The Revolt of the "Bonus Army" Part 1

EXCLUSIVE - The Jericho Report
The Revolt of the "Bonus Army" Part 1

Thousands of Vets Flock to Washington Protest

This silent newsreel shows thousands of hungry veterans on top of railroad cars winding their way to Washington from across the nation to seek help in the Great Depression.

A Fictional Portrayal of an FDR-Like Politician
Claiming to Support the Troops

In 1932, unemployed veterans marched on Washington, DC demanding payment of a bonus due in the future. The "bonus marchers" were routed by the military on orders of President Hoover. The idea of World War I veterans who had come home as heroes being confronted by the army was a national shock and doomed whatever hope Hoover had for reelection.

In this Hollywood version, made on the eve of the New Deal, a fictional president (under the influence of divine inspiration) visits the marchers and promises a public job program similar to job-creation programs of the actual New Deal. Note the explicit reference by one member of the crowd to past veteran service.

Bonus Bill of 1930s

Veterans of the First World War in the United States had been promised a cash bonus payable in 1945. Beginning in 1931 veterans organized to get full payment immediately. Congressman Wright Patman and Senator Huey Long were the leading proponents.

Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt strongly opposed the payment. 45,000 veterans calling themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force or Bonus Army marched on Washington in 1932 and were driven out by the Army.

Congress passed several bonus bills that were vetoed and finally overcame Roosevelt's veto in 1936 (Adjusted Compensation Payment Act, 1936, January 27, 1936, ch. 32, 49 Stat. 1099). The Treasury distributed $1.5 billion in cash to the 4 million veterans.

And now in this year 2007 the veterans are not getting the recognition due to them. Our political leaders, especially the ones overseeing Walter Reed, said that they found out about the lack of outpatient care from the Washington Post after the story broke. Dana Priest and Anne Hull wrote the story.

The house and shacks and tents on fire are the homes of the Bonus Army, our WWI vets. They marched on Washington trying to get their $700 promised to them after WWI. Their little shakes and temp. homesteads were burnt under orders of President Hoover.

This was how our veterans were treated by the government of the USA and the government is still not supporting our men and women in Uniform. They pay lip service but they wish our vets would go away especially the wounded vets, the ones who need after care.

The American people care and the American people will force our nit wit government officials, Democrats and Republicans, to start paying attention and provide our vets with what they need, even if it's for a life time.

The two story outhouses you see are designed so that the politicians are on top and the vets have to use the lower seating.

2007 - Army Demands Bonus Returns

Laura Ingraham interviews Pfc Jordan Fox who has been asked to return his bonus after injury.

In 1924 Congress voted $3,500,000,000 to the American veterans of the First World War. In order to prevent an immediate strain on its funds, the Government decided to pay the money over a 20 year period. During the Great Depression, many of these veterans found it difficult to find work. An increasing number came to the conclusion that the money would be more useful to them in this time of need than when the bonus was due.

In 1932 John Patman of Texas, introduced the Veteran's Bonus Bill which mandated the immediate cash payment of the endowment promised to the men who fought in the war.

In May 1932, some 20,000-50,000 veterans of World War I calling themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force or BEF (crowd estimate varied widely) marched on Washington - their families in tow, hungry and homeless - to demand the bonus they had been promised some 20 years down the road. They wanted, and needed, it now. It was the first open revolt of the retired military against the politicians. Bringing their families, they set up a tent city at Anacostia Flats, an area that had formerly been used as an army recruiting center, bathing in the river, while demanding jobs.

During World War I, there had been strict segregation of black and white troops and, according to the diary of one black soldier, there had even been riots and deaths within the military over racial slurs. But in the huge tent city of the Bonus Army, according to Roy Wilkins, the civil rights leader who was at the time just a young reporter, blacks and white ate together and even shared the tents and shanties without incident, despite official pronouncements that they would be unable to co-exist.

Listen to a Black Soldier's Account of World War I
From National Public Radio, 2004 (MP3)

Republican President Herbert Hoover refused, saying America could not afford it, even though the country could later afford to bail out the failing banks, in a scenario frighteningly similar to what America would experience in 2008 as consumers and homeowners faced financial ruin and homelessness while the government poured hundreds of billions of dollars into unregulated "investment banks."

Hoover vetoed any law that would have met the veterans' demands, and said, in 1932, that "the bonus marchers are criminals."

Read Hoover''s Side of the Story

Others, such as J. Edgar Hoover, called them communists, fearful of what had happened in Russia in 1917 when Russian soldiers joined the people and overthrew the Czars, ushering in the Communist Revolution.

On 15th June the House of Representatives passed the Bonus Bill by 209-176. Two days later the Senate defeated it 62-18.

It was this treatment of the veterans, as much as the deepening depression, that swept Franklin D. Roosevelt into the White House in 1932 ... but he, too, repeatedly vetoed any attempt by Congress to come to the veterans' aid.

What happened next shocked and shamed America. In an epic drama of American history, men like Marine hero Gen. Smedley Butler, Ernest Hemingway and Evalyn Walsh McLean, owner of the Hope diamond, sided with the veterans, paying for food out of their own pockets, while others such as J. Edgar Hoover, Herbert Hoover, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, George Patton, Dwight Eisenhower and later Franklin D. Roosevelt, all became Public Enemies #1.

Future President Dwight Eisenhower argued with his commanding officer, General Douglas MacArthur, not to attack these unarmed war heroes, but MacArthur refused and ordered the tanks and machine guns to attack, torching what little possessions they had left. The day’s toll was three dead, 54 injured, 135 arrests, and over 1,000 men, women and children gassed.

MacArthur, controversially used tanks, four troops of cavalry with drawn sabers, and infantry with fixed bayonets, on the ex-serviceman. He justified his attack on former members of the United States Army by claiming that the country was on the verge of a communist revolution.

In the rush to point fingers, in addition to the Communist element, Congressman Patman and colleagues received their share of the blame. The Chicago Tribune editorialized that responsibility for the incident ‘lies chiefly at the door of men in public life who have encouraged the making of unreasonable demands by ex-service men and inflamed their mistaken sense of judgment.’

Many Americans saw the grainy black-and-white footage in their theaters as part of the news reports that preceded the movies.

It was this event that prompted an angry electorate to demand that Congress do something. Roosevelt then offered a relatively small group of the veterans jobs building a road in Florida, but a savage hurricane killed 245 of them in less than an hour. Under threat of a wider revolt by the nation itself, Congress overwhelmingly passed the G.I. Bill in 1936 and Roosevelt had no choice but to sign it.

The Bonus Army: An American Epic
by Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen
The sweeping story of the veterans’ protest that changed the course of American history. Veterans have vexed politicians since the days of Caesar’s legions.

Even the American Revolution ended with a disgruntled army menacing Congress. But no veterans story has been as dramatic or eventful as that of the Bonus Army.

During the summer of 1932, in the depths of the Depression, some 45,000 veterans of World War I descended on Washington, D.C. to demand of Congress immediate payment of a cash bonus promised them eight years earlier for their wartime service. They lived in shantytowns, white and black together, and for two months they protested peacefully for their cause—an action that would set off a chain of events and have a profound effect on American history.

President Herbert Hoover, Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur, and others feared the veterans were controlled by Communists plotting revolution, and would turn violent after the Senate defeated the “bonus bill” passed by the House. On July 28, 1932, going beyond presidential orders MacArthur drove out the veterans with tanks, tear gas, and soldiers wielding bayonet-tipped rifles. Newspapers and newsreels showed graphic images of American soldiers attacking their former comrades in arms.

Upon reading newspaper accounts of the eviction, Democratic candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt, in a critical contest with Hoover for the presidency, said to an advisor, “This will elect me.”

But Roosevelt was as reluctant to pay the bonus as Hoover, and bonus armies returned in the first three years of his administration. Seeking a solution, FDR drafted veterans into the Civilian Conservation Corps, sending many to Florida; there, on Labor Day, 1935, the worst hurricane ever to strike the United States killed some 250 of them, prompting Ernest Hemingway to champion their cause against a government cover-up.

"The Bonus Army" tells the full and dramatic story of the Bonus Army, and of the many celebrated and unlikely figures involved: MacArthur and his aide, Dwight Eisenhower, Walter Waters, who inspired the first 150 bonus marchers in Portland, Oregon; Evalyn Walsh McLean, owner of the Hope Diamond, who sided with the marchers against the Washington establishment; Roy Wilkins, then a young reporter, who saw the model for racial integration there; J. Edgar Hoover, who built his reputation against the bonus army radicals. Dickson and Allen also recover the voices of ordinary people who dared tilt at powerful injustice, and who ultimately transformed the nation.

The bonus was finally paid in 1936. But the marchers’ crowning achievement came eight years later when Congress, knowing now the power of veterans demanding their rights, passed the G. I. Bill of Rights, one of the most important pieces of social legislation in U. S. history, which in large part created America’s middle class.

It was this incident, terrifying and outrageous to the American people, that gave some powerful, wealthy financiers and media moguls the idea to create their own private army and overthrow the government of Franklin Roosevelt - not for the benefit of the veterans they were conning into becoming the cannon fodder, but to stage their own coup to take over the United States for their own private money agenda.

Today, America's veterans are becoming likewise angry, in increasing numbers, and even calling for a Bonus March II. Among their demands today are these:

Totally free and universal lifetime access to VA medical care, regardless of ailment origin/cause

Life-time guarantee of a one-time job preference benefit

A total-cost burial expense benefit based on pre-declared religious conviction

Blame-free, low-interest private business loans

A federally guaranteed veteran's charge card program enabling rapid debt recovery and credit worthiness

Repeal the Patient Enrollment System of PL 104-262

A Congressional Medal denoting Honorable Discharge/Service

Emergency Room access/treatment in any military hospital

A peer program to consider/award eligible discharge upgrades

A Cost-of-Living allowance retirement corporation to supplement veterans receiving Social Security only

A federal, enforceable law outlawing veteran impersonation

A post-service, federal ID card issued to all veterans regardless of length of service

Encouraging, tax-deductible incentives for any employer who hires a vet

Medical treatment for children afflicted with the "after-effects" of harmful chemicals during their parent's military service

Access to PX and commissaries (meeting clothing/communication standards)

College credit for military training (currently available but seldom formalized or positioned as a benefit)

Separation of disability benefit from retirement pension

Optional medical/dental insurance plan freeing employers except for work-related illness/injury

Should honorably Discharged vets be exempted for life from all federal, state and local (excluding non-sales) taxes?

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