It was ex-army sergeant—ironically, who had served in the Rainbow Division’s Forty-first Infantry—and unemployed cannery worker Walter W. Waters of Seattle, Washington, who led the first group of 300 jobless veterans on a march to Washington to show their support for the new Bonus Bill. They dubbed themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force, or BEF, and within days thousands of other vets joined them on a pilgrimage to the nation’s capital—a march that would become known ever after as the Bonus March. Many brought along their families and by June an enormous shantytown of tents and makeshift huts housing 20,000 veterans had sprung up along the banks of the Anacostia River south of the District of Columbia.
No one doubts today that the Bonus March was a spontaneous, unplanned movement born of frustration and—in many cases—desperation.32 In 1932, however, there were many who saw more sinister motives in the restless throngs gathering in sight of the Capitol building—motives bordering on violent revolution. One of them was President Hoover, who, under siege from an economic crisis like no other, was steadily descending from gloom (the writer H. G. Wells, visiting him in the White House, found him “sickly, overworked, and overwhelmed”) to paranoia. He was never convinced that the majority of the Bonus Marchers were veterans at all, and he believed, then and later, that they were “organized and promoted by the Communists” while being egged on by his Democratic rivals. In his mind, what was happening that summer was a direct challenge to his authority, perhaps even to lawful governance, and he was prepared to meet force with force.33
Another skeptic was Douglas MacArthur. He had encountered protesting veterans at a benefit track-and-field meet in Washington in 1922, and although he had not followed the bonus issue very closely, he was perfectly aware of how radical revolutionary elements like the Communist Party of the USA were poised to promote and take advantage of massive popular protests. Early in 1930, Communists had spearheaded hunger demonstrations in cities including Cleveland, Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York, that had led to violent confrontations with police. In March police had fired on rioting autoworkers at a Ford plant in Detroit, killing four and wounding more than fifty. The funeral procession for the slain had included portraits of Lenin and banners with the hammer and sickle.34
In this atmosphere it didn’t take much to convince MacArthur that “the [Bonus] movement was actually far deeper and more dangerous than an effort to secure funds from a nearly depleted federal treasury,” he wrote later. Like Hoover, MacArthur was convinced that American Communists wanted to use the Bonus March “to incite revolutionary action.”35 It wasn’t a bad guess, as it happened, because in fact that was exactly what the CPUSA was trying to do.
Their stalking horse inside the Bonus Army was John T. Pace, a lean, hatchet-faced Communist organizer and former veteran who had come from Detroit with a band of dedicated radical bonus seekers. MacArthur critics would later point out that Waters had specifically sworn that his Bonus March would put up with “no panhandling, no drinking, no radicalism.” They also note that Pace and his men numbered fewer than two hundred in a camp of thousands. Yet the truth was, that was all Pace needed to provoke the kind of incident that the Communist Party could capitalize on. As Pace himself confessed years later, “I was ordered by my superiors to provoke riots…and to use every trick to bring about bloodshed” that would force the U.S. Army, and MacArthur, to intervene.36
They tried several times—even as other Bonus Marchers tore up their propaganda sheets—including trying to establish a picket line around the White House. But relations between the marchers and the authorities remained largely peaceful, even friendly. Police superintendent Pelham D. Glassford, who had been a brigadier general in France during the war, was particularly sympathetic to their cause. He paid daily visits, arranged for the Salvation Army to offer food and bedding, provided housing in some vacant downtown buildings for veterans and their families, and even at Waters’s request handled the Bonus Army’s finances—as well as arranging for the Marine Band to serenade them.37
MacArthur was more aloof, although he states in his memoirs that he ordered tents, rolling kitchens, and other camp equipment to be provided to the marchers. He met with Waters and reached an agreement that if the army did get called in, the veterans would withdraw without violence. But his doubts about a peaceful end to the massive sit-in were growing. On June 8 MacArthur spoke at the University of Pittsburgh and offered strong words about the threat of “pacifism and its bed-fellow, Communism,” which were “organizing the forces of unrest and undermining the morals of the working man.” He made it clear that he was including the Bonus Marchers in his indictment, which provoked outbursts from student demonstrators, leading to arrests and fines.38
That same day 8,000 members of Waters’s BEF staged a march through downtown Washington, as MacArthur returned and ordered his nine corps area commanders to give him any information on Communist groups who might have passed through their areas posing as Bonus Marchers.
—
A week later, the summer heat was settling over the District as things began to build to a climax. On June 15, the House of Representatives passed Congressman Patman’s bill, 209–179. Waters and his people were jubilant, but the real test, the vote in the Senate, remained. Waters and other BEF officials asked to see President Hoover; he brusquely refused. Then on the night of June 17, crowds gathered at the Capitol to hear the final Senate vote.
It was devastating. The Senate rejected the Bonus Bill by a 62–18 margin—an overwhelming defeat. According to eyewitnesses, the veterans tearfully sang a stanza of “America the Beautiful,” then fell into formation by platoons and returned to Anacostia. For most, the vote represented the end of the road—and their hopes. A smattering began leaving Washington, but many others stayed, arguing that they had no place else to go. Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt even offered to pay the rail fare for any veterans from New York State who were willing to leave. Then in early July, President Hoover and Congress passed a bill providing funds for returning all the veterans home (although the rail fare would be deducted from their 1945 bonus redemptions). More than 6,000—“the real veterans,” as MacArthur liked to think of them—took the offer and left. “But the hard core of the Communist bloc not only stayed, but grew,” he grimly wrote in his memoirs.39
It was time to prepare for the worst, in case the president ordered a forced evacuation of the rest.
Congress adjourned in mid-July as the army quietly made its preparations. MacArthur was taking no chances and hoped an overwhelming show of force would compel any marchers thinking of resisting to back down. He ordered tanks brought up from the Aberdeen Proving Ground, and a squadron of cavalry under the command of Colonel George S. Patton. Troops underwent anti-riot training at Fort Myer, and cavalry units practiced dispersing large crowds. Meanwhile, MacArthur and General Perry Miles reviewed the War Department’s “White Plan,” an emergency contingency plan in case of civil disorder in the capital. They agreed that the critical points to protect were the White House, the Capitol, the Treasury building, and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Troops would assemble at the Ellipse, behind the White House, for dispersal to any trouble spots.
In their minds, they were preparing for revolution, especially assistant chief of staff General George Van Horn Moseley. An ardent right-winger who had earlier presented the General Staff with a plan to nip radicalism in the bud by expelling all foreign-born aliens from the country, Moseley would be one of the key instigators of a strong army reaction to the growing tension in the Bonus Marchers’ camp. There Communists and other radicals were directly challenging Walter Waters’s authority, while Waters himself began talking about organizing a “Khaki Shirt” movement made up of veterans to “return government to the masses”—a distinct echo of Mussolini’s Blackshirts and Hitler’s storm troopers. On July 16, nervous district commissioners told Chief of Police Glassford to use force if necessary to keep any marchers from parading close to the White House.40
A point
of no return had been reached. On July 21 Glassford got the order from the commissioners to clear the veterans out of buildings they had occupied on Pennsylvania Avenue, and shut down all BEF encampments by noon on August 4. Everyone assumed the police would probably need the assistance of the military, although it was not until July 27 that Hoover called MacArthur, Secretary of War Hurley, and Attorney General Mitchell to his office to get them to agree that the army would be ready to help the police clear the Pennsylvania Avenue corridor if necessary.
The city held its breath the next morning as police arrived at Pennsylvania Avenue between Third and Fourth Streets, and began clearing the buildings, starting with the old armory, where some 1,100 Bonus Marchers were holed up. Glassford had negotiated a deal on evacuation with Walter Waters, and the process was under way when a flying squad of Pace’s Communist thugs tried to start a riot, attacking the police line and hurling bricks, one of which hit Glassford. Still, the incident soon passed. There were a few arrests, and Glassford was able to head back to the district commissioners to tell them the situation was well in hand but that they should hold off on any further evictions that day.
So far, then, there was no sign of the army or any need for it. But the district commisioners quickly lost their nerve. At 1:00 P.M. they asked President Hoover for federal troops, saying, “it will be impossible for the Police Department to maintain law and order except by the free use of firearms which will make the situation a dangerous one.”41
The telephone rang in MacArthur’s office. It wasn’t Hoover but Commissioner Herbert Crosby, a former major general, who informed him that Glassford “requested that troops should be held in immediate readiness for action.” MacArthur ordered General Miles to gather his troops at the Ellipse, and so he wasn’t surprised when at 2:55 he got a message from Secretary Hurley stating that “the President has just informed me that the civil government of the District of Columbia has reported to him that it is unable to maintain law and order in the District. You will have United States troops proceed immediately to the scene of the disorder.”42
At this juncture MacArthur made two decisions—neither of which had any bearing on what was going to happen over the next eight hours but which would reverberate back through the media and shape the popular image of what did happen.
The first was that he decided he would accompany General Miles, the officer in charge, to the scene. Miles was startled at the idea of the chief of staff himself presiding over what was a minor operation (fewer than 800 troops would be involved), but MacArthur reassured him that he was going “not with a view of commanding the troops but to be on hand as things progress, so I can issue [any] necessary instructions on the ground.” Besides, he said, “I will take the rap if there should be any unfavorable or critical repercussions”—words that would be uncannily prophetic.
Nonetheless, Miles was not the only officer who thought this an odd proceeding. Another was Major Dwight Eisenhower, who was attached to the General Staff. He told MacArthur he thought the chief of staff showing up in person was “highly inappropriate.”
MacArthur shook his head. “This is a question of Federal authority in the District of Columbia,” he told Eisenhower, and besides he was worried that “the incipient revolution was in the air.” The man who had charged up the Côte de Châtillon unarmed was not going to be absent when his troops confronted what could turn out to be an insurrectionary situation.43
His second decision had to do with his clothes. MacArthur was wearing a light summer suit that morning. That seemed inappropriate for a chief of staff attending a military operation, no matter how minor—especially one being held in the nation’s capital. He sent his Filipino valet to Fort Myer to find him a uniform. The orderly came back with the most ornate uniform he could find—one that MacArthur’s mother usually picked out for formal occasions and dinners, and decorated with every ribbon and medal, including his marksmanship badges. Mac put it on without thinking twice. But it would hurt him later when people saw photographs of him in action that day. To the ignorant (or malicious) eye it looked as if MacArthur thought his full dress uniform, complete with breeches and gleaming riding boots and spurs, was the right garb for putting down unemployed veterans and their families—especially since the same photos showed Eisenhower and Miles in more modest military attire.
Meanwhile, the situation on the ground was deteriorating rapidly.
Police who had pushed their way into one partially demolished building near Fourth and Pennsylvania were met with bricks and clubs. A cop slipped and lost his footing, and in a panic opened fire. In moments there were two dead veterans, killed by gunshots, and three seriously injured policemen. It was news of this incident that had prompted President Hoover into action, and now MacArthur and Miles were driving down Pennsylvania Avenue as infantry and Patton’s cavalry hurried up to meet them.
MacArthur jumped out of the staff car to find police chief Glassford, still nursing his head wound but determined to be on the scene.
“I have orders from President Hoover to drive the veterans out of the city,” he barked at Glassford. “We are going to break the back of the B.E.F.” Glassford, chagrined that his men had lost control of the situation and that the marchers had broken their promise that there would be no violence, said nothing. He and MacArthur had served together at West Point—he was class of ’04. The last thing he was going to do was interfere with his former class commandant.44
Then he and MacArthur both watched as the next stage of the tragedy unfolded.
First came the cavalry down Pennsylvania Avenue at the trot, clearing the road with sabers drawn. Then the infantry fanned out to empty the buildings one by one. At the first sign of resistance, an officer ordered his men to put on gas masks as they threw tear gas grenades—“by the hundreds,” according to one eyewitness—through doors and windows.
In minutes “black smoke and orange flame rose from the shacks constructed between buildings” as veterans poured out and ran in every direction, choking and cursing. Farther down the avenue the troops advanced, as the marchers, pushed back across Maine and Missouri Avenues, continued to fight. “Growing hate and defiance was evident,” reported Lieutenant Colonel Kunzig, “from the boos, barrage of profanity, the throwing of rocks and the return of tear gas grenades.”45
One of those who came under attack from the mob was the driver of MacArthur’s own staff car, his aide Captain Thomas Davis. Davis emerged unhurt, but MacArthur’s eyes were left puffy and streaming from the clouds of tear gas.
Still, he was pleased. “Not a shot was fired,” he would remember in his memoirs. “The sticks, clubs, and stones of the rioters were met only by tear gas and steady pressure. No one was killed”—that is, not by his troops—“and there were no serious injuries on either side.” Even so, the black smoke from the burning shacks along Pennsylvania could be plainly seen from the Capitol.
They were still burning at 9:30 P.M. as remaining veterans fled across the Eleventh Street Bridge in the last light and headed back to the Anacostia flats.
“It was a good job,” MacArthur told a reporter, “quickly done, with no one injured.” That wasn’t entirely true: almost thirty people had taken blows from bricks, clubs, bayonets, and sabers used as prods and paddles along their flat edge—“[W]e made a lot of bottoms sore,” Patton remembered—and one infant later died from smoke inhalation.46
Still, the question now was whether the troops should use the occasion to continue on and clear the Anacostia camps, as Hoover had ordered they should eventually do. Back at the White House, a worried Edward Starling, head of the Secret Service White House detail, raised that very question—but in a worried tone. In the aftermath of the fighting along Pennsylvania Avenue, was the army now going to use gas and bayonets to clear the women and children camped out there?
That made Hoover pause and think. After a few minutes he ordered Secretary Hurley to tell MacArthur and Miles that under no circumstances were troops to cross the Anacostia bridg
e until all the women and children had been evacuated.
The message was sent—but MacArthur was destined never to see it. The man responsible for that was none other than MacArthur’s own assistant chief of staff George Van Horn Moseley. It was he who received Hurley’s order; later he claimed in his memoirs that he delivered it to MacArthur, “who was very much annoyed at having his plans interfered with.”47
That story turned out to be a lie. As historian Geoffrey Perret has pointed out, no fewer than three independent witnesses contradict him. The most damning is Assistant Secretary for Air F. Trubee Davison, who ran into Moseley and Fred Payne the morning after, and found them smiling and congratulating themselves.
“What in the world have you fellows done that’s so terrific?” Davison asked.
“Well, the President wrote an order to MacArthur to stop at the Anacostia bridge,” they told him, but they had made sure it never arrived. Moseley, who detested the marchers and was convinced, as MacArthur was, that they were only a hotbed of radicals and criminals, wanted them cleared out no matter how it was done. Later, Eisenhower confirmed Davison’s story: MacArthur never saw the message. “The result,” Davison relates, was that “MacArthur and the whole force went across the bridge” as the second stage of the tragedy took place.48
Meanwhile, darkness had fallen. Soldiers stood silently on the Eleventh Street Bridge, arms at rest, staring out to the Anacostia flats beyond.
MacArthur finally turned to Glassford. At this critical point he had decided he was taking over the operation. Miles’s men were going forward, he told the police chief, but “we will proceed very slowly. I will stop the command for supper so that full opportunity will be given for everyone to leave without getting hurt.”49
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