555th America’s First Black Paratroop Unit
By
John C Abercrombie
The United States including the military has long practiced second class citizenship when it comes to Black citizens. This did not change during peace or war time and the achievements made were often concealed which contributed to the stereotype that Blacks were not contributing to the country. This post brings light to a military group that deserves long overdue recognition.
While the common conception of military is fighting, there were many jobs relegated to Black members. These Black members were more than willing to fight and often were incensed by these lesser roles which were highly undesirable.
In this post, we look at Black soldiers relegated to guard the field where Whites trained to be paratroopers. They had duty from 4:00 pm until 8:00 am when the Whites returned to train. The first sergeant of the Black troops was Walter Morris.
First sergeant Walter Morris recounts how the Blacks were miserable. The post was highly segregated including the movie theater and post exchange. As the Black soldiers passed the post exchange, they could s German and Italian prisoners of war enjoying themselves, drinking and smoking while the blacks were prohibited to enter.
The first sergeant Walter Morris had joined the Army as a one-year volunteer in January 1941. He had finished high school and started working as an apprentice bricklayer; however, construction work was sparse so, he joined the Army. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he continued as a clerk. By 1943, he was in Infantry Officer Candidate school, but washed out the 12th week of a 13 week program, which he attributed to the fact that he had never attended basic training and had never fired a rifle in his life and had no combat training.
Morris was determined to boost the morale of the soldiers. Under his command the men voluntarily started a regimen of strenuous calisthenics and maneuvers like the White paratroopers on the same field, since they were there for 16 hours.
Mr. Morris was determined to boost the soldiers’ self-esteem. Under Mr. Morris’s command, the men voluntarily began a daily regimen of strenuous calisthenics like that of white paratroopers. He said one day Lt. Gen Ridgely Gaither drove by and saw how well they were doing and called Morris to his office.
Gaither confided they were looking at an all-Black parachute company and invited Morris to be the first sergeant. He describes how excited he was saying “My heart almost burst”. The went to OCS and was the only Black in his class which he completed.
The company was organized December 1943 as an all-Black unit with Black officers as well as Black enlisted men. All members were volunteers selected by 92d Infantry Division at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.
The first mission of the 555th was to be a single reinforced Airborne Rifle Company, however the crisis passed before they were deployed. They were sent to the West coast of America instead in a secret mission called Operation Firefly.
In late 1944, the Japanese were sending balloon bombs over the Pacific Ocean and starting forest fires in the West. It is believed that they launched 9,300 devices of which about 1,000 reached the United States. The mission was largely concealed although it was reported in both Time and Newsweek (National Magazines).
The unit began training at Fort Benning, Georgia. Fort Benning is named for Henry L Benning a Confederate States Army Brigadier General, one of 10 Army installations named for former Confederate Generals.
The unit then moved to Camp Mackall, North Carolina where it was reorganized as Company A of the newly activated 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion. The unit was also unusual in that they had all Black officers, since 6 Black officers completed jump training. Camp Mackall, North Carolina is located south of Southern Pines, North Carolina.
Toward the end of the war, they were tapped for a secret mission called Operation Firefly. While on a westbound train in May 1945 from Camp Mackall, N.C., then-1st Sgt. Morris thought that he and the men under his command were headed to the Pacific, perhaps to join up with Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
“None of the commanding generals wanted to accept the black battalion because it meant integration, which had never been done,” Mr. Morris recalled.
When the train stopped in Pendleton Field, Oregon, they were met by a group of loggers who had been waiting on them. It was their first knowledge that they were designated to become “smoke jumpers”.
The Triple Nickles with the unusual spelling of Nickels responded to more than 30 domestic fires and made over 1,200 individual jumps. They augmented the United Stats Forest Service Smoke jumper program which had been in effect since 1939.
In November 1944, the Japanese sent over 9,000 balloon bombs across the Pacific Ocean. These devices were designed to ignite forest fires in Western United States vast forests. There were few fatalities from these devices that included 5 children and a minister’s wife who were killed when they went to investigate one of the devices which exploded in proximity of them. 1 of the 555th was killed when he fell about 140 feet out of a tree that snagged his parachute.
The 555th were highly trained and fought fires started by lightning and thoughtless campers. They also trained on how to avoid encounters with bears and rattlesnakes. Wow, what duty.
In 1948, 3 years after the war ended, President Harry S Truman signed an executive order desegregating the military. Remember the story of Isaac Woodard featured in another post on the site that influenced this decision.
Although there were no significant wildfires, small ones nonetheless developed from some of the balloon bombs being detonated suddenly after landing on the forests undisturbed for weeks or months mainly in California, Oregon, Washington or Idaho. Stationed at Pendleton Field, Oregon (formerly the base of the pilots and aircraft selected for the Doolittle raid on Japan), with a detachment in Chico, California, unit members participated in fire-fighting missions throughout the Pacific Northwest during the summer and fall of 1945. The 555th worked on twenty-eight fires during the 1945 season. Of these, fifteen fires were “jumped” or parachuted to. While some United States Forest Service reports refer to some employees as smokejumpers, the 555th were reported as paratroopers on all fire reports. The only fatality in the unit died while jumping on 6 August 1945.
The 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion was nicknamed the “Triple Nickles” because of its numerical designation and the selection of 17 of the original 20-member “colored test platoon” from the 92nd Infantry (Buffalo) Division). Hence, the origin of the term Buffalo Nickles; the spelling derives from old English. Three buffalo nickels joined in a triangle or pyramid is the identifying symbol.
This story has special significance as I lived about 50 miles from Pendleton, Oregon and did not know about these brave men, eager and willing to pay the supreme sacrifice in defense of the United States. Even more significant is that they were deployed to fight a fire at Hanford, Washington where I worked for decades, yet I only recently learned about the 555th.
There are others living within arm’s length of history without knowing. It is important to do your own research. You may be pleasantly surprised at what you find.
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