debut: 2/16/17
39,249 runs
Elite Black paratroopers 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion known as the “Triple Nickles.”
“He broke barriers, he defied limits, and he proved that bravery knows no color,” Harris’ grandson Ashton Pittman told CNN.Few knew about the Triple Nickles in their day and Pittman said he was unaware of his grandfather’s wartime heroism until he was a teenager.“His (wartime) service was just a chapter in a long, extraordinary life,” added Pittman. “But it’s a testament to his resilience and his honor and his unwavering dedication to something greater than himself.”Even well into World War II, Black soldiers were typically relegated to menial, non-combat positions in the Army. They cooked, patched roads, did the laundry and guarded the military gates, according to Robert Bartlett, a veteran, retired college professor and Triple Nickles historian.
But 16 soldiers from the segregated 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion became the first Black men to graduate from the Army’s elite Airborne School at Fort Benning, Georgia. Their unit was nicknamed the “Triple Nickles,” referencing the members’ past as “Buffalo Soldiers” of the 92nd Infantry Division and the “buffalo” nickel of the era, though using the unusual spelling of nickle.Instead, their group, now 300 strong, was ordered to Pendleton Army Airfield in Oregon where they learned they would be taking on a different kind of enemy, one they had not trained for: Fires.The Army was determined to keep “Operation Firefly” a secret, Bartlett said.“They didn’t want the American people to panic that they were getting bombed by the Japanese, and they didn’t want the Japanese to know that they were successful,” he added.“It was a secret war that the US was fighting.”
Harris completed 72 jumps during his time with the Triple Nickles. He was honorably discharged after he was seriously injured on a jump when his parachute failed to inflate fully.The Black heroes of the 555th did participate with their White brothers-in-arms for the 1946 victory parade in New York City even before the Army and the rest of the military were desegregated. But they still had to sit at the back of the bus and endure the other hostilities of discrimination.“It’s like ‘We don’t really respect you, but we need you,’” said Pittman of what his grandfather and others went through.Some of the official recognition of the 555th is being lost. A page on the US Forest Service website about the agency’s connection to the Black paratroopers entitled “The Triple Nickles: A history of service, an enduring legacy” is now blank except for the message “You are not authorized to access this page.”
Sgt. Joe Harris, who is being laid to rest on Saturday, was one of them. He died last month in Los Angeles at the age of 108, perhaps one of the last of the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion known as the “Triple Nickles.”That legacy was to be honored Saturday, with a full military funeral complete with the fly-past.
RIP..
“He broke barriers, he defied limits, and he proved that bravery knows no color,” Harris’ grandson Ashton Pittman told CNN.Few knew about the Triple Nickles in their day and Pittman said he was unaware of his grandfather’s wartime heroism until he was a teenager.“His (wartime) service was just a chapter in a long, extraordinary life,” added Pittman. “But it’s a testament to his resilience and his honor and his unwavering dedication to something greater than himself.”Even well into World War II, Black soldiers were typically relegated to menial, non-combat positions in the Army. They cooked, patched roads, did the laundry and guarded the military gates, according to Robert Bartlett, a veteran, retired college professor and Triple Nickles historian.
But 16 soldiers from the segregated 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion became the first Black men to graduate from the Army’s elite Airborne School at Fort Benning, Georgia. Their unit was nicknamed the “Triple Nickles,” referencing the members’ past as “Buffalo Soldiers” of the 92nd Infantry Division and the “buffalo” nickel of the era, though using the unusual spelling of nickle.Instead, their group, now 300 strong, was ordered to Pendleton Army Airfield in Oregon where they learned they would be taking on a different kind of enemy, one they had not trained for: Fires.The Army was determined to keep “Operation Firefly” a secret, Bartlett said.“They didn’t want the American people to panic that they were getting bombed by the Japanese, and they didn’t want the Japanese to know that they were successful,” he added.“It was a secret war that the US was fighting.”
Harris completed 72 jumps during his time with the Triple Nickles. He was honorably discharged after he was seriously injured on a jump when his parachute failed to inflate fully.The Black heroes of the 555th did participate with their White brothers-in-arms for the 1946 victory parade in New York City even before the Army and the rest of the military were desegregated. But they still had to sit at the back of the bus and endure the other hostilities of discrimination.“It’s like ‘We don’t really respect you, but we need you,’” said Pittman of what his grandfather and others went through.Some of the official recognition of the 555th is being lost. A page on the US Forest Service website about the agency’s connection to the Black paratroopers entitled “The Triple Nickles: A history of service, an enduring legacy” is now blank except for the message “You are not authorized to access this page.”
Sgt. Joe Harris, who is being laid to rest on Saturday, was one of them. He died last month in Los Angeles at the age of 108, perhaps one of the last of the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion known as the “Triple Nickles.”That legacy was to be honored Saturday, with a full military funeral complete with the fly-past.
RIP..
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