3 minute read
The Smoke Jumpers
By Tyler Francke, Veterans News Magazine
In November 1944, a group of 300 black soldiers stationed at Fort Mackall in North Carolina made military history when their unit was reorganized and redesignated as the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion.
They would be nicknamed the “Triple Nickles” (the spelling derives from Old English), because of their numerical designation and the fact that 17 of the original 20 members came from 92nd Infantry (Buffalo) Division. (This was a time when “buffalo nickels” were still in circulation.)
Because of their work, they would also come to be known by a different name: The Smoke Jumpers.
Lt. Clifford Allen, of the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, better known as the "Triple Nickles." Based in Pendleton, it was an all-black airborne unit of the United States Army during World War II.
It was the first all-black airborne unit in the history of the U.S. Armed Forces. Like other airborne units, they were all volunteers. And, like other airborne units, they expected to play a critical role overseas in the Second World War.
When the call finally came, the only order they were given was to get on a train to Pendleton.
“They thought they were going to be shipped overseas to join the war,” said Robert Bartlett, a Vietnam veteran and professor of sociology at Eastern Washington University. “Instead, they got classified orders.”
When they finally arrived at Pendleton Air Field (where the Doolittle Raiders had been trained and stationed several years earlier), they were assigned to a classified mission: Operation Firefly.
They would not be going to Japan, as they had suspected. They would be protecting the home front.
During the winter of 1945, the Japanese sent an estimated 9,300 “balloon bombs” toward North America. More sophisticated than they may sound, each hydrogen balloon carried over 70 pounds worth of explosives and incendiaries.
Japan’s goal was to set the entire West Coast ablaze. The Triple Nickles’ job was to stop them, to find the bombs and dismantle them, and to keep it all quiet. (The government feared a panic if the public knew about the bombs.)
They were not merely firefighters. More than half their missions in the summer and fall of 1945 would require them to put their airborne training to use: parachuting into burning forests, also known as “smoke jumping.”
The Triple Nickles equip themselves and prepare to parachute over a forest fire in 1945.
It was a job that required ingenuity, adaptability, specialized skills and extreme courage. And, during a time when the military — like much of the United States — was still deeply segregated, it also required a deep and unusual patriotism.
“I grew up hearing stories about how hard it was for them to get in the back of the bus, when the men at the front of the bus were German POWs,” Bartlett said of his father and uncle, who both served as combat medics during WWII. “But they served, because they strongly believed in America. It was their home. And whatever it took to preserve the freedoms of their home, they were willing to do it.”
Bartlett returned to Pendleton this summer to witness the dedication of a new marker in that city, which commemorates the legacy of the nation’s first black paratroopers.
A project of the Oregon Travel Information Council, with support from Umatilla County, Travel Pendleton, Pendleton Underground Tours and the state of Oregon, the new panel proudly sits on Main Street, sharing information about the Triple Nickles and their clandestine work, while also frankly acknowledging the discrimination they experienced.
Dedication of a new marker in Pendleton, which commemorates the legacy of the nation's first black paratroopers.
“I’ve been here several times, and now it feels like coming home,” Bartlett said. “This is such an amazing thing the city of Pendleton has done. Statues, historical markers, and all these kinds of things: They’re value statements. They tell us the things we value. And this is a huge value statement.”
