Trial by Fire
By Dale Andradé

First Sgt. Walter Morris was doing what most African-Americans did in the Army during World War II — picking up after white soldiers and pulling guard duty. Morris and his men were part of a service company charged with guarding the parachute school at Fort Benning, Ga. "We patrolled the airfield," he recalls. "We patrolled the packing shed, and the various jump towers they had there, and the calisthenics field." They watched white soldiers train to be paratroopers by day and then walked the grounds throughout the night until the trainees returned the next morning.

The monotony of guard duty paired with the knowledge that there was no hope for anything better wore Morris and his men down. "As first sergeant I had to do something about it," he recalled in a subsequent interview. The answer, Morris concluded, was to copy the white paratroopers; namely, to adopt their discipline and use the empty school facilities to run a physical-fitness program for the African-American soldiers.

Beginning in the autumn of 1943, Morris formed his unit into ranks each afternoon and double-timed his men to the calisthenics field, where they performed the same routine as the white soldiers. They lined up in old c-47 cargo-plane fuselages to practice exiting an aircraft and jumped off low platforms to learn how to make a parachute landing. After a few weeks of training, recalls Morris, his unit's morale had improved.

Still, these soldiers had no hope of being placed in an airborne unit. But one day Brig. Gen. Ridgley A. Gaither, commander of the parachute school at Fort Benning, called Morris into his office. Expecting to be reprimanded for using the training facilities, Morris quickly began to explain what his unit was doing and why. But Gaither had other things to discuss.

Gaither told Morris he had received an order from Washington to activate a new parachute unit. "It will be an all-colored company, a separate company," Gaither explained. "You'll have black officers and black men." With that, Morris became the first African-American soldier accepted into the U.S. Army's airborne training.

The decision to form an African-American airborne unit rose out of a special government panel called the Advisory Committee on Negro Troop Policies, chaired by Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy. In December 1942 — months before Morris and his men began their self-imposed training — the committee recommended activating an African-American parachute battalion "for purposes of enhancing the morale and esprit de corps of the Negro people." Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall agreed.

Action did not come quickly, however. Almost a year passed before the Army finally selected 17 volunteers from the 92nd Infantry Division at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., to join Morris and two men from his service company to form the experimental battalion. Six African-American officers were added to the roster, thus completing the first all-African-American unit in the U.S. Army. Finally, on Dec. 30, 1943, the unit officially was activated as the 555th Parachute Infantry Company at Fort Benning.

Overcoming untruths

The decision to form the unit was a small step on the long road toward equality for African-Americans in the U.S. Army. During the Civil War, black troops had fought against the Confederacy and later were noted for their courage in the Spanish-American War. But during World War I, racist attitudes against African-Americans in the military hardened when allegations of poor combat performance led to calls to exclude them from frontline units.

Although there were many available examples of African-American bravery, critics focused on problems within the 92nd Infantry Division — a predominantly African-American unit. The division's white commander, Gen. Robert Lee Bullard, characterized his experience as a "nightmare" and called his soldiers "cowards." Another white officer who had commanded African-American troops during the war commented, "History has repeatedly proven that normally the Negro, as a race, is and always has been lacking in bravery, grit, and leadership." As a result of these opinions, African-American servicemembers were no longer assigned to combat troops, though they could continue to serve as laborers.

Between the world wars, the Army systematically rid itself of African-Americans in the ranks. At the end of World War I, there were almost 183,000 African-American soldiers in the Army, but by the end of 1940, the number had plummeted to 4,179, with only five officers.

On the eve of America's involvement in World War II, however, the War Department decided to draft African-Americans in proportion to their numbers in the American population. By the time Pearl Harbor was attacked, almost 100,000 African-Americans had been drafted into the Army; one year later there were almost half a million.

While many leaders still were strongly opposed to using African-Americans in combat, Lt. Gen. Leslie J. McNair, the chief of U.S. Army ground forces, believed America could not afford to ignore black soldiers' fighting potential. McNair pushed to form African-American combat units and watched over their progress. Although he would not live to see the fruits of his efforts (he was killed July 25, 1944, in France), these units were training for the battlefield at the time of his death.

But maintaining African-American units — even segregated units — within the Army was difficult. Wherever African-American and white soldiers came together there were separate bathrooms and segregated buses. Violence simmered beneath the surface and occasionally erupted with deadly results. In January 1942, white military police in Alexandria, La., beat and arrested a black soldier accused of violating Jim Crow rules. The Army tried to keep the incident quiet, but word inevitably got out. Some members of the African-American community began to question why its young men should fight for a country that refused to show them even the most basic respect.

An uphill battle

Sgt. Roger Walden was in the 555th when it was activated at Fort Benning. He saw the 250-foot-high parachute towers and the ranks of disciplined soldiers going through training. "I couldn't believe I'd go off one of those towers," he later told an interviewer, "yet I felt I had a mission that was [above] and beyond me, and I would give it all I had."

In an era when racial segregation was the rule, these African-American soldiers trained alongside white soldiers, and Walden remembered the white trainers as no-nonsense professionals. "There was a lot of esprit de corps, which our instructors can take credit for," he recalled. Still, the general feeling on base was that African-Americans simply were not good enough to be paratroopers. "At the time, bets were made that blacks would never jump," said Walden. But, he continued, "We not only jumped but were darn good." Only three of the original 20 enlisted men failed the training. In February 1944, the "super 17" made their jump and earned their wings, followed by the unit's six officers.

Lt. Bradley Biggs was the first of the African-American officers accepted for airborne training. Biggs had served with the 92nd Infantry Division and knew this was an opportunity to prove that skin color had nothing to do with fighting ability. "We carried the burden of succeeding for the race and for the country," Biggs said after the war. "We helped relieve some of the cancer of prejudice from the nation's back."

That summer, the 555th, also known as the "Triple Nickles" (the spelling comes from the original word for the five-cent buffalo coin, which also was the symbol for the 92nd Infantry Division) moved to Camp Mackall, N.C., where it formed the cadre around which the unit would grow. During the next five months, qualified African-Americans were pulled from other Army units to fill out the 555th's ranks, and training continued unabated.

On Nov. 25, 1944, the 555th officially became a battalion. By then the Triple Nickles was a well-trained and motivated unit of more than 400 battle-ready paratroopers looking forward to action. Although the Allies were advancing across Europe, the Germans were counterattacking in the Battle of the Bulge in Bastogne, Belgium. Fierce fighting between December 1944 and January 1945 resulted in 77,000 American casualties before the Germans were pushed back.

The airborne ranks were hit particularly hard, and the heroic 101st Airborne Division needed replacements desperately. Trained and ready, the 555th expected to answer the call. "At last we were going to tangle with Hitler, whose embarrassment at the 1936 Olympics [by] a black American named Jesse Owens was fresh in our minds," wrote Biggs in his account of his military experiences. "We eagerly anticipated pitting the Nazis against another group of black champions."

But they were not called to fight. Instead, the Triple Nickles underwent more special training as riggers, jump masters, and pathfinders. By April 1945, German forces were collapsing, and there was no need for more troops in Europe. So on May 5, the 555th moved to Pendleton Air Base, Ore. (a contingent also would be stationed in Chico, Calif.), for duty with the U.S. 9th Service Command on a highly classified mission in the Pacific Northwest called Operation Fire Fly.

Dangerous duty

For several months, the Japanese had been sending incendiary balloons across the Pacific in a last-ditch effort to bring the war to America — something they had been unable to do since Pearl Harbor. These balloons consisted of a wood and parchment frame carried aloft by a silken bag filled with hydrogen gas. They rose to an altitude of 35,000 feet and traveled the jet stream across the Pacific Ocean at speeds between 100 and 200 mph. Each balloon carried a half-dozen incendiary bombs and one conventional explosive charge.

The first 200 balloon bombs were released in June 1944 but never made it to the continental United States. A modified version was completed in October 1944, and 9,300 new balloons were launched in early 1945.

Because American intelligence had broken Japanese military codes, U.S. war planners knew what was coming and put the military on alert. In January 1945, fragments of a balloon were found in Montana, and parts of another were pulled from the ocean in the Pacific Northwest. Yet another incendiary balloon was spotted floating off the coast of California before military aircraft arrived and destroyed it.

Other than igniting several forest fires, only twice did these balloons cause serious damage. In late 1944, a balloon became entangled in power lines near the Hanford Engineering Works in eastern Washington state, shorting out power for the reactors, which were turning out uranium for the atomic bombs that soon would be used on Japan. Disaster was averted only because workers were able to get power back to the cooling system before it caused a meltdown. The second balloon-related problem occurred in May 1945 when a woman and five children stumbled upon a balloon while on a fishing trip near Bly, Ore. One of the children tried to move the bomb, which exploded and killed all six people.

Despite these incidents, scientists concluded the incendiary balloons were not much of a threat. Still, the U.S. government wanted to keep the story under wraps because if word leaked out that the American continent was being "bombed," the Japanese likely would send more. A few newspapers reported finding some balloons with Japanese markings on them, but the media didn't carry any stories linking the forest fires with the balloons. Though only 285 balloons were found from Alaska to Mexico, analysts estimate that as many as 1,000 reached the continent. America's silence, however, led the Japanese to assume their plan was a failure.

The men of the 555th were unaware of the balloons; they only knew they would be fighting fires instead of enemy soldiers. Carl Reeves, a member of the second class of airborne graduates, remembered the new assignment as "a blow to us because we joined the paratroops for the reason of fighting." But their bravery and services were badly needed, and the members of the 555th realized they still were contributing to the war effort.

However, the Triple Nickles found the same racial attitudes in Oregon as in Georgia and North Carolina. White officers and enlisted men at Pendleton were no more open to African-Americans than those at Fort Benning or Camp Mackall. Again, black officers and their men were forced into separate barracks and mess halls. Local civilians were just as unwelcoming, and Biggs recalls that "black soldiers, who were helping Oregon save its forests and possibly some of its people, found it difficult to buy a drink or a meal."

Undaunted by the cold shoulder, the Triple Nickles concentrated on their new mission. Members of the U.S. Forest Service, which had been parachuting men into forest fires since 1940, put the African-American soldiers through an intensive three-week training course. They learned to use a new, steerable parachute that would allow the paratroopers to spiral down to the ground and land on more closely targeted drop zones. As smoke jumpers, the 555th would deliberately do something paratroopers usually try very hard to avoid: They would land in trees. Even with special equipment such as helmets, wire face protectors, and fleece-lined leather jackets to make the task somewhat less risky, the Triple Nickles were in for a dangerous mission.

The first fire call for the 555th came July 14, 1945. A team from the contingent in Chico jumped into the Klamath National Forest in northern California and successfully doused the flames and avoided injuries. Six days later, the Pendleton group got its chance, when 55 men were called to fight a fire in Meadow Lake National Forest in Idaho. It, too, was a success.

The Triple Nickles lost only one man during their smoke-jumping mission. On Aug. 8, 1945, while fighting a fire in Siskiyou National Forest near Roseberg, Ore., Pvt. Malvin L. Brown was killed after he landed on top of a tall tree. As he struggled to free himself from his jump harness, Brown slipped or lost his grip and fell 150 feet onto a rock ledge. It took three days for patrols to find his body.

Japan surrendered to the United States and its allies on Aug. 14, 1945, the same day the 555th was fighting a blaze in Whitman National Forest in Washington state. The firebomb threat was over, and Operation Fire Fly came to an end. As it turned out, the Japanese had run out of hydrogen in April, and there had been no more balloon launches since then. But the Triple Nickles' efforts still were a welcome help, and they remained in the Pacific Northwest through September, when the autumn rains came and ended the fire threat. By then, the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion had participated in 36 firefighting missions with more than 1,000 individual jumps.

Acceptance at last

In October 1945, the 555th moved to Fort Bragg, N.C., which became its home for the next two years. But the tension surrounding the all-African-American battalion was not over. On Jan. 14, 1946, the Triple Nickles marched proudly in a parade down New York City's Fifth Avenue with the 82nd Airborne Division, even though none of the African-American paratroopers had seen combat in Europe. The decision to allow the unit to march came at the insistence of Maj. Gen. James M. Gavin, the commander of the 82nd. He strongly believed the Army should lead the way in changing racial attitudes.

On Dec. 9, 1947, the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion ceased to exist. During a ceremony at Fort Bragg, the unit was deactivated, and most of its members were reassigned to the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division — months before President Truman's July 1948 executive order mandating racial integration of the armed forces. From then on, African-Americans would work alongside whites in the military. Though discrimination and bigotry continued, this was a concrete beginning born of the strength of Gavin's convictions. As Biggs wrote in his memoir, "While even the best of his colleagues were content to drag their feet, Gavin was a crusader for equal opportunity and integration."

Today's African-American paratroopers serve in a fully integrated Army, but Biggs admonishes them not to forget their past. He still wonders: "Are their commitments as strong as ours? How well do they accept and execute their responsibilities? How do they comprehend the heritage we established for them?"