The Triple Nickel-- 555th parachute battalion Traditional Geocache
The Triple Nickel-- 555th parachute battalion
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The cache is a 40oz plastic peanut butter container that has been
camoed. The cache has a film container for the signing sheet, a
camera (please take a picture of your battalion and place back in
the cache, so we can developed later!!), and some other
treasures!!! The FTF will be able to take the trackable! Please put
the cache back where you found it!
The 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, nicknamed the "Triple
Nickles" (using the English spelling of 'nickel'), was a World War
II African American unit of the U.S. Army stationed in Pendleton in
1945. The battalion, first organized in November 1943 at Fort
Benning, Georgia, was made up of voluntary transfers from other
organizations. Created when the U.S. military was segregated by
race, the 555th was the only African American parachute unit.
The distinctive insignia for the 555th was a white parachute with a
black panther crouching on top. According to Lt. Col. (ret.) John
Cannon, "We were the first Black Panthers because that was our
emblem, the black panther."
At Fort Benning, the unit's black officers and sergeants were not
welcomed in the base and noncomissioned officers' clubs. After
demonstrating that they were capable paratroopers, the Triple
Nickles trained, worked, and ate together with some degree of
solidarity with their white counterparts. Off-base, they continued
to encounter discrimination, segregation, and police
abuse.
The company transferred to Camp Mackall, North Carolina, in July
1944 to train for duty in Europe. By April 1945, however, the
German armies were collapsing and the unit made a permanent change
of station to the army air base at Pendleton. Their mission
was to recover and dispose of Japanese balloon bombs and to
suppress the forest fires the bombs started. The "Fire-Fly
Project," as it was called, was experimental and a tightly guarded
secret.
The 555th continued to experience racism in Oregon. The base
commander made it clear that he disliked having an all-black unit,
and it was reported that only two Pendleton bars and one Chinese
restaurant would serve unit members. The unit spent most of its
time on base, learning how to disarm bombs, use a new type of
parachute, fight forest fires, and survive in remote forested
areas.
A detachment of the 555th went to Chico, California, where it
responded on July 14, 1945, to the unit's first fire call to
suppress a blaze on the Klamath National Forest. Through the rest
of the season that year, the unit fought fires in Oregon,
California, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and
Canada. They located fire bombs, exploding some and
retrieving others for intelligence personnel. They also
participated in a training mission for navy pilots, staged a Fourth
of July demonstration jump, and attended the Pendleton
Round-Up.
By the end of the 1945 fire season, the 555th had participated in
thirty-six fire missions with more than 1,200 individual
jumps. PFC Malvin L. Brown of Narbreth, Pennsylvania, was killed
when he landed in a tall tree and fell 150 feet.
The battalion was assigned to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in
October 1945 and became an integral part of the 82d Airborne
Division. On September 11, 2008, three former Triple Nickles were
honored in a ceremony at the Oregon National Guard's Pendleton
Aviation Support Facility. The conference room at the facility
was dedicated and named for the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion.
Written by:Warren Aney
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Ernq gur fgbel!