Sniper Elite 5/Sgt.Clarence Beavers-555th Parachute Infantry Battalion 1943-1947

The 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, nicknamed The Triple Nickles, was an all-black airborne unit of the United States Army during World War II.
The unit was activated as a result of a recommendation made in December 1942 by the Advisory Committee on Negro Troop Policies, chaired by the Assistant Secretary of War, John J. McCloy. In approving the committee's recommendation for a black parachute battalion, Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall decided to start with a company, and on 25 February 1943, the 555th Parachute Infantry Company was constituted.

On 19, 1943, Headquarters, Army Ground Forces, authorized the activation of the company as an all-black unit with black officers as well as black enlisted men. All unit members were to be volunteers, with an enlisted cadre to be selected from personnel of the 92nd Infantry Division at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.

The company was officially activated on 30 December 1943, at Fort Benning, Georgia. After several months of training, the unit moved to Camp Mackall, North Carolina, where it was reorganized and redesignated on 25 November 1944, as Company A of the newly formed 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion.
Clarence Hylan Beavers (June 12, 1921 – December 4, 2017) was an American United States Army sergeant and paratrooper who served with the first all-black airborne unit, the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, during World War II. He was part of the groundbreaking group of black paratroopers assigned to the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion also known as the "Triple Nickles" and later "Smoke Jumpers" at Fort Benning in Georgia.
During the 1940s, army posts in the south were largely segregated. Beavers later told stories about how members of the unit were not allowed to use the post exchange or mess hall, a privilege even Italian and German prisoners of war being held there were allowed.
The unit served stateside, mostly on the West Coast, protecting against Japanese fire balloons, which were described as the world’s first intercontinental-range airborne weapons — giant bomb-laden balloons launched from Japan and aimed at North America.
Beavers died on December 4, 2017 at his home in Huntington, Long Island of a coronary related illness. He was 96 and interred at Calverton National Cemetery