Interesting from The HistoryMakers
On December 30, 1943, the U.S. Army authorized the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, the first platoon of African American paratroopers in American history. The army selected twenty volunteers to undergo rigorous training at Fort Benning, Georgia, to become a part of the parachute battalion, which included intense physical conditioning, practice jumps from a 250-foot tower, and finally, test jumps from a plane. By the winter of 1944, seventeen out of the original twenty had passed their training course, and were activated as U.S. Army paratroopers.
The 555th did not see combat during World War II. They had originally been slated to travel to Europe to provide reinforcement during the Battle of the Bulge, but the U.S. turned the tide against Germany before they could be shipped out. Instead, the 555th was deployed to the West Coast, where they help to survey and protect the northwestern United States from forest fires caused by a Japanese fire balloon program. Many members of the 555th would later serve as combat troops during the Korean War.
HistoryMaker Lt. Col. Roger Walden was one of those first seventeen who got through paratrooper training, known as The Triple Nickles. Walden remembers the day when he, having volunteered originally to get away from his unit and face a new challenge, realized the extent of what he had signed up for: “I didn’t really know what getting into the paratroopers was about, or probably I would have gotten out–and not until I saw the 250-foot towers; I think they had three or four of ’em there, and the thirty-four-foot tower that they had to jump off of out there, and then I realized what this test group was gonna go through, and what it ultimately was gonna be–jumpin’ outta planes. So I felt it behooved me to give my all to it, and that’s what I was going to do–live or die.”
Glenda Dugar Career Soldier TM The Career Soldier Series TM 