- ​Mission -  

To create awareness and educate about the history of America’s first Black Paratroopers known as the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion. 

​

​

"The Triple Nickles"​

The 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion
1944 - 1947

 

In the frosty Georgia winter of 1943-44, soldiers and officer candidates traveling to and from Fort Benning often saw the sky filled with white parachutes. Most of them assumed that the faces beneath the chutes were also white. The black soldiers they knew drove their trucks, waited on them in mess halls, or hauled their ammunition; they rode in the back of the bus to and from Columbus; they gathered at their own separate clubs on the fort.

​

Some of the faces beneath those chutes, however, were black. As such they were also pioneers, blazing new trails for countless black soldiers to follow. It wasn't easy. A proud black lieutenant, sergeant, or private, with polished boots and paratrooper wings, still had to use the "colored" toilets and drinking fountains in the railroad stations, sit in segregated sections of theaters, and go out of his way to avoid confrontations with racist police. Black officers continued to find post officers' club closed to them. But they endured, and proved themselves as airborne troopers--"as fine a group of soldiers as I have ever seen," in the words of the notoriously fussy General Ben Lear.

True, these black pioneers were exceptional men, specially selected for the task. They were former university students and professional athletes, top-notch and veteran noncoms. A major element in their success was that, unlike other black infantry units officered by whites, they were entirely black, from commanding officer down to the newest private.

 

In fathering the 3rd Battalion, 505th Airborne Infantry Regiment, the 80th Airborne Anti-aircraft Battalion, the 503rd Airborne Artillery Battalion, and the 2nd Airborne Ranger Company, and serving in the 82nd, 101st, 11th and 13th Airborne Divisions, the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team, the 188th and 511th Airborne Infantry Regiments, the Airborne Center and Special Forces, the Triple Nicklers served in more airborne units, in peace and war, than any other parachute group in history.

Test Platoon - First 16 qualified black paratroopers (1944) Enlisted men of the Test Platoon. Front Row from L-R: First Sgt. Walter Morris, first black enlisted man accepted for airborne duty • Sgt. Jack D. Tillis • Sgt. Leo D. Reed • Sgt Daniel Weil *S. Sgt. Hubert Bridges • Tech. Grade IV Alvin L. Moon • Sgt. Ned D. Bess • Sgt. Roger S. Walden Back Row from L-R • Cpl. McKinley Godfrey, Jr. • Sgt. Elijah Wesby • Sgt. Samuel W. Robinson • S. Sgt. Calvin R. Beal • S. Sgt Robert F. Greene • S. Sgt. Lonnie M. Duke • Sgt. Clarence H. Beavers and Sgt. James E. Kornegay. Not Shown Carstell O. Stewart, the seventeenth, who was on emergency leave and earned his wings a week later.

 

Though combat-ready and alerted for European duty in late 1944, the changing tides of the war resulted in a different assignment--jumping over the blazing forests of the American northwest searching for Japanese balloon bombs, a job requiring exact skills and special courage. In this unusual role, the 555th also confronted a new dimension in warfare involving the use of biological agents that could destroy woodlands and crops, but not humans.

The population of the west coast would have been seriously alarmed by the knowledge that these weapons, launched in Japan, were landing on their shores. Consequently, the 555th approached Operation Fire Fly committed to absolute secrecy. We realized that any slip on our part, any breach of security, could bring chaos to the west coast and damage the nation's morale. Only recently fear, hatred, and prejudice had been vented on Japanese-American citizens in the western states by stripping them of their rights and property and placing them in concentration camps. That Americans of German and Italian descent were spared this treatment did not escape our attention.

 

The Officers of the test platoon (1944) Left to Right • First Lt. Jasper E. Ross, Chicago, IL • Second Lt. Clifford Allen, Chicago, IL • Second Lt. Bradley Biggs, Newark, NJ • Second Lt. Edwin H. Wills, Washington, DC • Second Lt. Warren C. Cornelius, Atlantic City, NJ • Second Lt. Edward Baker, Chicago, IL

In this mission, and in many others, the 555th was successful. We became a superb organization because of our belief in ourselves and each other. We worked together. We were not greedy for promotion and publicity, nor did we engage in the army's political games. Our game was soldiering. It took a total effort and a collective frame of mind that recognized that everything we did was for a special purpose. As black men in competition with whites, we knew that if we failed it might be a long time before we were given another chance.

For us, integration meant survival and advancement in the white man's army. But would it remain a white man's army? By the turn of the century there could well be all-black units again--not by design but rather because of the economics of the job market for young blacks, and the appeal of the military as a new and permanent way of life.

Walter Morris, First Jump with the 1st Sgt. 555th Parachute Company Fort Benning Ga.

 

I wish that it were possible to name and write about every trooper who has ever enjoyed the prestige and spirit of being a Triple Nickler. But that cannot be done here. I hope that those who are unnamed in the pages that follow will recognize that in the history of each of us lies at least some of the history of all of us.

Because of my personal and professional involvement in the 555th from its inception, through integration and beyond, it has been difficult to avoid personal intrusions into this group portrait. I trust that my colleagues will understand, if not appreciate, this fact.

Smoke Jumpers
The 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion (PIB)

Let us travel back to the origins of this unit, its conversion from a highly trained and combat ready parachute unit to the extremely dangerous role of "smoke jumping" and their performance in one of the best kept secret operations in World War II.

 

Smoke Jumpers -- Army paratroopers of the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion stand at ease during inspection. The men were issued the usual "let-down" ropes and football helmets with wire face masks, but wore sheepskin outer garments rather than canvas smokejumper suits.
Historical Note...Private First Class Malvin L. Brown, a medic and member of Headquarters Company, 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion was the first smokejumper to perish on a fire jump. PFC Brown, a native of Narberth in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania died on August 6, 1945. His death occurred during a fire jump in the Siskiyou National Forest near Roseberg, Oregon.

Through December 1944 and January 1945, the Triple Nickles had continued to jump, maneuver, and grow to a strength of over four hundred battle-ready officers and men. During that same period a far more deadly action was taking place on the battlefields of Belgium - the Battle of the Bulge - the massive German counterattack in the Ardennes that began on 16 December 1944. It lasted more than a month and before the Germans were turned around, the American army had suffered some 77,000 casualties. Many of them had been paratroopers - men from General Jim Gavin's 82nd Airborne Division and General Maxwell Taylor’s 101st who had made the heroic stand at Bastogne. The cry was out for replacements, not only in paratroopers ranks but throughout the European Theater of Operation (ETO) combat command.

 

At last we thought we were going to tangle with Hitler, whose embarrassment at the 1936 Olympics of a Black American named Jesse Owens was fresh in our minds. We eagerly anticipated pitting the Nazis against another group of black champions - men like Walter Morris, "Tiger Ted" Lowry, Jab Allen, Edwin Wills, Jim Bridges, Roger Walden, the list goes on." Biggs recalls in his book THE TRIPLE NICKLES. He goes on to say that:

"We soon found that we would not go as a battalion but rather as a "reinforced company". The reason was simple, we had not trained or maneuvered as a battalion. The original orders authorizing the 555th said we would not begin such training until we had reached a strength of twenty-nine officers and six hundred enlisted men. This could have been achieved if commanders army-wide had released volunteers and approved scores of requests for parachute duty."

 

Early morning, 6 August 1945. Capt. Richard W. (Black Daddy) Williams, battalion executive officer, and 1st Lt. Clifford (Jabo) Allen, commanding officer, headquarters company, and jumpmaster for this “smoke jump” mission, peer through the open door of the Troop Carrier Command C-47 at the spot where they will drop 2nd Lt. Harry Sutton and his fire fighting team, Lt. Sutton, on the left, smiling and bareheaded, achieved immortal fame as the rifle company commander whose unit held the ridge overlooking the Hungnam-Hamburg sea evacuation. He was killed by a sniper a few days before the evacuation ended. Posthumously awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in action, Sutton joined the ranks of Korean War heroes.

Eventually, the Triple Nickles would grow to more than thirteen hundred for duty, six hundred in jump training at Fort Benning and nineteen hundred on the morning report rosters. But for now the smaller number had some advantages. It had enabled them to concentrate on intensive individual and small-unit training. Riflemen, machine gunners and mortar men had sharpened their aim to perfection. Training in judo and other forms of hand-to-hand combat were intensified. They had time and opportunity to become superb combat men. No goof-offs were allowed.

Moreover, men could be sent to schools for special training as riggers, jumpmasters, pathfinders, demolition experts, and communications men. Jump demonstrations and small unit maneuvers had helped them to perfect the tactics and logistics essential to many paratrooper combat missions, especially those requiring no more than a company-size force, such as an attack on an enemy communications center, bridge, enemy headquarters or road junction.

 

So when the order came to "skeletonize" to one reinforced company of eight officers and 160 men, the battalion had a pool of the best from which to choose the super-best. It began with a downward shift of command, a move for which everyone was fully prepared. The battalion executive officer, for example Captain Richard W. Williams became the company commander. Williams, the eleventh officer to join the Triple Nickles, had come to the organization as a first lieutenant from the 92nd Infantry Division. A well-built, muscular man, he was known as a tough, aggressive officer, filled with imaginative ideas and a sense of adventure.

 

A group of "Triple Nickle" loadmasters heft fire gear into an Army air Corps C-47 at the Pendleton, OR, smokejumper base.

The battalion S3 (Plans and Training), lst Lt. Edwin Wills, the real "brains" of the training program, became the company executive officer. The commanders of A, B, and C rifle companies became platoon leaders, with each given his choice of an assistant platoon leader. Each former company commander chose his executive officer. First sergeants became platoon sergeants and platoon sergeants became squad leaders.

This special company was ready to take on anybody. But suddenly midway through the rigorous combat training, their destiny changed. By, April 1945, the German armies were collapsing. Americans were on the Elbe River - and would stay there. From the east the Russians were moving on Berlin, and the fall of the German capital was only weeks away. It seemed unlikely that any more paratroopers would be needed. In late April 1945, the battalion received new orders - a "permanent change of station" to Pendleton Air Base, Pendleton, Oregon for duty with the U.S. Ninth Service Command on a 'highly classified" mission in the U.S. northwest. No one had any idea of what the mission would be.

On 5 May 1945, the battalion left Camp Mackall for Oregon. The move was made in about six days. Ninety-eight percent of it by rail the rest by battalion motor vehicle or private auto - including Graphite. Sergeant Lowry and two other NCO’s brought the faithful old Ford cross-country. (Graphite was a two-door 1937 Ford, owned by Lt. Julius F. Lane and Lt. Bradley Biggs). It was the battalion’s service vehicle.

Apparently no one had noticed a brief Associated Press item that had appeared in the New York Times of 10 September 1944. With a Portland, Oregon dateline headed "Fire Fighters Use Parachutes", the story reported that: "Crews have been dropped by parachute to fight forest fire in many areas of the Northwest. A blistering summer sun indirectly caused fire in six areas in Idaho in the last 48 hours. An eight man unit crew was dropped to fight a blaze in the Lost Horse Pass Country of Idaho. Other parachutists were dropped into the back woods of Chelan National Forest to battle 300 acre Fire".

On 6 May, while the battalion was still en route west, a woman named Elsie Mitchell and five children were on a Fishing trip near Bly, Oregon. One of them found a strange object on the ground and the others went to investigate. Suddenly the object exploded, killing all six. First news reports said it was a blast of "unannounced cause".

Actually, the object had been a Japanese bomb that had traveled across the Pacific on a hydrogen-filled balloon. Though it remained a tightly-guarded secret for a time, the Mitchell's had been the victims of the first intercontinental air attack on this country. Since early November, 1944 the Japanese had been launching these "balloon bombs" - layered silk-like bags with clusters of incendiary bombs and explosives attached to them.

The secrecy continued even after one balloon caused a near calamity at the Hanford Engineering Works in Washington state, then turning out uranium slugs for the atomic bomb that would destroy Nagasaki. One of the balloons descending in the Hanford area became tangled in electrical transmission lines causing a temporary short circuit in the power for the nuclear reactor cooling pumps. Backup safety devices restored power almost immediately, but if the cooling system had been off a few minutes longer a reactor might have collapsed or exploded and this country could have had a Chernobyl for which it was totally unprepared. The havoc would have been unimaginable.

By January, 1945, however, both Time and Newsweek magazines had told of two woodchoppers near Kalispell, Montana who had found a balloon with Japanese markings on it. By the time the battalion arrived in Oregon the veil of secrecy was partially lifted. The War and Navy Departments had issued statements to the local populace describing the bombs and -warning people not to tamper with anything resembling them.