Courage Has No Color

by Tanya Lee Stone

  August 1945. The paratroopers dropped in on fires that would have taken days to reach otherwise. Here, Triple Nickles stomp out a fire and cover hotspots in an inaccessible part of the Umatilla National Forest.

  At the end of a mission, they would pack up their gear and walk back to the base, miles out of the forest. Muscles aching, covered in grit and grime, all they wanted to do was rest their weary bones and sleep — after pouring cold drinks down their scorched throats.

  But the club on the base wouldn’t let them in. No coloreds allowed.

  A 555th trooper in Pendleton, Oregon, waits in full gear to board the C-47 in the background for a smokejumping mission.

  After all they had done — and were doing — for their nation, the Triple Nickles were still not accepted as equal citizens. Nothing seemed to trump the color of their skin.

  Biggs said that in Pendleton, a predominantly white town, “the reception was cold. We could not eat in any one of the restaurants.” His voice held the chill of that memory. “[We] found it difficult,” he said, “to buy a drink or a meal. Only two bars would serve [us] anything. We could not go into the hotel — they refused to give us a room. . . . Hotels in town would not serve us.” The people there, he felt, “were living in the Northwest but with a southern attitude.”

  Morris agreed. His voice had a sad tone: “The townspeople in Pendleton were very negative in their attitude toward black soldiers.”

  It was not just the citizens who were less than happy to greet the men of the 555th. The colonel in command of Pendleton Air Base was, as Biggs portrayed in his book, “a man who would quickly make it clear that he disliked having an all-black unit at his station. He was careful that we did not mix with his officers, that our area was inspected with undue meticulousness, and that the atmosphere of his office was ‘cool’ to us.” The men were upset that they “had to serve again under a prejudiced post commander. We had just left one at Mackall. . . . Such was our lot.”

  There were also positive interactions between blacks and whites. Clarence Beavers and J J Corbett remember eating at the restaurants in town without incident. Beavers said he ate out all the time, enjoying the steak and chili that were popular out West. Corbett didn’t have any trouble either, but the sign on the door that said “Indians and Dogs Not Allowed” upset him. The Triple Nickles had good experiences with the smokejumpers they trained and worked with side by side. “The smokejumpers we encountered with respect to the Forestry Service were also top flight guys. We had a wonderful relationship,” Biggs said. They were not only welcoming; they were also extremely helpful in their roles as teachers to their new firefighting partners: “They told us what branches we could avoid . . . what foods we could eat, how to sleep, where to sleep, how to cut a tree down. . . . [It was a] wonderful relationship.”

  J J Corbett (second from right) and fellow Triple Nickles in Pendleton, Oregon, summer 1945

  Although the general feeling in Pendleton seemed to be that the Triple Nickles should stay out of sight and stick to the base, some folks enjoyed seeing the men in town. Cathryn Davenport grew up in Pendleton and was impressed by their appearance.

  “The most we saw of them was downtown . . . all dressed in full uniform . . . and it was not a planned event or anything — it was very spontaneous on their part. They would fall into formation and march to cadence down Main Street, and I tell you that was a showstopper. . . . They were a fine bunch to see.” Biggs recollected that the men did venture into Pendleton once in a while to go to the movies. They even put on a few demonstration jumps for the locals. Corbett also remembered a group of them having a great time at a local rodeo event.

  Company A of the 555th assembled in Pendleton, Oregon

  On one occasion, Biggs and some of his men were loaned to the Navy for a special mission to train a group of naval pilots who were about to be sent overseas. During this one-day operation, the lieutenant commander, paying no attention to segregation rules, took the men to lunch in the naval officers’ club. “I could not help but notice,” Biggs recollected, “that this sister service treated us better than our own.”

  The men served with distinction, taking the naval pilots through a simulation of jumping into battle during an enemy attack and fortifying ground troops with supplies. They jumped fully loaded with water, food, weapons, and ammunition on their backs. The Triple Nickles received high praise for this mission and became the first black paratroopers to serve with the U.S. Navy. During the mission, the hopeful but pragmatic Biggs was struck with the realization that “perhaps we were jumping under conditions as close to combat as we might see.”

  Lieutenant Jesse Mayes. As jumpmaster, he was in command of his men on the ground and had to know when to make the drop. Here, he is about to jump out of a C-47 Troop Carrier Command plane..

  Roger Walden was also skeptical about the 555th’s chances of ever being given a combat mission. But the information they were given about the balloon bombs made him feel better about their assignment. “Upon arriving at our destination we learned that over a period of time . . . there had been a build-up of forest fires in the Northwest caused by incendiary bombs carried by balloons released by the Japanese . . . doing considerable damage in the great forests of . . . Canada and the United States.”

  Unbeknownst to Walden, however, this information was not completely accurate. For one thing, the bombs did not seem to be setting off many fires. When asked whether the Triple Nickles were given any specific knowledge that the fires they were fighting were actually set by the incendiary bombs, Morris said, “We could not confirm or deny that. Of the thirty-six fires we contained, I have no idea how many were started by the incendiary balloons. The rumor was there was very few.”

  In fact, according to meticulously charted information that later documented where and when every bomb was dropped, the Japanese balloon bombs were not responsible for any of the forest fires set that season.

  And because no news reports or panic alerts about the effectiveness of their balloon bombs ever got back to the Japanese, they had assumed that their efforts had failed. The Japanese had canceled the balloon-bomb project in mid-April, before the 555th even arrived. This may be why two of the most respected scholarly books on Japanese balloon bombs do not give the Triple Nickles much attention. Japanese Paper Balloon Bombs refers only to two hundred paratroopers who were part of a larger effort; Silent Siege does not discuss them at all. And A Pictorial History of Smokejumping, endorsed by the U.S. Forest Service, briefly mentions the 555th but reports that “the battalion was never used for balloon fires.”

  Even though the fires the 555th fought were not caused by balloon bombs, their firefighting service was greatly needed. Both the threat of the bombs and the 555th’s additional duties were extremely dangerous and real. Walden can confirm that firsthand: “We did find a few of the magnesium bombs that had failed to ignite, or fragments which we carried back to our base for further study and further training.” JJ Corbett also had a close encounter with a bomb. “We found a bomb that had not detonated — it was still hanging in the brush on its balloon. So we were trained in dealing [with] and disposing of the bombs.”

  This is the bomb-carrying part of the balloon apparatus. Bags of sand were hung from an aluminum wheel. At different altitudes, sandbags would be dropped to make the balloon rise higher. The Japanese calculated the speed and distance of the balloon so that once all the sandbags were dropped, the balloon should have been located over the American West, and the bombs were released. The black cylindrical objects hanging near the sandbags are the bombs.

  The Triple Nickles also played an integral part in pioneering the field of smokejumping as they dropped into the blazes and put them out. They tested equipment and techniques that are now standard smokejumping practices. There were injuries, including some broken bones, but the Triple Nickles suffered only one casualty. Malvin L. Brown was the only member of the 555th to die in the line of duty during World War II. In all, between July and October 194
5, the 555th made 1,200 jumps and helped control 36 fires.

  But questions remain as to why the 555th was the only group of paratroopers chosen to do this important work. What was really going on behind the scenes? Did the existence of the bombs create a perfect opportunity for the military to appease the Triple Nickles with an important noncombat assignment? Why was there such a rapid and secret need for the 555th to report to Oregon for Operation Firefly? Was it a diversion to keep these black troops from being sent overseas? Some of the 555th certainly felt that way.

  About being shipped out west, Morris said, “This was like a godsend for the Army because they didn’t know what to do with us. . . . The Army had no place for us. None of the commanding generals wanted the extra problem of integrating colored soldiers with the white soldiers, so they refused.”

  August 1945. Triple Nickles Captain Richard Williams and Lieutenant Clifford Allen look through the open door to pick the spot where they will drop Lieutenant Harry Sutton (bareheaded and smiling at left) and his team. Sutton went on to earn a Silver Star for gallantry in action in the Korean War, in which he lost his life.

  He explained further in a phone interview: “General MacArthur did not want any colored paratroops in the Pacific; he did not want the additional job of integrating the services. It had never been done, and he had other important things to do, he thought, with winning the Pacific theater combat. He didn’t want us, and that was a blow to us, as well as the one that we got when we thought we were going overseas. None of the commanders wanted any colored troops. It had not been done. They didn’t know what would happen when they brought black and white soldiers together. We were denied the experience.”

  Perhaps sending the 555th to smokejump and fight fires was the best use of their time and skills as the war in Europe was coming to a close. But one could argue that instead of being sent to Europe, the 555th could have been deployed to the Pacific. On the other hand, the sequence of events that led to America’s dropping the atomic bomb on Japan — which quickly ended the war — was already in place by July 1945, so it is possible the military commanders already knew they would likely not need more troops.

  It may be impossible to ever know definitive answers to some of these questions. But the importance and value of what the Triple Nickles achieved is clear, and their accomplishments carved out a new path that others would follow.

  One sunny August morning, about to smokejump into another forest fire, Walter Morris stood in the open door of the plane and thought about the discrimination he and his men faced. “Why, I asked, was I standing here on my way to a dangerous mission that could possibly get me and my men killed? Why should I die for a country that thought so little of me and my people?”

  Morris thought about all that he and the Triple Nickles had accomplished since he had first marched his men onto that calisthenics field in Fort Benning two years earlier. He thought about how their spirits had lifted as they had begun to realize they were just as skilled and able as the white paratrooper students. He flashed back to being called to General Gaither’s office and getting the surprising news that a black paratrooper company was going to be formed. His mind raced back over earning his silver wings, officer school, combat training, smokejumping training, and firefighting.

  They had done all that, even when people thought they shouldn’t. Even when people made bets that they wouldn’t. Morris looked down at the raging fire.

  “I was struck with a sudden understanding of my reason for being there. Why would a black man risk his life to help his country? The answer was simple. This is my country; this is my duty regardless of the social climate; regardless of the faults. This is my country, my children’s country, and their children’s. It is up to me and many, many people of all races and cultures to fight the haters and racists to make this a better place to live.”

  The 555th proudly participated in parades celebrating the Armed Services and America’s victory in WWII. In this photograph the 555th marches down Michigan Avenue in Chicago for the Army Day Parade on April 6, 1946.

  January 12, 1946, began as a gray, rainy morning. More than 12,000 paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne were about to march down New York City’s Fifth Avenue for a victory parade celebrating the end of World War II. As the parade got under way, sunshine burst through the clouds. A brass band blared John Philip Sousa’s rousing “Stars and Stripes Forever,” and more than two million people started to cheer from the sidelines and the balconies of buildings along the parade route. Nearly 350 Triple Nickles marched right alongside the 82nd Airborne. They all — members of the 555th included — wore colorful honors across their chests, decorations from 82nd Airborne victories during the war.

  Three of the 555th who marched that day later shared vivid memories. Melvin Lester said, “Black people in the crowd went crazy and were coming out to greet us.” They were mentioned in the paper the next day, and Lester said, “I kept that . . . until it turned brown and crumbled up!” Carstell Stewart was pensive. “It was a heck of a feeling that we were there. It was like goose pimples, and that sort of situation.” Jesse Mayes smiled and waved his hands in the air as he thought back. “Oh, you should have been there. When we came down that street . . . man, they were yelling . . . and we were strutting down there like peacocks.” He laughed long and hard. “I tell you, that was a great feeling.”

  Captain James Porter leads the 555th down Fifth Avenue in New York City as part of the victory parade on january 12, 1946. They marched with the 82nd Airborne.

  The man responsible for this feeling was General James Gavin. As Walter Morris said, it was up to many people to challenge racism and change the world. Gavin would loom large as one of those people.

  Five months earlier, on August 14, 1945, the Japanese had surrendered. World War II was over. The Triple Nickles had continued to fight fires for the Forest Service until October, when Operation Firefly came to an end. They were then reassigned to the 13th Airborne Division and sent to Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

  Once again, the Triple Nickles were given inferior housing, in an area Gavin later described as “a mud pond surrounded by sand.” Gavin wrote that the Triple Nickles “were billeted in old tar-paper-covered shacks for barracks. Their swimming pool was not much more than a mud puddle and their bathhouse was a scandal.” Once again, the Triple Nickles were kept out of the recreation center and the Officers’ Club for white soldiers, so once again, they started their own. Gavin saw that the Triple Nickles “did well with what it had been given,” but it caused him a great deal of concern.

  It upset Gavin — whom Biggs described as “color-blind”— that, in his own words, “our Army had been a two-colored Army for a long time, just as was our society.” At thirty-eight, Gavin had served with the all-black 25th Infantry and had experienced firsthand how black soldiers were just as “well trained, well armed, and well led” as white soldiers. Gavin decided to take action and find a way to integrate the Triple Nickles into the 82nd Airborne. Knowing that what he was going to ask for had never been done before, and that he would likely be rejected if he simply wrote a letter of request, Gavin went right to the top. He traveled to Washington, D.C., and had a meeting with Lieutenant General John Hull in the War Department.

  Major General James M. Gavin

  After Gavin had stated his case, Hull addressed him.

  “General,” Hull asked, “do you intend to give all those . . . medals that the 82nd won in Europe to the 555th?”

  Gavin said yes, and added that, if the 555th were integrated into the 82nd, they would benefit from the “newest equipment and weapons” he knew the 82nd was getting and so would have the opportunity to earn those honors for themselves. “I’ll see to that,” Gavin told Hull.

  And so the Triple Nickles marched in the victory parade wearing those medals. Gavin began working with the 555th at Fort Bragg in early 1946.

  On December 9, 1947, the 555th was officially integrated into the 82nd Airborne as the 3rd Battalion of the 505th Para
chute Infantry Brigade, under Gavin’s leadership.

  It was an emotional day. Triple Nickles member William Weathersbee remembers it well: “I walked in the barracks, and it was as if someone had died.” It was also fresh for Charles Stevens, who joined the 555th in 1946: “Everybody was crying. . . . I think we were crying for two different reasons. We were glad that segregation was leaving the Army, and we were sad we were losing our Triple Nickles colors.” Stevens said of the 555th: “I finally felt like I belonged to something.”

  They were now the first black unit to be integrated into an airborne division, as well as into a white division. But Gavin couldn’t have done it without the record that the Triple Nickles brought with them. Military historian Bernard Nalty said, “There’s no question that Gavin played a critical role, but you’ve got to remember you had good people in the 555th. And what they did, they did by themselves, for themselves. . . . No one is going to adopt an outfit that is weak, and Gavin may have had the greatest moral instincts in the world but if this was not a good fighting outfit he would have had nothing to do with it.” Still, Biggs wrote that the Triple Nickles’ appearance in the victory parade was “a symbol of Gavin’s determination to proceed with racial integration in the service.”

  Major General Gavin with 2nd Lieutenant Roger S. Walden as they view the Drop Zone during a training jump near Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in 1946. This was Gavin’s first jump with the 555th.

  “But he did more than that,” Biggs insisted. Once Gavin integrated the Triple Nickles into the 82nd Division, he also placed several of the 555th men in leadership roles in different companies. “Now,” Biggs said, his admiration for Gavin coming through loud and clear, “when you had that happening, you had a sprinkling, then, of integration under Jim Gavin [in] now all of his key staff division positions.” Biggs also said Gavin “moved quickly to provide equal treatment for his black officers and men.” Integration under Gavin was not going to be halfhearted. With pride brimming in his voice, Morris emphatically said, “White soldiers and black soldiers moved into the same barracks. . . . That was historic. . . . And there was not one incident of racism — not one.”