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Born in 1899, Winry Rockbell is Ed and Al's childhood friend. They performed their first alchemic transmutation to create her a doll, but she becomes terrified by the transmutation process, which foreshadows both the amazing and horrible aspects of alchemy. She's a self-professed "gearhead" who helped her grandmother Pinako build Ed's "automail" machine limbs. She sometimes travels with the Elric Brothers to maintain Ed's artificial leg and arm. Her parents were doctors who were killed during the Ishbal War by Roy Mustang under Basque Gran's orders because they treated the enemy as well as Amestris soldiers. In the movie, Winry took care of Al for two years believing Edward would return to see him, and that belief came true when Ed temporarily returned. She embraced Ed in tears of joy seeing him back. When the Thules attacked she help fit Edward with new automail limbs (adjusted to his growth) once he came back from across the gate. After Edwards departure, Winry continued to work on automail with her Grandmother.
 Winry is a very optimistic person and loves working on automail. She likes to do things her way and has a tendency to disobey the rules such as sneaking into Central or (as in the anime) opening Ed's watch when he told her not to. Winry's love for her friends (especially Ed) is only matched or even surpassed by her love of technology. She will absolutely lose herself finding a new piece of technology or tool. This often leads to some interesting scene or situation, one extreme example is when she got kidnapped by Barry the Chopper when he had a human body and almost got killed. Usually these moments happen when she is asking Ed something or she just found out that the brothers were just returning from a dangerous mission. She constantly shows the fact that she worries about Ed and Al when they are gone.
Similar to the manga, Winry had a considerably deep friendship with Edward, although it seems to be more related to her need to maintain his automail limbs. Throughout the series, she tends to most express her feelings during moments of weakness, she expresses genuine concern and romantic interest towards him. Their relationship however, is greatly toned down compared to the manga; Winry never once admitted that she cared about Edward past friendship. The relationship between them would ultimately end after the movie, where she comes to the conclusion she will never see either Ed or Alphonse ever again.
 The granddaughter of Edward appears in the "Kids" OVA with a stunning resemblance to Winry. It pleases many fans to realise that Ed, does after all, get together with Winry, or Al gets together with Winry.
In the manga, in which the plot diverges from the anime considerably, she goes with Ed and Al to Rush Valley where she becomes an apprentice to a mechanic named Garfield. She spends most of her time there until Ed goes through Rush Valley once more. Wanting to visit the Hughes family again (she met them during her first trip to Central after Ed's 5th Laboratory adventure), she tags along with the Elrics and the Xingese to help fix his automail on demand. Traumatized when she discovers that Hughes is dead, Winry became very worried that the Elrics may meet the same fate as her parents and Hughes. The fact that Ling can't comprehend why Al would want his human body back only adds to the strain.
When she hears people on the street talking about a big fight involving the Elrics and the "state alchemist killer"(Scar), she has a flashback of her parents leaving for the war, walking away from her. She panics because she thinks that the way she had seen the Elrics from the back the night before was prophetically similar to the way she saw her parents leave. Not knowing that Winry is present, Ed accuses Scar of killing Winry's parents in Ishbal, though Scar simply remains silent. When Winry hears this, she has a mental breakdown and tries to shoot Scar with a handgun which was on the ground. Unwilling to let Winry become a killer, Ed strafes over Scar and shields him from Winry. (and also gives up a golden opportunity to disable Scar's destroyer-arm). Al then leads Scar away from her  while Ed tells Winry, "Your hands are not those that kill people. They're hands that help people live." Winry then breaks down completely as Ed has to leave to help Al.
Upon returning to her hotel in chapter 48, she gets a phone call from Garfield, who informs her that many customers are waiting for her to return to Rush Valley. Winry finally realizes that she should not live in the past and that she needs to move forward, because there are people waiting for her as well. In this chapter, she also realizes that she's been in love with Edward for a while. Winry's relationship with the Elric brothers is now being exploited by Wrath, as the Homunculi have opted to use her safety as leverage to keep Ed and Al in place. In fact, in order to keep Edward in the military, the Fuhrer clearly threatens to harm Winry if he does not stay and serve.
Winry has blonde hair and blue eyes. She is tall in the anime, but about Ed's height in the manga.
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