erskine, presents him with a potential candidate, Steve Rogers, but Rogers' frail physique and numerous health problems lead Phillips to believe that Rogers was unsuitable, at one point suggesting Gilmore Hodge, a physically superior soldier but also a disagreeable showboat. To prove his own theory correct, Phillips throws a fake grenade at the soldiers, but Rogers was the one who attempts to shield the blast with his own body while the other soldiers, including Hodge, take cover. Phillips reluctantly gives in.

Later on, after Rogers was transformed successfully by Erskine's serum, Erskine was killed by an HYDRA agent named Heinz Kruger, and Phillips decides to leave the untrained Rogers behind and to continue the war the old fashion way. When a huge platoon of 400 men goes missing, among them Rogers' best friend James "Bucky" Barnes, Phillips, though regretful for his soldiers' fate, refuses to allow Rogers to attempt a rescue mission, planning to bomb the facility instead, although Rogers defies Phillips' order. When Rogers was successful in rescuing the men alone, however, Phillips allows him to work in the field, and entrusts him with a special elite commando force, rather than punishing him as Rogers had believed.

Battle in the Valkyrie
After Arnim Zola was captured, Phillips successfully interrogates him and locates Johann Schmidt's last secret HYDRA base. While Rogers distracts the enemy, Phillips himself leads the assault on the base, defeating a large number of HYDRA agents. Eventually, he helps Rogers in reaching the Red Skull's experimental plane riding Schmidt's special car, ending on the edge of a ravine and seeing the plane flying away with Rogers and the Skull aboard. His last words to Rogers are "I'm not kissing you" after Rogers kisses Peggy Carter goodbye.

Later on, when Rogers relays the news to Peggy over the radio from Schmidt's plane that he was going to sacrifice himself to destroy Schmidt's weapons of mass destruction by crashing the plane into the arctic, Phillips listens in on Rogers' final conversation. When the radio goes blank, Phillips, visibly saddened at his friend and comrade's apparent demise, walks away, and later hands Rogers' file to Peggy.

After the War
In 1946, Phillips and Howard Stark chose Peggy Carter to be run S.H.I.E.L.D. after her successful completion of the Zodiac assignment.

His current whereabouts are unknown, though it's arguable that Phillips died of old age in the seventy years before Rogers' re-awakening in the modern world.

Character traits
Chester Phillips was an old fashioned soldier, a gruff and iron-forged man who firmly believed in classical war values. He's contrary to Abraham Erskine's choice for his Super Soldier Serum test subject, since he was used to training "real" combatants, and didn't see the value of a small and skinny man such as Rogers.

Phillips was a good strategist and a trained soldier, and, despite his rank, he still took part in on-field missions, using canonical firearms.

Relationships

 * Steve Rogers - Subordinate.
 * Abraham Erskine - Subordinate.
 * Howard Stark - Subordinate.
 * Peggy Carter - Subordinate.
 * Howling Commandos - Subordinates.
 * Johann Schmidt - Enemy.
 * Arnim Zola - Enemy.
 * Heinz Kruger - Enemy.
 * HYDRA - Enemies.

Trivia

 * While in the movie Phillips opposes Abraham Erskine's choice for the Super Soldier test subject, in the comics he chose Steve Rogers personally, while General Saunders was contrary.