KEYSVILLE, Ga. — In some ways, Daniel Boatwright’s first jump from the World War II-era Douglas C-47 while training at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia, was a metaphor for many challenges Black soldiers would face in and out of uniform.
It was 1947. The U.S. military was still segregated, and Black enlisted soldiers in the Army, like Boatwright, had to be better than good enough.
Stepping out of the plane that day during his training in what became known as the all-Black 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion was more than a leap of faith. It was training for precision perfection — the only standard for Black soldiers seeking to prove their merit and mettle.
“Ma’am, you just do what the instructor tells you to do,” Boatwright, now 93, said during a recent visit to his home. “You jump.”
Feet and knees together. Knees slightly bent.
“You get this sensation when you jump in the air,” he said. “That parachute snatches you all kinds of different ways. Your buddies are swinging with you. You’re talking and hollering, waiting for the ground.”
Land on the balls of your feet.
Roll to one side on your leg and hip.
“You land and thank God you’re safe.”
Credit: U.S. Army Air Force
Credit: U.S. Army Air Force
‘They broke the stereotypes’
As Americans celebrate Veterans Day on Nov. 11, it is often observed as a bittersweet moment for Black veterans.
Historically, many of their white counterparts and officers did not think they were on par, but they proved themselves brave and patriotic warriors on the battlefield.
Boatwright, a Waynesboro, Georgia, native who now lives in Keysville, was one of the early members of the 555th, also known as the Triple Nickles, a nod to its numerical designation. It’s also sometimes spelled Triple Nickels.
The historic Triple Nickles, activated in December 1943 as an all-Black airborne parachute infantry company of the U.S. Army that got its start during World War II as a test platoon.
There are monuments of the 555th at Fort Benning, among 29 such salutes to various airborne units.
It shows their contribution to the airborne effort, as well as their "inclusion as equals in the airborne brotherhood,” said Edward Howard, the Historic Preservation Specialist at Fort Benning.
It comprised the first Black paratrooper unit and included the nation’s first Black smoke jumpers, who were sent on a secret assignment to the Pacific Northwest to fight fires, some from incendiary devices launched by Japan and carried by trade winds to U.S. shores.
Credit: National Archives
Credit: National Archives
Its members and supporters often wear caps, jackets or necklaces with the symbol of three buffalo nickels, sometimes with “555” and wings included.
“They’re trailblazers,” said Timothy A. McCoy, a retired U.S. Army sergeant first class and the national historian on the Triple Nickles. "They started out as an experimental platoon. They broke the stereotypes of Blacks in the military. They jumped out of planes.
“They used improved techniques in airborne operations that are still used today. They were bad. They were an elite unit. Period. That’s the truth.”
McCoy flies around the United States with his mobile museum dedicated to African Americans in the military, a large part about the Triple Nickles, which he said is the preferred spelling. Photos, letters, equipment and uniforms.
‘I didn’t know anything about them'
There have been books written about the unit, and their story has been included in military and Black history museums.
A Facebook page devoted to their story has more than 900 members.
For the most part, though, their full story has remained largely out of the public eye.
Credit: National Archives
Credit: National Archives
People will say they’ve heard of the Tuskegee Airmen, but they’ve never heard of the Triple Nickles, said Ferrell Martin, president of the Robert F. Greene Atlanta Chapter 555th Parachute Infantry Association and who retired as a sergeant major from the 82nd Airborne Division. “I didn’t know anything about them until I was about to retire."
Boatwright joined just one month before the 555 was redesignated the 3rd battalion of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division and two years after WWII ended. As the 3rd Battalion PIR 505th, “they were the first Black unit to be integrated into the Army,” McCoy said.
“I just slid in there in just enough time to call myself a Triple Nickle,” he said of his chance timing. “I’m proud to be a Triple Nickle. They were soldiers. I think about those guys all of the time.”
Boatwright recalled the jumps he had to make — day and night.
“At night when I was in the plane, you could see the fire from the engine, you never saw something like that,” he said. “It’s dark and you jump out into the darkness. It’s no big deal. You just did it.”
Boatwright moved with his family to New York from Waynesboro. There, he worked a number of jobs in a clothing store, as a shoe shiner and factory worker.
When the factory went on strike, Boatwright decided to enlist.
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
At the time, Blacks faced a difficult time in the military. They were often assigned to menial tasks and were under the command of white officers.
Everything was largely segregated, even basic training, and Boatwright and other Black soldiers had to take on tasks like cleaning equipment used by whites.
“It was tough. We didn’t even have enough food to eat when I was in the unit. I’ve never been hungry until I went into the 555. It seems like I’m complaining, but it was tough, ma’am,” he said.
In an interview housed at the Library of Congress, Walter Morris, a Waynesboro native and one of the original members of the 555 test platoon, recalls what it was like:
“We as colored soldiers in Ft. Benning could not go into the main Post Exchange,” he said in the interview. “We looked in (and) could see the German and Italian prisoners of war sitting down at the same table with white soldiers ... So it is understandable how colored soldiers would have an inferiority complex.”
Morris and Boatwright knew each other from their shared hometown of Waynesboro. Morris was the first sergeant of the test platoon and made the guys emulate what the white paratroopers were doing. It came to the attention of General Ridgely Gaither, who was the commander of the airborne school.
Credit: USDA Forest Service
Credit: USDA Forest Service
“I was among the last to go through the class and he (Morris) was the first," said Boatwright, who now lives about 30 minutes from Augusta.
Boatwright, who went on to build a decades-long career in the military, retired in 1970 as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army. His last assignment was as a battalion commander at Fort Dix in New Jersey.
Boatwright doesn’t count all the jumps he’s made. Only one seems to matter. He got out and rejoined the military in 1950 as a Ranger during the Korean War, during which he made a jump behind enemy lines in Munsan-ni.
“I’m proud of that one. All you need to count is one.”
“I don’t know if I had fear in me at any time,” he said. “Now, I couldn’t go up on my roof and look down. I’m afraid of heights.”
‘Officers were Black from the top down’
Boatwright, a four-time Purple Heart recipient, was shot in Korea and also in Vietnam. A nerve condition and frostbite from his time in Korea have affected his mobility. He gets around in a wheelchair and has a caregiver who comes several days a week to help with household tasks.
“It was the crème de la crème. The top of the line. The Triple Nickles were so proud. What we would do is get in our uniforms, they were very starched and creased and our boots were so shiny you could see your face in them.”
Riding the bus, Boatwright and others would stand, so as not to put a knee print in their trousers. When they walked, their gait was straight legged.
“We’d go stand on the corner, just so people could look at us,” he said, chuckling.
He talks often with his longtime friend Jordan J. Corbett, who’s 97 and lives in Bartow, Florida.
Corbett joined the Triple Nickles and was one of the Black smoke jumpers from the original battalion. He joined the Army in 1943 and the next year joined the 555th.
Before "all the non-commissioned officers were Black and the commissioned officers were white. That was until I became a paratrooper.
“That’s one thing that really excited me — officers were Black from the top down,” he said during a telephone interview.
President Harry S. Truman signed an executive order in 1948 to desegregate the Army.
The training was pretty rigorous, even for someone like Corbett, who played football for Bethune-Cookman College.
“I was in pretty good shape,” he said. “The physical fitness test was pretty tough. I had played football but this was rougher than that. The number of push-ups, the continued running. It was the volume we had to do that was greater than what I was accustomed to doing,” Corbett said.
Credit: National Archives
Credit: National Archives
For those who came later, “I have to applaud them for taking the baton and really carrying on with the outfit. They eventually had the opportunity we didn’t have. They fought in the Korean War, and many of them received medals for their service.”
While he didn’t get the opportunity to fight, “it took awhile to realize what we did was important,” said Corbett, who was part of Operation Firefly smokejumper operation.
“They made us smoke jumpers and I think we did a good job. We were trained to fight but we retrained to jump in trees and fight fires and detonate the bombs sent over by the Japanese that didn’t explode.”
He says most people, even those in his family, didn’t know what role they played.
The government, he said, didn’t want people on the coast to know that Japan was reaching them with these bombs attached to balloons and “they didn’t want the Japanese to know they were successful.”
He said many top elected officials held the view that Blacks were “too dumb to fly” and “too scared to jump.” However, “it made us proud. We had something to prove and we did.”
But it wasn’t always rewarded.
‘All we needed was a chance’
At the end of World War II there was a victory parade in New York.
When the Triple Nickles marched with the 82nd Airborne Division and when they got to a certain point the cameras were turned off or pointed away.
“We didn’t realize it until we saw it on television,” he said. “It was a hurting feeling.”
His son, Jerome Corbett, knew his dad was a paratrooper in World War II, but didn’t know the significance of his service. He found out when he read an article in a Florida newspaper about the 555th.
“Operation Firefly was never discussed in my house,” said Jerome Corbett of Lakeland, Florida.
“He was a humble hero and he kept his mission’s integrity years after he had returned home.”
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Jerome Corbett’s pride is evident.
“If it doesn’t show through my voice, you’d see it in my eyes,” he said of the senior Corbett, who went on to teach math, coach high school sports and become a member of the school board. “We wear the same size shoe, but I could never fill his shoes.”
Johnny Miller, a member of the 82nd Airborne Division and former president of the Robert F. Greene Atlanta Chapter 555th Parachute Infantry Association, agrees.
“What you can learn from us is that we can do anything anyone else could do, all we needed was a chance.”
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