During World War II, more than 250 American men
— mostly Quakers and Mennonites — stood up for their
pacifist beliefs, declared themselves conscientious objectors, and
volunteered for a different risky service. They became pioneer
smokejumpers, parachuting onto the front lines of wildfires in the
Rockies. Smokejumping had only been invented in 1939, and it was,
as Mark Matthews writes, “a flirtation with death.”
Equipped with primitive gear, including football helmets, wire-mesh
masks and ankle braces, the pacifist smokejumpers leaped out of
wallowing airplanes, aiming themselves at “fires smoking in tight
canyons and near … craggy cliffs, where winds swooped,
churned, died down, and spiraled with changing temperatures.”
Floating downward — or plummeting, when their chutes failed
— they sometimes sang hymns, and often crash-landed in trees
and rocks, breaking ankles, hips and vertebrae. Some got caught
upside down, dangling from an ankle snagged in high branches. They
got paid $5 per month and their employer, the U.S. Forest Service,
refused to provide health insurance as punishment for their
anti-war stance. As if the job wasn’t hazardous enough
already, some of their fellow Americans called them “yellowbellies”
and roughed them up.
Matthews, himself an experienced
wildland firefighter, first explored the heroism of
conscientious-objector smokejumpers in an HCN
cover story in 1995. He adds a richness of details in his book,
drawing from interviews with conscientious objectors and many other
sources. He traces the roots of pacifism back to the Revolutionary
War, and smokejumping back to Leonardo da Vinci’s design for
the first parachute. He’s created a fascinating,
many-faceted, respectful book, personalizing it around the men who
lived out their commitment to nonviolence — role models that
remain relevant, as the Bush administration launches questionable
new wars, and labels skeptics as unpatriotic cowards.
Smoke Jumping on the Western Fire Line: Conscientious
Objectors During World War II
Mark
Matthews
316 pages, hardcover: $29.95.
University of Oklahoma Press, 2006
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Brave ‘yellowbellies’ served the West well.
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