The Bonus Army

by Paul Dickson

  1. Walt Whitman lived in a house in the 500 block of Pennsylvania Avenue; previously the house had been a gambling palace known as Pendleton’s Palace of Fortune. (Evelyn and Dickson, On This Spot, 48.)

  2. Meisel, Bonus Expeditionary Forces, 2. The June 14, 1932, report from National General Headquarters of the Bonus Army to the D.C. police puts the 7th Regiment strength at 2,300 (Glassford Papers). Meisel, describing the Pennsylvania Avenue camp around June 14, estimates its population at 2,000 to 3,000.

  3. Jack Douglas, in Veterans on the March, identifies the veterans’ leaders as George Alman, who had been deposed by Waters, and Edward Williams. Both men were left-wingers. Douglas’s description of the encounter has the police captain saying, “We’ve been soft-pedaling but a change is coming,” and Alman replying, “You’re right, a change is coming. We’re tired of it, too, and we’re going to do something about it quicker than you may think.” Douglas was not there, and Meisel was, so Meisel’s eyewitness account is more reliable. Still, the Douglas version underscores the hostility growing between the left-led vets and the police. Meisel, Bonus Expeditionary Forces, 6; Douglas, Veterans on the March, 159. Alman was later deposed by Waters, supposedly because of this incident.

  4. Mellon’s personal contribution to the Federal Triangle would be the National Gallery of Art, built with his funds to house his extensive art collection. His son, Paul Mellon, was one of three trustees responsible for the building of the gallery. National Gallery of Art Web site; U.S. General Services Administration, “Historic Federal Buildings,” GSA Web site.

  5. Lisio, President and Protest, 78.

  6. Cross, “Bonus Army,” 27. Cross used as his source the Hoover Papers, then in the Hoover Library at Stanford University. These included the July 20, 1932, Heath letters. The papers were later reassembled and archived at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library in West Branch, Iowa.

  7. Sneller, “Bonus March of 1932,” 184–86, using reports from the Washington Evening Star andWashington Daily News, July 20, 1932, and New York Times, July 21, 1932. The account essentially agrees with Douglas, Veterans on the March, 220–22.

  8. Lisio, President and Protest, 144. Glassford’s census of the area showed nine separate billets containing 824 by police count on July 26, including 150 WESL followers in one of the billets at 210 13th St. SW. (Glassford press statement, September 13, 1932.) The location of Pace’s billet was described in The Justice Department Investigation of the Bonus Army, September 10, 1932: Public Papers of the President of the United States/ Herbert Hoover, 1932–1933 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1956), 409–20.

  9. Copy of commissioners’ notice to Glassford, July 21, 1932. Glassford Papers, RG 679, box 15, folder 7.

  10. “B.E.F. Ordered Off Camps by Noon August 4,” Washington Post, July 22, 1932.

  11. Washington Daily News, July 23, 1932.

  12. “Washington Orders B.E.F. to Evacuate,” New York Times, July 21, 1932.

  13. “Veterans Get New Lease in Capital,” Baltimore Sun, July 23, 1932.

  14. Sneller, “Bonus March of 1932,” 196–98; Baltimore Sun, July 23, 1932.

  15. Handwritten notes transcribed, June 10, 1932, HH Notes-JTB 1930–1933, 1959. Boone Papers.

  16. Laurie and Cole, Role of Federal Military Forces, 373. Lisio, President and Protest, 195, notes discussions of dispersion problems in Winship’s “Memorandum for the Chief of Staff, Bonus Expeditionary Force,” July 28, 1932. The memorandum looks back at discussions that occurred prior to July.

  17. Secret letter, June 4, 1932, from Major General Samuel Hof, chief of ordnance, to commanding officer, Abderdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, Report of Operations against Bonus Marchers, AG 320.

  18. Winship was the first judge advocate to receive the Distinguished Service Cross or the Silver Star. Army Lawyer, July 1997, 38.

  19. Don Lohbeck, Patrick J. Hurley (Chicago: H. Regnery, 1956), 101.

  20. Moseley reveals the proposed proclamations in an unpublished manuscript, “One Soldier’s Journey,” among the Moseley Papers. He gives no date for the first statement but gives June 14 for the second.

  21. Laurie and Cole, Role of Federal Military Forces, 371.

  22. The authors are indebted to Aaron Jaffe for his analysis of the relationship of Glassford and Waters.

  23. The vet called himself Running Wolf, but his actual name was C. W. Taylor. Glassford testified as a character witness for Taylor in March 1933, when he was tried in Reading, Pennsylvania, for the murder of his estranged wife. “He went to the dairy to get milk for the children of the camp,” Glassford testified. “He brought fuel from the municipal wood yard to use for cooking purposes and he kept me informed about particular cases in distress.”

  24. “Steam Shovels Ordered to Bonus Army Billets,” Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1932.

  25. Waters, in his account, does not mention this meeting. Lisio, President and Protest, 150–51, notes that Arthur Hennessy, “The Bonus Army,” had interviewed Ward in December 1956.

  26. Waters, B.E.F., 192.

  27. B.E.F. News, July 23, 1932. Glassford had told Bartlett that he personally would make sure the camp was run in military fashion. Glassford Papers, RG 679, box 15, folder 12.

  28. Waters, B.E.F., 198–200. Waters says he agreed to keep the meeting with MacArthur and Hurley secret. The Washington Post (July 27, 1932) mentions the meeting, and Waters, true to his word to Hurley, says they discussed the economic condition of the country.

  29. Waters, B.E.F., 203–4.

  30. Carolyn Bartlett, “The Labor Day Hurricane of ’35,” Islamorada Free Press, August 31, 1988, 19–20. After his conversation with Glassford, Bartlett wrote a letter to Glassford with copies to Treasury Secretary Mills and local newspapers saying he would allow the veterans to occupy his land only if this were “agreeable to the Government and to the District.” This stipulation, of course, wiped out the plan. But no one was aware of Bartlett’s proviso when the fateful day began.

  31. Sneller, “Bonus March of 1932,” 208; Steve Murray diary.

  32. Charles F. Mugge, of Hoboken, New Jersey, who commanded Camp Bartlett, said in an affidavit on September 10, 1932, that, after hearing of a call for men to come to Pennsylvania Avenue, he had suspicions and asked Waters, who denied it. Mugge rushed to Camp Marks to stop men from leaving, but “the damage had been done.” Affidavit from Mugge, Glassford Papers, RG 679, box 14, folder 2.

  33. References to Aldace Walker appear in the Glassford papers, but Glassford does not identify Walker or provide any background on him.

  34. “Wrecking Crews to Oust Bonus Army This Morning,” Baltimore Sun, July 27, 1932.

  35. Wilford, commander of the 6th Regiment, later said that the man “had been planted there.” Wil-ford said that the Texas contingent in that building had twice put him out that morning, but he had slipped back in. Wilford believed that government agents posing as veterans had tried to “provoke a riot to justify the calling out of the troops.” Signed statement from Wilford, Glassford Papers, RG 679, box 14, folder 2.

  36. “Two Play Pitch and Toss with Gas Grenade in Fight,” Philadelphia Public Ledger, July 29, 1932.

  37. Daniels, Bonus March, 147–49.

  38. Patton’s grand jury testimony, as published in ibid., 149. Waters, B.E.F., 215, says two B.E.F. men “knocked the ‘Red’ down,”picked up Glassford’s badge, and handed it back to him. Glassford, in his accounts of July 28, does not mention the badge. Nor is the badge mentioned in Glassford’s interview, on August 18, of McCoy and two other men. According to Glassford’s handwritten notes, McCoy had served in the Navy and was discharged as a machinist mate first class. He was a member of the American Legion in Chicago and had been billeted on Missouri Avenue near Third Street. Glassford Papers, RG 679, box 14, folder 13.

  39. Statement of Lieutenant Ira Keck, August 3, 1932; District of Columbia Records, Bonus Marchers (Veterans), 39–010, as cited in Hennessy, “The Bonus Army.”

  40. Baltimore Evening Sun, July 29, 1932.


  41. “Bombs and Sabres Win Capital Battle,” New York Times, July 29, 1932. This account, as do several others, says Scott had been awarded the Medal of Honor. But his name does not appear on the list of names maintained by the Congressional Medal of Honor Society. Glassford was quoted in some accounts as saying that Scott was a holder of the Distinguished Service Cross. Scott’s skull was fractured, according to the casualty list prepared by the Associated Press, July 28, 1932.

  42. Anderson, a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, wrote this account for The Nation, August 17, 1932, 138–40.

  43. Weaver, “Bonus March,” 18–23, 92–97.

  44. Bartlett, “Labor Day Hurricane,” 101.

  45. Waters, B.E.F., 214. As Lisio, President and Protest, 178, points out, Patton “was the only police officer who claimed that Communists were at the eviction site. Glassford, who was equally familiar with the Communists, was convinced that none of them were involved in the brick battle.” But Lisio (451) calls the group “a Communist delegation,” and Weaver in “Bonus March,” 93, calls them “radicals.” Daniels, Bonus March (150), refers to the brick throwers as “the Communists.”

  46. Glassford notes on his interview of Olson that he had a Distinguished Service Cross, had been billeted at Camp Marks, and “claims he ran out to take flag out of the fight.” Glassford Papers, RG 679, box 14, folder 13.

  47. Sneller, “Bonus March of 1932,” 211, based on Edwards’s report in “Bonus March,” 1932, Central Files, District of Columbia, which Sneller found in the Old District Building. These files may still exist, but workers at the D.C. Archives were unable to locate them.

  48. “Bonus March Conditions,” a 91.2-page, single-spaced document apparently prepared for the White House. It bears a handwritten date, August 1, 1932, and notation, “Incidents & Criminal Components.” The document contains reports on interviews of District commissioners and police officers (not including Glassford) by two of J. Edgar Hoover’s assistants in the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation. Herbert Hoover Presidential Library. Presidential Papers—World War Veterans, Bonus—Reports.

  49. Lisio, President and Protest, 175.

  50. Ibid.

  51. Ibid., 183, quoting Washington Evening Star and New York Times, both July 28, 1932.

  52. Statement of Officer Vernon West, August 3, 1932; District of Columbia Records, Bonus Marchers (Veterans), 39–010, as cited in Hennessy, “The Bonus Army.”

  53. Born in Lithuania, Hushka had come to America as a young man and started a butcher shop in Saint Louis. In 1917 he sold the shop, volunteered for the Army, and served in France. After his honorable discharge he drifted to Chicago, worked as a butcher, but never had a steady job. His wife divorced him and won custody of their daughter. By June 1932, when he heard about the B.E.F., he joined and headed for Washington. “I might as well starve there as here,” he told his brother. Pals in the B.E.F. called him “Bud-die Bill.” He died almost instantly. A bullet through his heart had made him eligible for his $528 bonus, which went to his ex-wife. (Time, August 8, 1932; Bartlett, “Labor Day Hurricane,” 7.)

  54. New York Times, July 29, 193; Lisio, President and Protest, 186.

  Carlson died on August 2. As he died, Hushka was being buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. Waters and his staff, along with representatives from local American Legion and Veterans of Foreign War posts, were there. On the way to Arlington, the Hushka funeral procession circled the White House (B.E.F. News, August 6, 1932). Carlson was later buried at Arlington.

  55. Bartlett, 32.

  56. Raymond P. Brandt, interview by Jerry N. Hess, September 28, 1970, for the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library. “I told him the soldiers were coming and he couldn’t believe it because he hadn’t asked for them,” Brandt said. Glassford’s recollection: “Calling of Troops to Evict Bonus Army without Justification, Asserts Glassford,” New York American, November 4, 1932. This was the seventh in a series of articles written by Glassford for Hearst newspapers.

  57. Laurie and Cole, Role of Federal Military Forces (375), citing a July 28, 1932, memo from Winship to MacArthur, say that he “assigned” to MacArthur and Miles “direction over Chief Glassford and the District of Columbia police force, an assignment which was not authorized under any existing federal statue or Army regulation.”

  58. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, interview by Raymond Henle, July 13, 1967, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library oral history collection. Geoffrey Perret, in Eisenhower (New York: Random House, 1999), 113, doubts whether Eisenhower would have argued with his superior. “There is no mention of this famous rebuke to MacArthur in Ike’s diary, a document so frank that much of it remained under wraps until 1998,” Perret wrote.

  59. John Eisenhower interview, National Press Club, November, 2003.

  60. “Report of Operations against Bonus Marchers,” from Brigadier General P. L. Miles to General Douglas MacArthur, August 4, 1932. Records of U.S. Army continental commands, 1920–1940, RG 394, National Archives.

  61. “Summary of Events Troop ‘F’, July 28, 29, 1932,” July 30, 1932. III Corps Area, District of Washington, National Archives.

  62. Truscott, p. 127.

  63. Blumenson, Patton Papers, vol. 2, 977.

  64. New York American, November 4, 1932.

  65. Glassford report in Hearst newspapers.

  66. The units involved were a battalion of the 12th Infantry, a squadron of the 3rd Cavalry, a tank platoon (five tanks and men), and Headquarters Company from the 16th Brigade. (“Report of Operations against Bonus Marchers,” Brigadier General Perry L. Miles to General Douglas MacArthur, August 4, 1932, U.S. Army Commands, RG 98, National Archives; cited in Sneller, “Bonus March of 1932,” 230.) Backing up the active forces were nearly 800 men at Fort Myer. They had been sent there from Fort Meade, Fort Howard (near Baltimore), and Fort Humphreys (now Fort McNair) in northern Virginia. One company, about 160 men, was on call to be deployed at the White House but were not sent. Marine garrisons in Washington and Quantico, Virginia, were also placed on alert. (Laurie and Cole, Role of Federal Military Forces, 379.)

  67. D’Este, Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life, 113. Davis would become General Eisenhower’s adjutant general in World War II.

  68. Glassford’s account: “Calling of Troops to Evict Bonus Army without Justification, Asserts Glassford,” New York American, November 4, 1932. Glassford wrote this as a series of articles for the Hearst newspapers. Bartlett quote: Bartlett, “Labor Day Hurricane,” 32.

  69. “Vet of the Bonus March,” New Orleans States-Item, October 30, 1976.

  70. MacArthur “joined me unexpectedly,” Miles later wrote. MacArthur explained that he was there “at the suggestion of the President and the Secretary of War not to interfere in any way with my command but to furnish any additional orders which the situation might demand.” [Brigadier General Percy L. Miles, Fallen Leaves: Memories of an Old Soldier (Berkeley, Calif.: Wureth Publishing, 1961, 307.)] There is no written record that the president made such a suggestion. It was clear throughout the day and long afterward that, while Miles was tactically running the operation, the true commanding officer was MacArthur.

  71. Major General H. W. Blakeley, “When the Army Was Smeared,” U.S. Army Combat Forces Journal, February 1952, 26–30. At the time of the Bonus March, Blakeley was a captain assigned to the 1st Battalion, 16th Field Artillery, stationed at Fort Myer.

  72. “Capital Riots Like Great Movie Unroll before ‘Grandstand’ Seat,” Christian Science Monitor, July 29, 1932. In 1971, covering a rally against the Vietnam War, Strout stood near on the site of the old Ford building, by then part of the Federal Triangle (Christian Science Monitor, April 24, 1971).

  73. Reinhold Niebuhr, a professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, was working on his epic, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics, when he read about the events in Washington. He had just written these words: “The fear of anarchy of American privilege
d groups and their self-appointment as the guardians of peace and order is significant only because it is so clearly expressed in a nation in which the classes have not become as distinct as in the older nations.” Then he wrote this footnote: “As these lines are written, the American Government is using troops to disperse the ‘bonus army’ from Washington. Since the bonus army is merely a symptom of the unrest caused by the failure of the government to provide adequate relief for the unemployed, President Hoover’s defense of the use of troops against the unemployed presents another perfect example of the superficiality of governments.”

  Responding to the fears of revolution then sweeping across America, Niebuhr went on to write: “Even when no anarchy is threatened and no violence is used by the classes which seek a more equal share in the processes of government and in the privileges of society, it is always possible for the privileged groups to predict anarchy on the score that the ambitious and advancing classes are unfit for the exercise of the rights which they desire.”

  74. Blakeley, “When the Army,” 29.

  75. “Troops Burn Anacostia,” Baltimore Sun, July 29, 1932. Essary was runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the events of July 28. Senator gassed: “Brevities of the Bonus Clash,” Evening Star, July 29, 1932, Bonus Army scrapbooks.

  76. Interview with Naaman Seigle, April 25, 2002. Not everyone gassed was unwilling. “I was there,” said Frank A. Taylor, ninety-nine, in an April 28, 2002, interview. “I had a buddy who liked to be in the middle of things. We were both officers. When the troops arrived from Fort Myer, he was a military nut and he was determined that he was going to be down there because the paper said they might use tear gas or something of the sort. He wanted to know what tear gas was like. He actually went down to expose himself to the tear gas and I went with him.” Taylor was curator of the Smithsonian’s Division of Engineering; his twenty years of advocacy led to the creation of the Museum of History and Technology, now the National Museum of American History, of which he was the first director.

  77. Joseph C. Harsch, At the Hinge of History (Atlanta: University of Georgia Press, 1993), 12.