by Gerald Boerner
Armies through history have been given “script” that was to be exchanged later for “real” money when the war was over. This was done for many who served during the first World War. Not much thought was given to this “hidden” debt during the prosperous 20s, but when the banks failed in ‘29 and the Great Depression hit, these “script” certificates were seen as a way for World War I veterans to survive the economic downturn.
But the government, under President Herbert Hoover, was also short on money and could not honor these demands. The veterans assembled in Washington, D.C., to protest the lack of payment. This “Bonus Army” set up their own tent city; when they would not disburse, the government moved against them.
Douglas MacArthur and George Patton were called upon to break up this encampment. There was a confrontation and those brave soldiers from the past were treated with the ultimate indignity. Let us not forget this betrayal and honor our brave fighting men and women.. GLB
[ 2800 Words ]
“Over all our happy country – over all our Nation spread, Is a band of noble heroes – is our Army of the Dead.”
— Will Carleton
“Really I feel less keen about the Army every day. I think the Church would suit me better.”
— Winston Churchill
“Secret operations are essential in war; upon them the army relies to make its every move.”
— Sun Tzu
“Philosophers are people who do violence, but have no army at their disposal, and so subjugate the world by locking it into a system.”
— Robert Musil
“People were very affected by the war. But it didn’t mean you stopped painting unless you were called into the Army; then you just couldn’t paint. But otherwise one continued.”
— Lee Krasner
“Since I’m allergic to various things, the army wouldn’t accept me during the war, and I got into the Office of War Information, which sent music to Europe.”
— Elliott Carter
“So I had to be the doctor to these wounded men until we could remove them to the hospital. There were fifty-four women and forty little boys with the Red Army prisoners, and I went daily to take care of them also.”
— Agnes Smedley
“So when I told my parents I wanted to go into acting because I was flunking out of my first year of junior college, they were relieved that I had picked something other than joining the army. But I can’t imagine how they had high hopes for me.”
— Dustin Hoffman
The “Bonus Army”: Demand for Justice
The self-named Bonus Expeditionary Force was an assemblage of some 43,000 marchers—17,000 World War I veterans, their families, and affiliated groups – who protested in Washington, D.C., in spring and summer of 1932. Called the Bonus March by the news media, the Bonus Marchers were more popularly known as the Bonus Army. It was led by Walter W. Waters, a former Army sergeant. The veterans were encouraged in their demand for immediate cash-payment redemption of their service certificates by retired U.S.M.C. Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, one of the most popular military figures of the time.
The war veterans, many of whom had been out of work since the beginning of the Great Depression, sought immediate cash payment of Service Certificates granted to them eight years earlier via the Adjusted Service Certificate Law of 1924. Each Service Certificate, issued to a qualified veteran soldier, bore a face value equal to the soldier’s promised payment, plus compound interest. The problem was that the certificates (like bonds), matured twenty years from the date of original issuance, thus, under extant law, the Service Certificates could not be redeemed until 1945.
On July 28, U.S. Attorney General William D. Mitchell ordered the veterans removed from all government property. Washington police met with resistance, shots were fired and two veterans were killed. President Hoover then ordered the army to clear out the veterans. The infantry and cavalry were supported by six tanks, and commanded by Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur. Major, later President, Dwight D. Eisenhower was his liaison with Washington police, and Major George Patton led the cavalry. The Bonus Army, their wives and children were driven out with fixed bayonets and adamsite gas, an arsenical vomiting agent, and their shelters and belongings burned. Two more of the veterans, and an unknown number of babies and children, died (accounts range from one to "a number" of casualties).
After Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election, his wife, Eleanor, urged members of the Bonus Army to apply for work with the Works Progress Administration building the Overseas Highway to Key West. Several hundred veterans were later killed in the September 1935 Florida Keys hurricane. Congress overrode a Roosevelt veto in 1936 to give the veterans their bonus 10 years early.
Background
The practice of war-time military bonuses began in 1776, as payment for the difference between what a soldier earned and what he could have earned had he not enlisted. Before World War One, the soldier’s military service bonus (adjusted for rank) was land and money—a Continental Army private received 100 acres (40 ha) and $80.00 at war’s end while a Maj. Gen. received 1,100 acres (450 ha). In 1855, Congress increased the land-grant minimum to 160 acres (65 ha), and reduced the eligibility requirements to fourteen days of military service, or one battle; moreover, the bonus also applied to veterans of any Indian war. Breaking with tradition, the veterans of the Spanish-American War did not receive a bonus, and, after World War One, their not receiving a military service bonus became a political matter when World War I veterans received only a $60 bonus. In 1919, the American Legion was created, and led a political movement for an additional bonus.
In 1924, over-riding President Calvin Coolidge’s veto, Congress legislated compensation for veterans to recognize their war-time suffering: receive a dollar for each day of domestic service, to a maximum of $500; and $1.25 for each day of overseas service, to a maximum of $625. Amounts owed of $50 or less were immediately paid; greater sums were issued as certificates of service maturing in 20 years.
Some 3,662,374 military service certificates were issued, with a face value of $3.638 billion. Congress established a trust fund to receive 20 annual payments of $112 million that, with interest, would finance the $3.638 billion dollars owed to the veterans in 1945. Meanwhile, veterans could borrow up to 22.5% of the certificate’s face value from the fund. In 1931, because of the Great Depression, Congress increased the loan value to 50 percent of the certificate’s face value; yet, by April 1932, loans amounting to $1.248 billion dollars had been paid, leaving a $2.36-billion-dollar deficit. Although there was Congressional support for the immediate redemption (payment) of the military service certificates, President Hoover and Republican congressmen opposed that, because it would negatively affect the Federal Government’s budget and Depression-relief programs. Meanwhile, veterans organizations pressed the Federal Government to allow the early redemption of their military service certificates.
Arrival in Washington
The Bonus Army massed at the United States Capitol on June 17 as the U.S. Senate voted on the Patman Bonus Bill, which would have moved forward the date when World War I veterans received a cash bonus. Most of the Bonus Army camped in a Hooverville on the Anacostia Flats, a swampy, muddy area across the Anacostia River from the federal core of Washington, just south of the 11th Street Bridges (now Section C of Anacostia Park). The camps, built from materials scavenged from a nearby rubbish dump, were tightly controlled by the veterans with streets laid out, sanitation facilities built and parades held daily. To live in the camps, veterans were required to register and prove they had been honorably discharged. The protesters had hoped that they could convince Congress to make payments that would be granted to veterans immediately, which would have provided relief for the marchers who were unemployed due to the Depression. The bill had passed the House of Representatives on June 15 but was blocked in the Senate.
U.S. Army Intervenes
On 28 July, 1932, Attorney General Mitchell ordered the police evacuation of the Bonus Army veterans. When they resisted the police shot at them, killing two. When told of this, President Hoover ordered the army to effect the evacuation of the Bonus Army from Washington.
At 4:45 p.m., commanded by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the 12th Infantry Regiment, Fort Howard, Maryland, and the 3rd Cavalry Regiment, supported by six battle tanks commanded by Maj. George S. Patton, Fort Myer, Virginia, formed in Pennsylvania Avenue while thousands of civil service employees left work to line the street and watch the U.S. Army attack its own veterans. The Bonus Marchers, believing the display was in their honour, cheered the troops until Maj. Patton ordered the cavalry to charge them—an action which prompted the civil service spectators to yell, "Shame! Shame!"
After the cavalry charged the infantry, with fixed bayonets and adamsite gas, entered the camps, evicting veterans, families, and camp followers. The veterans fled across the Anacostia River to their largest camp and President Hoover ordered the assault stopped. However Gen. MacArthur, feeling this exercise was a Communist attempt at overthrowing the U.S. government, ignored the President and ordered a new attack. Hundreds of veterans were injured and several killed—including William Hushka and Eric Carlson. A veteran’s wife miscarried. The infant, Bernard Myers, died in the hospital after the incident but reports indicated the death was not caused by the evacuation of the BEF.
The Posse Comitatus Act—forbidding civilian police work by the U.S. military—did not apply to Washington, D.C., because it is the federal district directly governed by the U.S. Congress (U.S. Constitution, Article I. Section 8. Clause 17). The exemption was created because of an earlier "Bonus March." In 1781, most of the Continental Army was demobilized without pay. Two years later hundreds of Pennsylvania war veterans marched on Philadelphia, surrounding the State House where Congress was in session, and demanded their pay. The U.S. Congress fled to Princeton, New Jersey, and several weeks later, the U.S. Army expelled the war veterans from the national capital.
Aftermath
A movie, Gabriel Over the White House, was released by MGM in March 1933 that depicted the Bonus March, but with a more positive outcome. Produced by William Randolph Hearst’s Cosmopolitan Pictures, it concerned the actions of "President Hammond" who ends the depression and solves the marchers’ problems through authoritarian means, which result in a stable economy, elimination of crime, and creation of world peace.
Following his election, President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not want to pay the bonus early either. In March 1933, Roosevelt issued an executive order allowing the enrollment of 25,000 veterans in the Civilian Conservation Corps for work in forests. When they marched on Washington again in May 1933, he sent his wife Eleanor to chat with the vets and pour coffee with them, and she persuaded many of them to sign up for jobs making a roadway to the Florida Keys, which was to become the Overseas Highway, the southernmost portion of U.S. Route 1. The third-strongest hurricane ever measured, the September 2, 1935 Labor Day hurricane, killed 258 veterans working on the Highway. Most were killed by storm surge flooding. After seeing more newsreels of veterans giving their lives for a government that had taken them for granted, public sentiment built up so much that Congress could no longer afford to ignore it in an election year (1936). Roosevelt’s veto was overridden, making the bonus a reality.
Perhaps the Bonus Army’s greatest accomplishment was the piece of legislation known as the G. I. Bill of Rights. Passed in July, 1944, it immensely helped veterans from the Second World War to secure needed assistance from the federal government to help them fit back into civilian life, something the World War I veterans of the Bonus Army had not received. The Bonus Army’s activities can also be seen as a template for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, and popular political demonstrations and activism that took place in the U.S. later in the 20th century.
Another Reflection on this Event
"The Bonus Army" EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (2000).
The Bonus Army
In 1924, a grateful Congress voted to give a bonus to World War I veterans – $1.25 for each day served overseas, $1.00 for each day served in the States. The catch was that payment would not be made until 1945.
Members of the Bonus Army
encamp within sight of the
Capitol, 1932However, by 1932 the nation had slipped into the dark days of the Depression and the unemployed veterans wanted their money immediately.
In May of that year, some 15,000 veterans, many unemployed and destitute, descended on Washington, D.C. to demand immediate payment of their bonus. They proclaimed themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force but the public dubbed them the "Bonus Army." Raising ramshackle camps at various places around the city, they waited.
The veterans made their largest camp at Anacostia Flats across the river from the Capitol. Approximately 10,000 veterans, women and children lived in the shelters built from materials dragged out of a junk pile nearby – old lumber, packing boxes and scrap tin covered with roofs of thatched straw.
Discipline in the camp was good, despite the fears of many city residents who spread unfounded "Red Scare" rumors. Streets were laid out, latrines dug, and formations held daily. Newcomers were required to register and prove they were bonafide veterans who had been honorably discharged. Their leader, Walter Waters, stated, "We’re here for the duration and we’re not going to starve. We’re going to keep ourselves a simon-pure veteran’s organization. If the Bonus is paid it will relieve to a large extent the deplorable economic condition."
June 17 was described by a local newspaper as "the tensest day in the capital since the war." The Senate was voting on the bill already passed by the House to immediately give the vets their bonus money. By dusk, 10,000 marchers crowded the Capitol grounds expectantly awaiting the outcome. Walter Waters, leader of the Bonus Expeditionary Force, appeared with bad news. The Senate had defeated the bill by a vote of 62 to 18. The crowd reacted with stunned silence. "Sing America and go back to your billets" he commanded, and they did. A silent "Death March" began in front of the Capitol and lasted until July 17, when Congress adjourned.
A month later, on July 28, Attorney General Mitchell ordered the evacuation of the veterans from all government property, Entrusted with the job, the Washington police met with resistance, shots were fired and two marchers killed. Learning of the shooting at lunch, President Hoover ordered the army to clear out the veterans. Infantry
Troops prepare to evacuate the
Bonus Army
July 28, 1932and cavalry supported by six tanks were dispatched with Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur in command. Major Dwight D. Eisenhower served as his liaison with Washington police and Major George Patton led the cavalry.
By 4:45 P.M. the troops were massed on Pennsylvania Ave. below the Capitol. Thousands of Civil Service employees spilled out of work and lined the streets to watch. The veterans, assuming the military display was in their honor, cheered. Suddenly Patton’s troopers turned and charged. "Shame, Shame" the spectators cried. Soldiers with fixed bayonets followed, hurling tear gas into the crowd.
By nightfall the BEF had retreated across the Anacostia River where Hoover ordered MacArthur to stop. Ignoring the command, the general led his infantry to the main camp. By early morning the 10,000 inhabitants were routed and the camp in flames. Two babies died and nearby hospitals overwhelmed with casualties. Eisenhower later wrote, "the whole scene was pitiful. The veterans were ragged, ill-fed, and felt themselves badly abused. To suddenly see the whole encampment going up in flames just added to the pity."
References:
Bartlett, John Henry, The Bonus March and the New Deal (1937); Daniels, Roger, The Bonus March; an Episode of the Great Depression (1971).
References
Other Events on this Day:
In 1896…
The city of Miami is incorporated.In 1932…
President Herbert Hoover orders the U.S. Army to evict the “Bonus Army” of World War I veterans who had gathered in Washington, D.C., seeking cash payments for bonus certificates the government had issued.In 1945…
A U.S. Army bomber crashes into the seventy-ninth floor of the fog-shrouded Empire State Building, kill more than a dozen people.
Dates and events based on:
William J. Bennett and John Cribb, (2008) The American Patriot’s Almanac Daily Readings on America. (Kindle Edition)
Background information is from Wikipedia articles on:
Wikipedia: Bonus Army…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army
Eyewitness to History: The Bonus Army…
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/snprelief4.htm
Brainy Quote: Army Quotes…
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/army_9.html
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