The Bonus Army

by Paul Dickson

  Shortly after getting the call from Bartlett, Glassford stood in front of a blackboard in the Traffic Bureau squad room at police headquarters and, before about one hundred police officers, drew his plan for the day’s operation: The entire area between Third and Four-and-a-half streets NW would be roped off and cleared of spectators, men placed at five-foot intervals, and two policemen assigned to escort each of the Treasury agents. Inspector Lewis Edwards, an assistant superintendent, would command the hundred men at the scene. Inspector Ernest Brown, also an assistant superintendent, would lead a detail of forty men, placed at key intersections in the large area bounded by Maryland Avenue, Indiana Avenue, Second Street, and Seventh Street NW near the foot of Capitol Hill, to divert veterans and rubberneckers from the evacuation scene. When the blackboard session ended, Edward, Brown, and Glassford and their men rushed off for Pennsylvania Avenue.

  Waters, in full boots-and-jodhpurs uniform and accompanied by similarly costumed aides, had already arrived at Pennsylvania Avenue. He ordered a bugle to blow “Assembly” and stood upon an improvised speaker’s platform. Amid heckling—“Give us our bonus!” “Let ’em come and take us away!” and “We’ll fight the whole damn works!”—Waters urged the men to accept the evacuation. “Glassford and his policemen are pretty good fellows, but when you start defying the federal government, which don’t take any consideration of the human element, you’re going to get licked. We can’t lick the United States Government, but when the United States troops are called to escort me out, I’m going out.”

  He rambled on, saying he had the money—donated by an unidentified Washington woman who “has plenty”—to build shelters at Camp Bartlett for at least two hundred people immediately. “Will you move or won’t you?” he asked, ending his speech. A chorus of “No!” answered him. The men drifted off to join the growing crowd. Veterans were coming in from all directions.31 That morning, phone calls had gone out to the camps, ostensibly from Waters’s headquarters, to send men to the evacuation area on Pennsylvania Avenue—but neither Waters nor any of his aides had issued such orders.32

  At 9:50 A.M., Glassford contacted Waters through Aldace Walker, a Washingtonian who had recently become Glassford’s “special secretary and aide.”33 Walker handed Waters a copy of the Treasury Department order: all the veterans in the area were being evacuated at 10:00 A.M. Waters, jolted by the news, realized that Glassford had betrayed him during the negotiations with the commissioners. (Glassford later insisted that he had to keep Waters in the dark because the commissioners had ordered the police chief to keep the real plan secret.) Waters read the order aloud and shouted to the men: “There you are! You’re double-crossed! I’m double-crossed!” The men, angry and confused, headed back into the buildings.

  The Rhine company had moved large cranes with wrecking balls to the area, but the cranes remained parked because the firm’s insurance company said it would not cover any work until the veterans and their families had been evacuated.34 At ten o’clock, six Treasury agents appeared, and Glassford put his plan into action. One of the agents announced that the Treasury Department was taking over the building—the old Armory—and handing it over to Rhine & Company. The Armory was the headquarters of the 1,600 predominantly southern men of the 6th Regiment of the BEF, whose leaders said that every one had been honorably discharged and that 85 percent had served in France.

  Glassford, Assistant District Attorney John Fihelly, the agents, and their police escorts entered the building. On the first floor were about a dozen men and a California woman, who smiled as a Treasury agent took her arm and walked her out. Jerry Wilford, the commander of the 6th Regiment, left just as peacefully, as did the other first-floor residents.

  The procession then filed up a wooden stairway that had been braced against the second floor on a wall-less side of the building. The eviction team found a basketful of bricks, about twenty empty beds, and an African-American man lying on the floor. He refused to stand. When two agents started to drag him toward the stairway, he started swinging at them. Fihelly ordered him arrested for resisting a legal eviction order. Policemen dragged him down the stairs, carried him across a stretch of rubble, and pushed him into the back door of a patrol wagon.35 The vets kept streaming out of the building, some walking, some pushed along by policemen who had arrested them. A Pennsylvania veteran had his artificial leg propped against a wall and demanded that he be carried out. The police refused, and he had to go out on his own.36

  The first phase of the evacuation went on smoothly for nearly two hours, before Glassford decided that he would suspend the evacuation while he broke for lunch. He planned to complete the evacuation by the end of the day.37 The crowd of bonus marchers and curious onlookers was growing steadily. Inspector Brown sped off on a motorcycle down Pennsylvania Avenue, past the Capitol, and saw trucks full of Camp Marks men. Brown whirled around, headed back to the evacuation site, and ordered traffic cops to fan out and detour all traffic heading toward the area.

  Police hauled a resisting veteran out of a government-owned building used as a Bonus Army billet. The eviction began peacefully at 10 A.M. on July 28. Near noon, attorney general William D. Mitchell ordered veterans expelled from all camps on U.S. property. (General Douglas MacArthur Foundation)

  As an old soldier, Glassford well knew the military adage “No plan survives initial contact with the enemy.” But he had never seen the vets as the enemy, and he did not expect trouble. Suddenly trouble came, in the form of a group led by a man who carried an American flag. The men emerged from the crowd, surged through the police rope, and began to cross a patch of rubble-strewn land behind the building. Glassford ordered them to stop. Patrolman J. O. Patton, who for weeks had been assigned to watch over the area’s BEF billets, identified one of the men as a Communist. He was Bernard McCoy, a Navy vet from Chicago.

  Someone—Patton said it was McCoy—rushed forward and tore Glassford’s badge off his shirt.38 Vets began hurling bricks and rocks at the police, who fought back with nightsticks. When an officer grabbed the flag, a veteran hit him with a lead pipe. Police and veterans took cover behind shanties.39 Bricks or rocks hit Glassford on the shoulder and on a leg protected by his leather puttees.40 A brick hit a police officer—a decorated combat veteran—as he went to the aid of his chief. The officer slumped to the ground and was hit again in the head. His skull fractured, he was carried off for medical aid, along with four other officers.41 “I was standing about forty feet away,” wrote reporter Paul V. Anderson, “and it looked like an ugly mess, but the cops kept their heads and no shots were fired. Glassford dashed into the heart of the melee, smiled when a brickbat hit him in the chest, and stopped the fighting in a few seconds.”42

  Violence suddenly flared during the attempt to evict veterans from abandoned government-owned buildings on the morning of July 28. The clash began when men carrying an American flag tried to break through police lines. (General Douglas MacArthur Foundation)

  Glassford climbed up on a pile of bricks and shouted, “Come on, boys. Let’s call an armistice for lunch.” Some men laughed and some cheered.43

  In those wild five minutes, police arrested McCoy and three others who were believed to have been in the group that had rushed in with the flag. Others arrested included John O. Olson, who had been awarded a Distinguished Service Cross for valor in France, and Broadus Faulkner, a Kentucky man who had also served in France. Faulkner had a criminal record—he had spent four years in prison for housebreaking. Olson, claiming that he had not been in the group that had fomented the brick-throwing, later said he had rushed out of the crowd that had arrived at the scene from Camp Marks and tried to grab the flag. As McCoy told it, as police grabbed the flag bearer and fought the others, “I went to the aid of my buddies. A half dozen cops jumped on me. One of them hit me over the head with his club and knocked me out. They say I grabbed General Glassford’s badge. I don’t know. I was out. . . . General Glassford is a fine fellow. Why should I grab his badge?”44

&n
bsp; Waters claimed that the flag-carrying group were “Reds,”45 but Glassford, who later interviewed the three men arrested, did not find them to be so.46 Still, the idea persisted that Communists had started the five-minute melee.

  The drawbridge to Anacostia, which the police had raised in June to keep veterans confined, was not lifted this time. Veterans packed it, and all morning and into the afternoon it remained a path for veterans streaming to the scene of action. As veterans poured into the Pennsylvania Avenue area, Inspector Edwards called on all precincts to send every man they could spare. More than five hundred more policemen rushed to the area on foot, in patrol cars, and in patrol wagons.47

  Without Glassford’s knowledge, Commissioner Crosby had a spy on Glassford’s evacuation team. After the brick-and-nightstick battle, the spy, Lieutenant Ira E. Keck, slipped off to the District Building—Washington’s equivalent of a city hall—at Pennsylvania Avenue and Fourteenth Street NW. Keck told Crosby and Commissioner Reichelderfer that “a riot had occurred,” that the police “had been attacked with bricks, clubs, iron bars, concrete and similar articles,” that “several thousand marchers were on their way from other camps,” and that Keck, along with Inspectors Brown and Edwards, believed that “the situation was beyond the control of the Police and bloodshed could be averted only by the presence of Federal troops.”48 Reichelderfer sent Keck back to the scene with instructions to tell Glassford that the commissioners wanted to talk to him before calling for military aid.

  As Keck approached Glassford, he saw him and his secretary, Aldace Walker, talking to Waters. As Waters recalled the conversation, Glassford said, “It’s looking serious.”

  “What shall we do about it?” Waters asked.

  “If I’m not asked to increase the area of evacuation,” Glassford replied, “I’m satisfied that there will be no more trouble.”

  Waters said he agreed, adding, “But if things go ahead like this morning, then I can’t control these men, and no one else can, either.”

  Meanwhile, shortly before noon, Attorney General William D. Mitchell, independent of the commissioners, told reporters that he had decided to order the evacuation of veterans from all government property, not just the buildings that Glassford had been evacuating.49 Mitchell, as a Cabinet officer, had to be acting with White House approval, but there was no indication that his action was coordinated with those of the commissioners.

  About 1:00 P.M., Keck returned to the District Building with Glassford, who brought along Walker, probably as a witness. What happened at the meeting depends upon who described it. The commissioners said that Glassford repeated Waters’s admission about losing control of his men, that Glassford had agreed that federal troops were needed, and that he was present when Crosby called MacArthur and requested that troops “be held in readiness.”50 Glassford, however, told reporters waiting outside the District Building that he had not asked for federal assistance “at this time,” though he did not want “to go against the seething mob” again. He said he had told the commissioners that his men could maintain order.51

  Glassford and Walker returned to the evacuation scene, which by now was jammed with about four thousand arriving veterans and hundreds of spectators.52 The roped-off area was clear of everyone except police, looking vulnerable in their summer uniforms of white shirt, black tie, and black trousers. Crosby and Reichelderfer soon arrived, briefly looked around, and left. Shortly after 1:45 P.M., Glassford heard an uproar in front of the Ford building, about fifty yards away. Glassford and several policemen rushed to the building and ran up a makeshift outside stairway to the second floor to get a better view of a scuffle on the ground below.

  Someone in the crowd yelled, “Let’s get him!”

  As officers George W. Shinault and Miles Znamenacek followed their chief to the second floor, men shoved them down. A brick hit Znamenacek. Someone grabbed Shinault’s nightstick and hit him with it. A garbage can, hurled from above, crashed near Znamenacek. Glassford, looking down on the fallen policemen, saw Shinault draw his gun and fire two shots. Two men fell. Other policemen rushed up, guns drawn.

  Angry veterans and police officers faced off at the rope that police stretched around the original eviction scene. As crowds of veterans poured into the area from other camps, every available policeman was ordered to the area. (General Douglas MacArthur Foundation)

  “Stop that shooting!” Glassford shouted. Dazed, Shinault raised his gun and aimed at Glassford, who ducked behind a pillar.

  On the ground lay William Hushka, a thirty-five-year-old veteran from Chicago, who died almost instantly.53 Eric Carlson, a thirty-eight-year-old veteran from Oakland, California, was mortally wounded. Ambulances carried them away, along with three injured police officers.54

  “A breathless silence of horror, as in the presence of death, seemed to depress the thousands of bystanders,” recalled John Bartlett, who had arrived shortly before and saw the shattering of his dream of providing a peaceful bivouac for the BEF.55 A few minutes later, Raymond P. Brandt, a reporter in the Washington bureau of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, went up to Glassford and jolted the chief with the news that federal troops were massing on the Ellipse, the circular greensward south of the White House.56 Then Assistant Attorney General Nugent Dodds formally told Glassford that the troops had been called out.

  “When will the troops arrive?” Glassford asked. “What will be their mission?”

  Dodds said he had delivered the message that had been given to him, then walked away.

  MacArthur had been meeting since morning with Moseley and Major General Blanton Winship, the judge adjutant general. Winship decided that the president could—and should—declare martial law; once that happened, Winship said, the situation was entirely in the hands of the military.57 The military was going to be MacArthur. His low-ranking aide, Major Dwight D. Eisenhower, recalled later that he diplomatically tried to tell MacArthur that quelling a riot was beneath the dignity of the Army chief of staff. “But,” Eisenhower remembered, “he said that this was a very serious test of the strength of the Federal Government; that he was going, and that I was going as his aide.”58

  MacArthur sent an aide to his quarters—a twenty-one-room Victorian-style home on General’s Row at Fort Myer—and told him to return immediately with the general’s dress uniform and boots. He then told Eisenhower to go home and get his own uniform. Eisenhower rushed to the Eisenhowers’ apartment near DuPont Circle. Cursing and throwing civvies and boxes around the room, he found his rarely worn uniform and sprinkled talc on his legs to ease the donning of his stiff leather boots.59

  “Where Veteran Was Killed” is a grim postscript to a peaceful portrait of the veterans’ billet where police fatally shot not one but two veterans on July 28. One was killed instantly; the other suffered mortal wounds. (Authors’ collection)

  At 1:35 P.M., General MacArthur telephoned Brigadier General Perry L. Miles and told him to alert the troops at Fort Myer and at Fort Washington, about eighteen miles down the Potomac on the Maryland side, opposite Mount Vernon. Five minutes later, MacArthur again called Miles and ordered him “to assemble on the Ellipse at once.”60 At 1:50 P.M., Major George S. Patton Jr., at Fort Myer, called the commanding officer of the 2nd Squadron to say that the squadron had been ordered to Washington and that the troopers were “directed to saddle and be prepared to move as soon as possible.”61

  Captain Lucian K. Truscott Jr. led 213 cavalry troopers who “pounded down through Arlington National Cemetery, over the recently completed Memorial Bridge, and halted on the Ellipse at about 2:30.”62 They were the first to arrive. Fort Myer infantrymen were being brought in trucks, and coming up the Potomac from Fort Washington was a steamer carrying about 250 infantrymen and their officers. While awaiting the infantry, Major Patton rode off alone down Pennsylvania Avenue to Third Street NW to reconnoiter the terrain. He returned to the Ellipse with the crowd’s cheers and jeers in his wake.63

  Glassford rode his motorcycle to the Ellipse, where he
found MacArthur in full uniform. When Glassford asked him what he planned to do, MacArthur said, “We are going to break the back of the BEF. Within a short time we will move down Pennsylvania Avenue, sweep through the billets there, and then clean out the other two big camps. The operation will be continuous. It will all be done tonight.”64

  Glassford asked MacArthur for a ten-minute head start and roared back to the Pennsylvania Avenue billets, where he had his men spread word among the veterans. He also sent warnings to the other camps and urged the evacuation of women and children before the troops arrived. Expecting that the troops were only minutes from going into action, Glassford cleared Pennsylvania Avenue, which had been filling with spectators. He kept them on one side of the broad ceremonial avenue, opposite the veterans and their billets. “Absolute order prevailed,” Glassford recalled. “Veterans in their billets on the other side of the avenue awaited with eager curiosity the arrival of the soldiers.”65

  It would be a long wait. The steamer bearing the Fort Washington troops sailed up the river to the Washington Channel and—not far from a small BEF camp at an abandoned warehouse—docked near the Army War College. The soldiers boarded trucks that took them to the Ellipse. Another fifty men and five officers came from a Fort Myer unit that usually guarded the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and provided pallbearers for funerals. Flatbed trucks appeared carrying five tanks that had been secretly transferred to Fort Myer in June. After stocking up on tear-gas grenades and tear-gas candles, the force was ready to move out.