The Bonus Army

by Paul Dickson

  78. A. Everette McIntyre, interview by Studs Terkel, in Hard Times (1986), 17–18.

  79. Descriptions and quotes: Baltimore Evening Sun, July 29, 1932.

  80. Weaver, “Bonus March,” 94.

  81. Blumenson, Patton Papers, vol. 2, 978.

  82. Wilfred Parsons, S.J., “The Rout of the Bonus Army,” America, August 13, 1932, 445–47.

  83. Weaver, “Bonus March,” 94.

  84. Sneller, “Bonus March of 1932,” 238.

  85. Baltimore Evening Sun, July 29, 1932.

  86. Laurie and Cole, Role of Federal Military Forces, 381.

  87. Baltimore Sun, July 29, 1932.

  88. “Papers of Operation against Bonus Marchers,” August 4, 1932, 6.

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

  90. I. S. David, “A Hero of 1917–1918; American of 1932: Holds Unsaluted Flag,” Washington Tribune, August 5, 1932.

  91. Brandt, interview.

  92. Keck grand jury testimony, August 4, 1932; cited in Sneller, “Bonus March of 1932.”

  93. Sneller, “Bonus March of 1932,” 243–44, quoting police officers’ grand jury testimony.

  94. Moseley unpublished biography, “Bonus March 1932” chapter. Moseley Papers, Library of Congress.

  95. Eisenhower, in At Ease, writes that MacArthur said “he was too busy and did not want either himself or his staff bothered by people coming down and pretending to bring orders” (217). Miles, in Fallen Leaves (309), says that the message also included a warning about veterans in Anacostia having a machine gun. But MacArthur “sent word back that it was too late to abandon the operation, that the troops were committed, that we encountered no machine guns and that some of the troops had crossed the bridge already.” (As Lisio, President and Protest, 212, points out, MacArthur had seen, corrected, and approved Miles’s manuscript before publication.)

  96. Miles, Fallen Leaves, 309–10.

  97. Nick and Joe Oliver, interview.

  98. Steve Murray diary.

  99. Harsch, At the Hinge, 13.

  100. “City of Hovels IsWiped Out by Fire and Swords of Troops,” Evening Star, July 29, 1932, Bonus Army scrapbook. For all of the reporters who crossed the bridge with the troops, one thing was beyond dispute, and that was that they had personally witnessed the torching of the camps. The list would include Es-sary, George Rothwell Brown, and Henry.

  101. “Eye Witness Account of Bonus March Incident, Including the Burning of the Camp at Anacos-tia, 1932,” RG 15, box 11, folder 7, “Purdy, Elbridge C,” MacArthur Archives, Norfolk, Virginia.

  102. War Department transcript of MacArthur press conference, July 29, 1932, Bonus March, Presidential File, Box 23, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library.

  Some of the vets insisted that MacArthur was so saddened by what he was forced to do that he cried. The fact was that he had refused to don a gas mask and had himself been gassed.

  103. B.E.F. News, August 6, 1932; “Father Lays Death of Ill Baby to Gas Used in B.E.F. Ejection,” New York Times, August 9, 1932; letter from Major General H. L. Gilchrist, chief of Army Chemical Service, to Adjutant General, August 2, 1932, AG 240—Bonus, National Archives.

  Chapter 9: The Long Morning After

  1. New Republic, August 17, 1932.

  2. Lawrence C. Jorgensen, “The Bonus Expeditionary Force, 1932” (Master’s thesis, University of Chicago, August 1963), 97–98. Based on an interview by Jorgensen of McCloskey, April 30, 1962.

  3. New Republic, August 17, 1932.

  4. “Waters Urges All to Join New Force,” New York Times, July 30, 1932.

  5. Evening Star, July 29, 1932.

  6. Lisio, President and Protest, 215, quotes Assistant Secretary of War F. Trubee Davison as saying that in a conversation sometime after July 28, 1932, Hoover told him that he had had “bawled MacArthur out” for crossing the bridge. But Hoover never publicly censured MacArthur or Hurley.

  7. The changes are handwritten onto typewritten drafts. Hoover to Reichelderfer, July 29, 1932, “World War Veterans Bonus,” Presidential Papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library.

  8. Associated Press story out of Boston, August 2, 1932.

  9. Hurley press release, August 3, 1932. Presidential Papers, Box 300, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library.

  10. Hennessy, “The Bonus Army,” 336–39. Cross, “Bonus Army,” 45, points out that newsreel and newspaper photos showed soldiers setting the downtown fires. He gives an evenhanded assessment of the arson: “It seems probable that it was not originally intended to burn the shacks, but once the fires were started (either by accident, misunderstood orders or by the marchers themselves) the army saw no reason to stop them, except to try and save certain government property burned at Anacostia.” That property included National Guard tents, most of which appear to have been set afire by the vets.

  11. Carolin Giltinan (Mrs. Leo P. Haarlow), “An Eye-Witness on the Route of the B.E.F. in Washington,” Fortnightly Review (St. Louis, Mo.), September 1932, 193–95.

  12. Bartlett, “Labor Day Hurricane,” 53.

  13. “Bonus Seekers Ousted Here Rushed to West by Indiana,” Washington Post, August 2, 1932.

  14. “Troops Renew Gas Attack on Veterans,” Washington Evening Star, July 29, 1932.

  15. Washington Post, August 8, 1932.

  16. “Girl Is Second Baby to Die,” New York Herald Tribune, August 2, 1932.

  17. White House, “Bonus March Conditions.”

  18. In 1952, when Miles wrote his memoirs, Fallen Leaves, key documents pertaining to July 28 were still classified. Miles’s official report, like many other National Archives documents concerning U.S. Army involvement with the Bonus March, remained classified for many years. Yet he must have had access to some official documents, because he wrote a detailed account of July 28 actions, in which he puts the first phone call from MacArthur at “about 3 P.M.” and the second one a few minutes later. As historian Donald J. Lisio points out (President and Protest), Miles sent MacArthur his manuscript for his approval. In a note accompanying the manuscript, Miles seems to endorse cross-the-river insubordination, for he wrote, “I have many times thought how unfortunate the country is that you were so restricted in advance by orders not to go beyond the Yahu in Korea.”

  In Hurley’s typewritten War Department letter to MacArthur, as it appears in the National Archives, there is a handwritten “2:55 pm” under the July 28 date. Both the “2” and the second “5” appear to have been overwritten. At the bottom of the letter is a standard government time stamp. It shows that the letter was received by MacArthur at 2:15 on July 29.

  Another version of the Hurley letter appears in the Douglas MacArthur Papers at the MacArthur Memorial in Norfolk, Virginia. That letter is handwritten, is not on a War Department letterhead, has the word “copy” written on the top, and with the date has a time: “2:55 PM.” In the lower left-hand corner are the names “Walter W. Waters” and “John Pace.” There is no record that either Waters or Pace ever received a copy of Hurley’s letter. Nor is there any indication in the MacArthur archives why this handwritten document is there and not in the National Archives. The impression is that it is a personal copy provided to MacArthur by Hurley.

  President Hoover did not officially designate a press secretary, but Theodore G. Joplin served as such. In Hoover off the Record he wrote what became the Hoover version of events on July 28: “The police were attacked as they began their work. . . . Under the personal command of General P. D. Glassford, the Superintendent of Police, who had played with the marchers throughout their stay, they resorted to their revolvers to defend themselves. One marcher was instantly killed and another fatally wounded within fifty feet of where General Glassford was standing.

  “The rioting became so critical that the police could not cope with the situation. The District Commissioners so advised the White House by telephone, asking that troops be called out.”

  For the rest of his life, Glassford insis
ted that he had never requested federal troops. He believed that if the commissioners had let him order no more expulsions after the morning of July 28, he would be able to hold the situation steady and resume the next day, possibly with the evacuation to Camp Bartlett going on as planned.

  19. Evening Star, July 29, 1932; New York Times, July 31, 1932. Newspaper stories about the arrest gave totals varying from twenty-six to thirty-six. The Washington Herald, on November 6, 1932, reported that “the thirty-five communists” who had been arrested were released in District Court for lack of evidence.

  20. Washington Daily News, August 1, 1932.

  21. “Army to Hold Rites for Bonus Marcher,” Washington Post, August 2, 1932.

  22. “Killing of Two in Riot Justified,” Washington Post, August 3, 1932; “Jury Absolves 2 Policemen in Death of Vets,” Washington Herald, August 3, 1932.

  23. “Policeman Slayer of Bonus Veteran Is Shot to Death,” Washington Herald, August 15, 1932.

  24. Glassford later recommended that the three men not be prosecuted because they were combat veterans, had no connection with WESL or the Communist Party, and would be made into martyrs if punished (Glassford Papers). They seem never to have been put on trial.

  25. Washington Post, July 31, 1932.

  26. Mrs. Grace Hablitt to Hurley, August 4, 1932, Adjutant General’s File, AGO-240, Box 1180, National Archives; cited in Hennessy, “The Bonus Army.”

  27. “A Cavalry Major Evicts Veteran Who Saved His Life in Battle,” New York Times, July 30, 1932.

  28. Philadelphia Public Ledger, July 30, 1932; Washington Daily News of the same date with headline “Army Major Forced to Throw Out Vet Who Saved His Life in the World War,” Bonus Army scrapbook.

  29. Truscott, Twilight, 129. In a 1924 letter to Patton, Angelo wrote, “We received your letter and sure thank you for your check as it helped us a lot. As it put us on our feet” (Blumenson, Patton Papers, vol. 2, 845). Robert Patton (Pattons, 212) writes that George Patton had recommended Angelo for the Medal of Honor; he also writes that Patton sent him $25 in 1939 after hearing, through another officer, that Angelo was in need.

  30. Washington Daily News, July 30, 1932.

  31. “Violence at Washington,” Boston Globe, July 29, 1932.

  32. “Bonus Army Ousts Reds at Johnstown; Waters Will Take Command Today; Food Shortage Becomes Serious,” Washington Post, July 31, 1932; New York Times, August 5, 1932.

  33. “Report on Bonus Expeditionary Force Emergency Camp Johnstown, Penna. Also Other Kindred Matters and Visits,” Glassford Papers. The copy in Glassford’s papers is frequently underlined, particularly in passages attesting to the veterans’ character.

  34. “Minutes of the Interstate Conference on Migrants,” Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, August 11, 1932. Published as an appendix in Meisel, Bonus Expeditionary Forces, 48.

  35. Jorgenson, “Bonus Expeditionary Force,” 98; Johnstown Tribune, July 29, 1932; Johnstown Democrat, July 30, 1932.

  36. “Johnstown Flood,” National Park Service memorial, South Fork, Pennsylvania.

  37. Ibid.

  38. McCloskey, interview by Lawrence C. Jorgenson, April 30, 1962, in Jorgenson, “Bonus Expeditionary Force.” McCloskey apparently endured the Bonus Army controversy because at the time of the interview he was a councilman.

  39. New York Times, August 2, 1932; Time, August 15, 1932.

  40. “Funeral Held for Shinault,” Washington Herald, August 17, 1932.

  Shinault was the seventh Washington policeman to die within a year. His murder occurred at a time of violence, much of which had profound racial ramifications. On Sunday, August 7, according to the Herald, a “gang of negroes” were alleged to have killed Park Policeman Milo J. Kennedy. On August 18, according to the same paper, an off-duty White House policeman named Ignatius Cole shot and killed Charles Young, an unarmed fifteen-year-old “colored prowler” in his neighborhood. The policeman and Young lived two blocks from each other. The next day, the coroner’s jury rendered the same quick verdict it had handed to Shinault and Znamenacek—that Cole had acted in the “line of duty and in defense of his life.” There was no investigation into any possible connection between the deaths of Hushka and Shinault. But, as Jack Douglas wrote in Veterans on the March, “The mysterious killing of Shinault . . . gave rise to stories that it was ‘a put up job’ because ‘he knew too much.’” Douglas, whose book has been described as the official Communist history of the Bonus March, was not an objective historian. Yet his book, published soon after the events, reflected feelings some Washingtonians had at the time.

  41. Statement of the Justice Department Investigation of the Bonus Army, September 10, 1932 (for publication on September 12); “Veterans Bonus,” Hoover Library.

  42. Daniels, Bonus March, 200.

  43. Bill Linebarrier (Steve Murray’s son-in-law) interview by authors, September 10, 2003.

  44. Waters, B.E.F., 257, said the roster sheets listed the names, addresses, and service numbers of 28,540 veterans—“perhaps half of the total who registered.”

  45. “Hurley Upholds Bonus Army Eviction,” New York Times, September 13, 1932.

  46. Washington Herald, September 15, 1932.

  47. Washington Herald, September 18, 1931.

  48. New York Times, September 13, 1932; Lisio, President and Protest, 254.

  49. Chicago Tribune, October 21, 1932.

  50. Starling, Starling, 300.

  51. Hoover biographer David Burner agreed that the incident dealt a final blow to the incumbent: “In the minds of most analysts, whatever doubt had remained about the outcome of the presidential election was now gone: Hoover was going to lose. The Bonus Army was his final failure, his symbolic end.” David Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life (New York: Knopf, 1979), 312.

  52. Memo from Hoover to Dodds, November 21, 1932. U.S. Military Intelligence, Surveillance of Radicals.

  53. Ibid, reel 22. Date obscured.

  54. “Troop Maneuvers Recall B.E.F. Rout,” Washington Post, November 23, 1932.

  55. New York Times, December 5, 1932.

  56. Time, December 26, 1932.

  57. Terkel, Hard Times, 31.

  58. New York Times, December 12, 1932; Douglas, Veterans on the March, 278–280; undated, unlabeled clipping from MID 10110 files, Box 2855, which also contains clippings on plans for the 1933 Bonus March.

  59. Washington Star, January 12, 1933.

  60. Inauguration Day was changed by the Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution, which was passed by Congress on March 2, 1932, and ratified by the states on January 23, 1933. The amendment changed the date to January 20 and set the beginning of terms of senators and representatives to January 3.

  61. Federal Bureau of Investigation documents pertaining to its investigation of the attempted assassination of President Franklin D. Roosevelt by Giuseppe Zangara on February 15, 1933, in Miami, Florida. Zangara was tried, convicted, and executed on March 20. According to the FBI documents, Zangara was cursing and railing against capitalists as he was put to death. The FBI report also noted that in August 1932, an operative of the Army’s Military Intelligence Department (MID) reported seeing a suspicious character among the bonus diehards who were still on the streets of Washington. In February 1933 the operative discovered who the character was: Guiseppe Zangara, who later admitted that he had originally planned to kill Hoover.

  62. Freidel, Over There, 85, 173.

  63. The Khaki Shirt, undated publication of the Khaki Shirts, Chicago; Art J. Smith of Philadelphia to Paul Kenda, San Antonio, Texas, undated, Military Intelligence Division files 10110 266–45, National Archives.

  64. Philip Jenkins, Hoods and Shirts: The Extreme Right in Pennsylvania, 1925–1950 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 343. The Christian Front was associated with the German American Bund and Father Charles Coughlin. In January 1940 the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested seventeen members of the Christian Front, charging that they planned assassinate “about a doz
en Congressmen” and several prominent Americans of Jewish extraction. The FBI said its agents found several Christian Front arsenals containing weapons and explosives, including arms stolen from National Guard. The arrested Fronters hailed Coughlin as their leader. See Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn, Sabotage! The Secret War against America (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1942).

  65. Douglas, Veterans on the March, 292–93.

  66. U.S. Military Intelligence, Surveillance of Radicals.

  67. Letter from John Alferi to Herbert Hoover, Palo Alto, California, May 8, 1933, Herbert Hoover Library.

  68. Washington Post, April 28, 1933.

  Chapter 10: The Return of the Bonus Army

  Epigraph. From Roosevelt’s Personal File, Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, NY.

  1. Biographical information on Fechner: American National Biography On Line; Quote from Time, February 6, 1936, 12.

  2. Kelly McMichael Scott, “FDR, Lewis Douglas, and the Raw Deal,” Historian, fall 2000.

  3. Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: Launching the New Deal (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 247.

  4. A founder of the America Legion, Johnson had immediately seen its political potential. His law firm, Steptoe and Johnson, was one of the most powerful firms in Washington because of his legion and Democratic connections. He served as the legion’s national commander in 1932–33 and was rewarded for his loyalty to Roosevelt with his appointment as assistant secretary of war in 1937; he served in that post until 1940, later becoming the president’s personal representative in India. Chief fund-raiser for President Truman’s 1948 election campaign, Johnson became Truman’s secretary of defense in 1949 and began a short, stormy career, presiding over the problems of military unification and the beginning of the Korean War. He resigned at Truman’s request in September 1950.

  5. Freidel, Launching, 449.

  6. Scott, “FDR.”

  7. (Representative) Virginia E. Jenckes to Stephen Early, May 17, 1933, with enclosure of letter from Carl A. Sanderson, contact officer, Disabled American Veterans, Sebring, Ohio, May 15, 1993, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.