The 555^th Parachute Infantry Battalion was nicknamed the "Triple Nickles" because of its

numerical designation and the selection of 17 of the original 20-member "colored test platoon"

from the 92nd Infantry (Buffalo) Division.  Hence, the origin of the term Buffalo Nickles; the

spelling derives from old English. Three buffalo nickels joined in a triangle or pyramid is the

Many years before “Black Pride" became a popular slogan, a small group of Black American

Born within an army that had traditionally relegated Blacks to menial jobs and programmed them

for failure, the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, or "Triple Nickles," succeeded in becoming the

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 rail-road stations, sit in segregated sections of theatres, and go out of his

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.

The first test platoon consisted of 17 fully qualified Black paratroopers in

February 1944.  The seventeenth man, CPL Carstell O. Stewart, missed the

graduation picture because of an emergency  leave.

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

 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 Nickles served in

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

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.  These men soon became known as

In early 1945 the "Triple Nickles" received secret orders for a permanent change of station.  They were sent to Pendleton,

Oregon & assigned to the 9th Services Command, trained by the U.S. Forest Service, and became history's first military

There were two reasons for this assignment, the first being that major commanders in Europe were leery of having highly

trained colored paratroopers coming into contact with racist white elements of the time.  There were two reasons for this

assignment, the first being that major commanders in Europe were leery of having highly trained colored paratroopers

Second, the Japanese were at the time floating incendiary devices attached to balloons across the Pacific Ocean, taking

The Forest Service asked the military for help and the “Triple Nickle” was ready, willing and able. The battalion answered

some 36 fire calls with more than 1,200 individual jumps during the summer of 1945, operating from Pendleton and Chico,

During fire operations the battalion suffered numerous injuries but only one fatality.  Malvin L. Brown, a medic assigned to

the battalion's headquarters company, died on Aug.6, 1945 after falling during a letdown from a tree in the Siskiyou National

Forest near Roseburg, Ore. His death is the first recorded smoke jumper fatality during a fire jump.

Munsan-ni, Korea, 23 March 1951. Heavily armed paratroopers and rangers descend

into the rice paddies during an airborne assault on Good Friday morning.