The Bonus Army

A Possible No-Win Situation Made Worse

By Jess R. Rankin

Article published on: January 1, 2026 in the Winter 2026 Edition of Army History

Read Time: < 30 mins

"A no-win situation is a possibility every commander may face.
Has that never occurred to you?"¹

On 28 July 1932, approximately 500 soldiers, in an operation overseen by U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur, used tanks, tear gas, sabers, bayonets, and controlled fires to forcibly disperse more than 10,000 World War I (WWI) veterans in downtown Washington, D.C. These veterans were part of the "Bonus Army," an organization of veterans and their sympathizers who agitated for a cash bonus for their wartime service. The Army's use of force on the veterans in Washington, D.C., met with disapproval from the American public. It tarnished the reputation of General MacArthur, fueled the rise of Democratic New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt's political fortunes, and was a key factor in the passage of the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, also known as the G.I. Bill of Rights.²

The Army's harsh treatment of the Bonus Army highlights multiple lessons in the domestic use of force that modern commanders and judge advocates should consider. Intelligence failures, an unwillingness to coordinate with the local police, and a breakdown in civil-military relations all contributed to the Army's failure to disperse a protest movement peacefully, particularly one that had broad support among the American people. The litany of errors, fueled by a faulty understanding of domestic law, doomed General MacArthur's goal of sending a message of federal supremacy and the Army's reliability to the government and the American people.

The Bonus Army originated from a widely held belief among WWI veterans that they were both unappreciated and left behind in the U.S. economy. A war-related boom had led to dramatic wage increases for many civilian workers, and men who had served in the Army from 1917 to 1918 believed they were not sharing in the affluence of the "Roaring Twenties," as the decade was soon known. Many veterans who came back from the war had trouble returning to their prewar employment. Initially, there were no additional federal benefits given to service members upon discharge from wartime service. The story was slightly better at state and local levels. Seventeen states offered cash payments to their veterans. Others offered employment training or placement services, and a few offered educational aid or land.³

The paucity of aid to WWI veterans was jarring when placed in contrast to Civil War veterans, some 400,000 of whom were still receiving pensions in 1914. U.S. Army soldiers who served in that conflict first were eligible for a pension in 1862. The pension had become progressively more generous as subsequent legislation was passed; veterans had become an influential voting bloc and their activism was known colloquially as "waving the bloody shirt." At one point in the 1870s, 20 percent of the federal budget went to funding military pensions.⁴

Recognizing that veterans needed assistance, Congress granted them two months' base pay (sixty dollars) in 1919. This money went to all service members upon discharge, regardless of rank. This provision, unsurprisingly, did not satisfy veterans' organizations like the American Legion or Veterans of Foreign Wars, who sought more substantial financial support in the form of an additional bonus, mortgage help, or land. In 1924, Congress bowed to pressure and passed the World War Veterans Act, in the process overriding a veto by President Calvin Coolidge. The legislation granted what was in effect a bond that could be redeemed in 1945 at 4 percent interest or, in practical effect, a life insurance policy to be payable immediately if the veteran died before the bond's maturity. In other words, Congress passed the buck, leaving no one particularly satisfied. This benefit became known as the "bonus." More than 3 million veterans received certificates with a total face value of $3.5 billion and an average predicted payout of $1,000. This payout was calculated and presented at the value the certificate would hold in 1945 as opposed to its smaller 1924 value.⁵

To give this benefit to veterans without raising taxes or utilizing deficit spending, Congress created an unwieldy payment mechanism that caused resentment and confusion. The difference between the present value of the certificate and its value upon maturation in 1945 was one source of frustration. The dawning realization that veterans would have to wait twenty-one years before payment, and that their families might be better off financially if they were to die before 1945, added to the general bitterness and, for some, despair.⁶

Given the evolution and use of Army doctrine in quelling serious civil disturbances on U.S. soil, and the mounting grievances of the Bonus Army, its convergence on Washington, D.C., in 1932 held the potential for a major domestic crisis. Civil and military authorities, including Congress, civilian police, and the Army, sought to address, manage, and, finally, remove the Bonus Army. Nevertheless, General MacArthur's use of military force to disperse the Bonus Army, the contested legality of his actions, and the political repercussions that followed provide important lessons for today's commanders and Army legal professionals to learn.

Developing the Army's Response to Civil Disturbance

The stock market crash in 1929 and the resulting Great Depression served as an accelerant to the latent anger of WWI veterans. With unemployment soaring in 1930, veterans began to argue for immediate cash payment of the bonus. President Herbert C. Hoover opposed immediate payment, believing it to be an unwise use of fiscal resources. Even so, providing economic aid to corporations, banks, and foreign governments contrasted poorly with the denial of aid to veterans. At the same time, movements like communism and far-right authoritarianism began to gain traction. Communist demonstrations in multiple large cities in 1930 and 1931 culminated in a hunger march in Washington, D.C., in December 1931. The rise of these antidemocratic movements framed how the Army viewed veterans who were protesting in favor of immediate payment of the bonus.⁷

One of the lesser-known chapters in U.S. Army history is the role soldiers from the Regular Army and National Guard played in suppressing labor strikes during the Gilded Age. The 1894 Pullman Strike, in particular, influenced the Army's doctrinal approach to domestic operations. In General Orders 23, dated 9 July 1894, Commanding General of the U.S. Army Lt. Gen. John M. Schofield directed that any group obstructing federal law or threatening property protected by federal forces was to be deemed a "public enemy."⁸ General Orders 23 made little distinction between a foreign hostile force and a domestic disturbance. In other words, there was little restraint placed on the use of force, and it was "purely a tactical question."⁹ The orders acknowledged the need for a degree of restraint; officers were told to apply some distinction between the merely curious and those more committed to an active demonstration by giving a verbal warning before firing weapons. There was also a nascent consideration of graduated use of force with the direction to first use bayonets to control the crowd. However, the general tone from the orders to soldiers was to suppress domestic disorder quickly and with overwhelming force. Subsequent regulations in 1901 and 1904 toned down some of the language, but through the WWI era the Army regarded domestic disorder and hostile foreign forces in a similar light.¹⁰

In 1922, at Camp Dix (now Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst), New Jersey, the Army offered a training course on domestic operations, developed by Lt. Col. Dennis P. Quinlan, a judge advocate. From this course, Colonel Quinlan created a fifty-eight-page manual, which was, essentially, the Army's first domestic operations handbook. It contained summaries of the Constitution; relevant Army regulations; and legal authorities at the federal, state, and local levels. The Camp Dix course distilled the Army's previous writings into practical training with a more legally focused doctrine for responding to domestic disorder. At roughly the same time, the Army had drawn up War Plan White to address the civil disturbances of the 1920s.¹¹

War Plan White was developed in part based on the experiences of post-Imperial Germany. Army leaders believed there were valuable lessons to learn from German forces who recaptured cities from Communist uprisings. However, these tactics relied heavily on deadly force, including strafing by airplanes, hand grenades, and trench mortars, along with the use of armored vehicles. There was internal debate about the appropriateness of such tactics on American streets, notably by the commandant of the General Service Schools, a precursor to the modern Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. However, the German combined arms response to Communist unrest appealed to those officers thinking about employing soldiers in support of civil authorities, which was reflected in Plan White.¹²

A potentially less deadly tactic available for the Army in responding to domestic disorders was the use of tear gas. German forces first developed and used poison gas in WWI. However, the tactical and operational advantages of using gas quickly evaporated. The military futility of gas, combined with its gruesome results on unprotected individuals, prompted feelings of revulsion toward it by soldiers who had fought in the trenches, and during the war Army Chief of Staff General Peyton C. March had repudiated its use as a weapon. After the war, though, Brig. Gen. Amos A. Fries, chief of the Army's Chemical Warfare Branch, made a sustained argument for the utility of tear gas for responding to civil disturbances. Claiming that tear gas had only temporary unpleasant effects and would therefore result in fewer casualties, General Fries was able, in fits and starts, to convince Congress and the Army to consider the use of tear gas in quelling future civil unrest. In so doing, he also preserved the Chemical Warfare Branch from disbandment. Regardless of any possible motives for protecting a particular branch of the service, the technical and doctrinal development of tear gas as a riot control agent during the 1920s and 1930s was a turning point. By incorporating tear gas into its potential arsenal, the Army's doctrine began evolving toward a policy of a more graduated use of force against civilians. Army leadership still had an ingrained bias against striking workers and a loathing of communism, but also increasingly recognized that violently suppressing a crowd of Americans might be counterproductive to stability operations.¹³

Creating the Bonus Army

On 10 May 1932, a group of veterans in Portland, Oregon, decided to travel to Washington, D.C., to protest in person for immediate payment of the bonus. This was not the first, or even the last, protest organized on behalf of the bonus issue, but it would be the most memorable. The Portland marchers secured rides in unoccupied boxcars at the local railyard despite initial resistance from the railroad. This group, like subsequent reinforcements, relied on local handouts for food. Responding to the haphazard logistics of their journey and concerns that their group might devolve into a mob, the protesters organized into companies, elected leaders, and appointed a supply officer and a military policeman. One of those leaders was Walter W. Waters, a former sergeant, who quickly would rise to overall leadership of the group. The veterans took to calling themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force (BEF).¹⁴

During the movement to Washington, D.C., the BEF primarily relied on riding in empty boxcars on the railroads. At the time, federal law prohibited riding for free on the railroads. However, many of the railroad workers who might have enforced the law were also veterans who looked the other way or actively assisted the BEF. As the BEF made its way across the western United States, its members often would parade in small towns and solicit donations of food and money. Veterans groups also began to send notices to the next town ahead to prepare supplies for the BEF. This ad hoc system worked in the less populated West, but it started to break down once the BEF reached the Midwest, where local officials were afraid of large crowds of unemployed men.¹⁵

In St. Louis, Missouri, the BEF began to face organized resistance. Railroad officials met them with a court order prohibiting further use of the railroad. The officials also called upon the local police to help enforce the order. Under Waters's leadership, the BEF responded by holding multiple trains captive, essentially through passive resistance. After a short standoff, local officials organized a convoy of vehicles to transport the veterans out of St. Louis and into Indiana. At this point, the governor of Indiana provided trucks from the National Guard to transport the BEF through the state. Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland followed Indiana's example, providing National Guard trucks to transport the BEF the rest of the way to Washington, D.C. Utilizing National Guard transportation assets allowed governors to defuse potential riots at railroads and interruptions to interstate commerce. However, in assisting the BEF to cover approximately 3,000 miles in eighteen days, those state governors passed the problem onto the federal government.¹⁶

On 29 May 1932, the BEF arrived in Washington, D.C., as the vanguard of the Bonus Army movement. Press coverage of the BEF, meanwhile, led to thousands of other veterans forming into ad hoc units across the nation that began to travel to the capital. Some of these veterans came in organized groups, replicating the movement of the BEF through use of requisitioned National Guard vehicles, privately donated trains, informal assistance from railroad employees, or some combination of the above. Others came individually or in family groups to join the swelling movement. Veterans who came to protest for immediate payment of the bonus included Black veterans who arrived in both integrated and segregated groups.¹⁷ All members of what came to be known as the Bonus Army arrived in Washington, D.C., with little to no personal resources. They were depending on charity, goodwill, and—they hoped—congressional action on the bonus.

War Department Planning

On 24 May 1932, as the BEF was leaving St. Louis, the Army chief of staff had received a series of briefings on the growing Bonus Army movement. General MacArthur initially was unconcerned but gave direction the next day to his deputy, Maj. Gen. George V. H. Moseley, to begin contingency planning. General Moseley then initiated Plan White by transferring several tanks from Fort Meade, Maryland, to Fort Myer, Virginia. He also sent warning orders to Brig. Gen. Perry L. Miles, commander of the Military District of Washington.¹⁸

General Miles modified the existing Plan White, which originally did not account for large numbers of veterans potentially participating in a civil disturbance in Washington, D.C. Miles planned to use the 2d Squadron, 3d Cavalry, and 3d Battalion, 12th Infantry, to respond to any disturbance. They were to be equipped with tear gas, gas masks, and live ammunition, and they would be supported by an armored car and a truck-mounted 75-mm. gun. Other soldiers from the 16th Brigade were to be detailed to guard the White House, Treasury, Capitol, and other key federal buildings.¹⁹

Army intelligence agents began to infiltrate the Bonus Army to determine the makeup and potential threat posed by the veterans. Throughout June 1932, there was no substantiated evidence of Communist subversion in the Bonus Army protesters. However, anecdotal evidence, like Communist handbills left anonymously at Fort Myer and a few known Communist leaders claiming outsized influence, affected Army leaders' thinking. Additionally, Army intelligence received multiple unsubstantiated reports of Communist plots to seize government buildings or obtain access to dangerous weapons. General MacArthur made a commencement speech at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania on 8 June in which he denounced communism as a "canker [that] eats deeper into the body politic," noting that "the wealth of the United States presents a tempting spectacle."²⁰

The speech highlighted the prominence and disdain in which he viewed communism at a time when 8,000 veterans were bivouacked across Washington, D.C., in squalid conditions, demanding financial assistance from the federal government.²¹

The Bonus Army Occupies Washington, D.C.

As the BEF began to arrive in Washington, D.C., on 29 May 1932, there was no federal plan to respond, logistically, to thousands of veterans peacefully "occupying" the downtown capital.²² Instead, an ad hoc system sprang into existence based on the efforts of the D.C. police chief, charity groups, and a local socialite. The D.C. superintendent of police was Pelham D. Glassford, a former general and a veteran of WWI.²³ Sympathetic to the Bonus Army marchers, Glassford would go above and beyond his professional responsibilities in trying to maintain calm in the city.

Glassford initially tried to get support from the War Department but routinely was rebuffed or frustrated by a tepid reply. In response, Glassford dipped into his personal funds, spending $120 at the Fort Myer Commissary and then budgeting seven cents per day for each Bonus Army marcher. After Glassford leaked to the press the Army's intransigence in providing bed sacks for Bonus Army members, the secretary of war loaned them 2,000 bed sacks—with a catch: the police had to provide a bond to cover the loan. It is not clear if this requirement came from an enterprising judge advocate captain's fiscal law review, but, in the end, Glassford assumed personal responsibility for the bedding.²⁴

The issue of who was going to sign for the bedding might be amusing, but the federal government was limited in its nature. It was not sophisticated enough to work well with other federal agencies let alone the city police force. The Economy Act, which allows different federal agencies to support each other through the provision of goods or services, was not passed until 30 June.²⁵ This organizational weakness plagued the Army's response to the Bonus Army throughout the summer of 1932.

In addition to food and bedding, a location for the Bonus Army needed to be established. By 2 June 1932, an estimated 2,000 veterans were camped at two different sites in downtown D.C. Glassford announced on that day that he would establish a camp in Anacostia, across the Anacostia River from the Capitol Building. By placing the veterans across the river, the police created a choke point at the 11th Street Bridge, which would be strategically advantageous if the Bonus Army were to become violent. This camp, named Camp Marks after a friendly police officer, became the primary residence for the Bonus Army. Veterans turned to a local junkyard for building material to create shelters for themselves, used fire hoses from fire hydrants to access fresh water, and buried their garbage in trenches. Other members of the Bonus Army took positions in what would become the Federal Triangle. At the time, there were multiple half-demolished federal buildings along Pennsylvania Avenue, close to both the White House and the Capitol Building. This encampment was known as Camp Glassford. Yet another camp, known as the Red Camp, was established a short distance away by overt Communist members. Although Camp Glassford and the Red Camp held far fewer Bonus Army members than Camp Marks, their geographical proximity to the heart of the federal government provided an unavoidable visual challenge to federal authority.²⁶

Congressional Action and Inaction

On 1 June 1932, Congress had held a hearing to discuss adding $75,000 to existing legislation that was set to provide $600,000 to the District for relief work. Washington, D.C., Commissioner Luther H. Reichelderfer, also a WWI veteran, opposed the additional money. Commissioner Reichelderfer was concerned that providing food and lodging for the Bonus Army would only attract "thousands, and perhaps tens of thousands" of people to come to Washington, D.C.²⁷ Congress did not take immediate action, but this hearing marked the beginning of legislative attention to the Bonus Army encampment.²⁸

Upon their arrival in the District in late May, Bonus Army members had begun petitioning Congress to vote on paying the bonus immediately, which would amount to an estimated $2 billion. The veterans secured the 145 signatures needed from members of Congress to rescue the bonus reform bill from languishing in committee and allowing it to proceed to a floor vote. Next, they raced to get the bill heard before Congress adjourned for the summer. On 15 June, in a closely divided vote, the House of Representatives passed a $2.4 billion appropriation to pay the bonus immediately. However, the bill still needed Senate approval. On 17 June, with 7,000 veterans quartered on the Capitol grounds, the Senate voted against the bill. There was an audible roar from the veterans when they learned the bonus bill had been defeated, and Waters was concerned they might move on the Capitol. Instead, the Army Band, which was in attendance that evening, played "America (My Country, 'Tis of Thee)," and Bonus Army members sang along, defusing the tension. The Senate, after voting against the bonus bill, tabled it, leaving its fate to be decided by a later Congress.²⁹

Despite the Senate defeat of the bonus bill, the Bonus Army remained in their scattered encampments across Washington, D.C., and, on 7 July, Congress appropriated $100,000 in an effort to disperse them. The money was given to Veterans Affairs to fund travel for Bonus Army members as a means of encouraging them to leave Washington. Veterans had to accept the funds by 15 July. However, in what was probably a penny-wise and pound-foolish maneuver, Congress required that any travel funds accepted by Bonus Army members be deducted from the eventual payment of their bonus certificates. About 1,100 Bonus Army members accepted Congress's offer by 11 July, although the effort was dogged by reports of fraud. Additionally, more veterans continued to arrive in Washington, D.C., counterbalancing any effect of those who took Congress's offer to leave. Seeing minimal effect by 15 July, President Hoover extended the deadline for accepting travel funds to 25 July.³⁰

As the effort to induce the Bonus Army's departure appeared headed toward failure, tensions between the Bonus Army and civil authority continued to increase. Thousands of veterans participated in a series of "death marches" around the Capitol, beginning on 13 July.³¹ Adding to that tension was Congress's scheduled adjournment on 16 July, which meant there would be no hope of resolving the bonus issue until a new Congress was seated in December 1932.³²

As Congress adjourned on 16 July, things appeared to come to a head. Waters, now generally considered the head of the Bonus Army, appeared to lead veterans in a quick march across the Capitol plaza toward the Capitol Building, resulting in his arrest by Glassford. This arrest infuriated the veterans and appeared likely to cause a riot. However, a nurse attached to the veterans grabbed a microphone and calmed the waters by again leading the veterans in singing "America." Waters was released and secured a meeting with the speaker of the House, where he asked for "some material aid" to be given to the Bonus Army before Congress adjourned.³³ However, nothing was done, and Congress adjourned shortly before midnight. Most members left through back doors and underground tunnels to avoid the veterans still protesting outside the Capitol.³⁴

Breaking the Bonus Army

From the beginning of the Bonus Army's occupation of the Capitol, local authorities had looked for a strategy to remove the potential threat. At the direction of the D.C. commissioners, on 4 June 1932, Superintendent Glassford had presented an ultimatum to the Bonus Army leadership, ordering them to leave the city by 9 June on the grounds of health concerns. Glassford offered to provide trucks to drive the veterans up to 50 miles outside the city and tried to maintain goodwill with the growing crowd. However, with no action yet taken by Congress, Glassford's ultimatum was rebuffed. The majority of the veterans making up the Bonus Army were orderly and law abiding, but officials were haunted by the fear of riots. Feeding the veterans always rested on the knife edge of sufficiency. Officials were so worried about sanitation and the threat of an epidemic that, on 11 June, General MacArthur allowed the Army to establish a field hospital at Fort Hunt in Fairfax County, Virginia, to treat Bonus Army members. There were reports that thousands more veterans were coming, and the BEF maintained hopes that Congress would take action to pay the bonus.³⁵

Later in June, the police attempted to evict approximately 150 veterans from a building in Camp Glassford, located on Pennsylvania Avenue. The BEF had been using the building as an ad hoc headquarters. Oddly enough, the D.C. fire department had ordered the eviction based on fire safety concerns. When the police ordered the veterans to leave the building, they refused, and a tense standoff occurred. Picking their battles, the police backed off the eviction. The incident highlighted the central dilemma facing authorities: the veterans would not be easily cowed while they advocated for the immediate payment of the bonus. Some level of force would be required to disperse the BEF from occupying the city. However, because of their generally orderly behavior and veteran status, much of the American populace had sympathy for their cause.³⁶

When Congress adjourned on 17 July, the rationale for the Bonus Army staying became less clear. A new Congress would not be seated until December, leaving the Bonus Army movement in limbo. The Treasury Department, which owned the partially demolished buildings in Camp Glassford, asked the police to remove the veterans, who, with their family members, would number more than 2,000 by 25 July. The eviction notice for Camp Glassford was given on 21 July and then expanded to all encampments on public land, including the now massive Camp Marks. Superintendent Glassford was able to postpone the eviction, on advice of the district counsel, until 27 July. In the interim, he worked with Waters to find ways to move the veterans out of the city peacefully. Waters, although the public face of the Bonus Army, exercised tenuous control over what was a spontaneous movement full of hungry and desperate people. He sought help from General MacArthur and Secretary of War Patrick J. Hurley in a meeting on 26 July, the eve of the Bonus Army's scheduled eviction. His request for help was denied, but Waters extracted a promise from General MacArthur to give the BEF time to make an orderly withdrawal from D.C. if the Army enforced the 27 July eviction.³⁷

Waters warned his leadership team on 27 July 1932 that camps in the downtown area were likely to be cleared soon and with little additional notice. He asked them to help keep veterans from the other camps away from downtown to reduce tension. Waters and Glassford then engaged in negotiations with the police commissioners on an evacuation plan to begin the next day and to be completed no later than 1 August. However, Waters left the meeting thinking only the downtown camps would be evacuated when, in fact, the eviction applied to every camp on public land. On the morning of the twenty-eighth, Waters attempted to convince veterans staying at Camp Glassford to move to Camp Bartlett on Alabama Avenue SE, near the Anacostia River, but he was met with heckling and refusal. Upon receiving official notice at 0950 on 28 July that the eviction order extended to all camps, Waters, feeling betrayed by Glassford, stopped helping to evacuate the downtown area.³⁸

At 1000, D.C. police, accompanied by Treasury agents, removed approximately 1,600 Bonus Army members from an old armory in Camp Glassford. The eviction was relatively smooth, though the police arrested a few veterans who resisted leaving the building. However, as the eviction proceeded, Bonus Army members from other camps continuously arrived to swell the onlooking crowd. This was in part because the police failed to cordon off Camp Marks properly. They also did not close the 11th Street Bridge, which had been the aforementioned choke point intended to prevent this exact scenario.³⁹

Approximately two hours into the operation, violence broke out when a small group of Bonus Army members tried to break police lines around the armory building. Five officers suffered injuries, and one, a decorated combat veteran, was seriously injured. The police arrested at least four Bonus Army members. This skirmish foreshadowed the fratricidal afternoon when the U.S. Army would be called in to forcibly clear the veterans. Superintendent Glassford momentarily restored calm to the situation, and, despite the physical violence, there was no resort to deadly force. That changed around 1345 when Glassford, accompanied by several police officers, responded to a disturbance in a nearby Camp Glassford building occupied by Bonus Army members. As the police rushed into the building, Bonus Army members felled one officer with a brick and physically assaulted another officer. This officer pulled his weapon and shot two members of the Bonus Army, killing both. Glassford again was able to restore calm, at which point he learned that U.S. Army units were massing south of the White House, relatively close.⁴⁰ Glassford asked, "What will be their mission?"⁴¹

The Army Intervenes

Confusion regarding the U.S. Army's mission helped lead to its subsequent failure to clear the Bonus Army peacefully and effectively. Unbeknownst to Glassford, earlier that day, the city's Board of Commissioners formally had requested the Army's assistance in maintaining law and order in the city. The Army leadership, both institutionally and in the person of General MacArthur, believed that once the Army was asked to intervene, it would take control. This belief was because the Army expected to be called only after a declaration of martial law. In fact, that is what Plan White presumed as a predicate before the war plan could be executed.⁴²

On the morning of 28 July, Maj. Gen. Blanton C. Winship, the judge advocate general, met with Generals MacArthur and Moseley to discuss Plan White. General Winship, assuming martial law would be declared, proposed that the Army take control of the D.C. police and offer the BEF an opportunity to depart the capital in Army trucks. He then proposed that, after a presidential order for the Bonus Army to disperse, any remaining individuals who failed to do so should be arrested.⁴³

However, there were multiple problems with this proposed Plan White modification. First, there was no legal authority for the Army to exercise control over the D.C. police. Second, General MacArthur did not commit to providing the opportunity, both in time and in logistical support, for the Bonus Army to disperse. Finally, and most importantly, President Hoover did not declare martial law or a state of insurrection, which meant the Army should have played only a supporting role.⁴⁴

President Hoover did approve the assembly of Army units near the White House, with troops moving there at approximately 1340. The primary maneuver units were the 2d Squadron, 3d Cavalry, and the 3rd Battalion, 12th Infantry, totaling approximately 500 soldiers. A platoon of five tanks accompanied 2d Squadron, with Maj. George S. Patton Jr. serving as the executive officer. Both units were in position by 1600, and they issued each soldier tear gas. These units had been undergoing riot training since the arrival of the Bonus Army and had received legal briefings from Colonel Quinlan. The 1st Battalion, 12th Infantry, would arrive later as reinforcements, raising the number of soldiers present to 800.⁴⁵

President Hoover had met with General MacArthur and Secretary Hurley earlier, between 1340 and 1500. Despite entreaties from Hurley, President Hoover refused to give the legal predicate for the Army to take sole control by issuing either a state of insurrection or declaring martial law. Instead, the president clearly directed that, under the present facts, the Army should cooperate with the police, who were to remain in charge of the eviction process. Women and children accompanying the Bonus Army were to be "accorded every consideration and kindness," and soldiers were to exercise restraint in supporting the police, primarily by surrounding each encampment and serving as a show of strength.⁴⁶ This sober guidance was not followed. Instead, General MacArthur ignored the president's direction and chose to act independently of the police. President Hoover, who never publicized his restrictions on the Army, would pay a significant political price for the public perception that he had ordered the Army to use force to disperse destitute veterans from the nation's capital.⁴⁷

General MacArthur supervised the operation in person in full-dress uniform. His aide, Maj. Dwight D. Eisenhower, recommended against direct participation and advised delegating mission control to General Miles instead. MacArthur ignored this recommendation. Miles did direct the commanders of the two principal units to limit force to what was necessary to allow the veterans an opportunity to disperse. However, soldiers were ordered to use tear gas if they faced resistance.⁴⁸

As the soldiers deployed from marching column into extended order to clear Camp Glassford, they presented a strange mix of modern and ancient warfare. The soldiers carried gas masks, and light tanks accompanied them. However, the infantry still relied on fixed bayonets to intimidate the crowd, and the cavalry were mounted on horses with sabers drawn. General Miles ordered the Bonus Army and watching bystanders to disperse and warned them that tear gas would be used if force was required. This warning appeared to have little effect; the veterans physically and verbally resisted the soldiers. The commander of the 3d Battalion, Lt. Col. Louis A. Kunzig, then ordered his soldiers to don gas masks and use tear gas. The crowd initially broke, but, as the cavalry pushed them away from Camp Glassford, members of the crowd began to reform and surround the troopers. Major Patton then ordered several charges at trot or half speed to break the crowd. Supporting infantry then caught up and physically prodded the crowd with bayonets to complete the dispersal of veterans from Camp Glassford. During this phase of the operation, the involved units showed discipline and, according to the standards of the time, restraint. During this initial phase, an officer intervened when he spotted a veteran being threatened by a bayonet-wielding soldier. The officer, acknowledging the Distinguished Service Cross and Croix de Guerre medals the veteran wore, told the soldier to "have some respect for those." He then warned the veteran, "Buddy, I'd go along if I were you. It will be better."⁴⁹ The cruel irony of soldiers using force on combat veterans was not lost on reporters covering the operation.⁵⁰

The initial favorable impression of the Army's operation, earned through the disciplined and restrained use of force, quickly faded. The very effectiveness of the dispersal at Camp Glassford began to eat away at General MacArthur and other leaders' portrayal of the Bonus Army as a dangerous, subversive organization posing a mortal threat to the Republic. Despite some scattered violence and the initial surrounding of the troopers, there was no effective, organized resistance by the Bonus Army. The Army's heavy use of tear gas, although effective in quickly dispersing the crowd around Camp Glassford, significantly affected innocent bystanders, including children, well away from the initial site. Fires also began to break out among shanties in Camp Glassford and other Bonus Army encampments downtown. A subsequent investigation determined that soldiers had initiated at least some of the fires at the request of local police.⁵¹ However, the Army initially blamed Communists and "defective tear-gas," a mischaracterization which subsequently hurt the Army's credibility.⁵²

Once the downtown encampments were cleared, there was a tactical pause in the early evening as the Army prepared to clear the much larger Camp Marks across the Anacostia River.⁵³ Here, the operation truly went awry. By failing to halt operations for the day and instead seeking an outright rout of the Bonus Army, General MacArthur turned a no-win situation into a public relations debacle for the U.S. Army and President Hoover. The threat, more symbolic than actual, to the federal government of having Bonus Army veterans squatting downtown and close to Congress and the White House had been addressed. The remaining Bonus Army veterans in Camp Marks occupied a position that was easy to isolate. The message had been sent to the Bonus Army members that it was time to decamp and that they could hope for nothing further from Congress in 1932. The U.S. Army lacked both logistical assets and a plan to remove the several thousand Bonus Army and family members, physically, from Camp Marks. Finally, any clearing operation commenced that evening would have to be conducted in the dark. This situation would complicate command and control as well as increase the risk of injury and death to both soldiers and Bonus Army members.

The daring that would win General MacArthur fame during World War II, and, even more notably, at Inch'on in the Korean War, failed him on the night of the twenty-eighth. In fact, the parallel between his handling of the Bonus Army and his command after the victory at Inch'on in the Korean War runs strong. Nearly twenty years before President Harry S. Truman would relieve him of his command for failing to follow presidential direction in April 1951, General MacArthur previewed his fundamentally flawed understanding of the American military's role in civil-military relations with how he proceeded on 28 July 1932.⁵⁴

The danger of continuing on to Camp Marks that evening was apparent to the accompanying reporters, who warned both President Hoover and relevant Congress members. President Hoover intervened and delivered an order to MacArthur, through both the secretary of war and General Moseley, to cease operations. Incredibly— or, in light of subsequent history, perhaps not so incredibly—MacArthur ignored these presidential orders. Instead, MacArthur allowed General Miles to execute the final phase of the operation at approximately 2100, after giving the Bonus Army at Camp Marks a quick warning to disperse.⁵⁵

General MacArthur chose to ignore presidential orders in part because of his loathing for communism and his belief that the ideology lay at the core of the Bonus Army. More importantly for future civil-military relations, he believed that once a military operation was underway, the commander had complete autonomy to execute and complete the mission. This dubious precept colored MacArthur's entire view of the operation and created a flawed understanding of the actual mission goals.⁵⁶

President Hoover had directed the Army to support the police in clearing the most visible and proximate threat to the federal government and to do so in response to evidence of violence and a need to reinforce the police. Instead, General MacArthur operated as if he had been granted authority—under Plan White—to treat the clearing operation as a response to an insurrection. A legal basis to do so was nonexistent without a presidential declaration of insurrection or martial law. MacArthur expanded the scope of his mission by superseding police authority, removing rather than surrounding the Bonus Army, and crossing the Anacostia River. As a result, once images and reports reached the American people through movie theaters and newspaper accounts, the Army would have to own the fallout.⁵⁷

With cavalry in a supporting role, the infantry began to cross the 11th Street Bridge, where they met immediate resistance and harassment. The lead company then used tear gas to clear the bridge. Once they were across the bridge, one of the leaders of the Bonus Army, Edward Atwell, met them with a white flag and requested a one-hour delay, which General MacArthur granted. During the delay, both soldiers and Bonus Army veterans started burning parts of Camp Marks. The soldiers reportedly did so for illumination; the veterans, by contrast, may have done so to spite the government, as some intentionally burned National Guard tents on loan. The infantry then advanced through the camp in a skirmisher line, meeting occasional resistance. At one tense moment, a mob of 2,000 individuals confronted the infantry, but, by 0200 on 29 July, the Army had cleared Camp Marks. Fortunately, the Army conducted this final nighttime clearance without any fatalities.⁵⁸ Major Patton noted that many people would have died if a "single shot had been fired," because fire discipline would have been lost in the dark, and there was no cover for protection.⁵⁹

Political Repercussions

The Army successfully cleared Camp Marks, but it lacked a plan to find a permanent place to settle the now-displaced veterans. Police checkpoints at various bridges barred entry of the Bonus Army into Virginia. Sad lines of veterans and their families now sought refuge in Pennsylvania. Once again, states pressed an ad hoc system of National Guard trucks into service. The trucks transported veterans from one state to the next with no overall plan beyond getting the veterans out of the current state.⁶⁰

Newspapers across the country published photos of Camp Marks burning. Movie theaters showed films that hit the American public in a new, visceral way. Newsreels showed the burning encampments with veterans fleeing and soldiers wielding bayonets and sabers. The contrast between the downtrodden veterans, sometimes with families accompanying them, and the tanks and tear gas created a powerful backlash against the Army during a presidential election year. The slogan "Remember the Bonus March" was used by critics to attack the Hoover administration and the Army.⁶¹

When Franklin Roosevelt, the Democratic presidential nominee, read the New York Times on 29 July, he confidently predicted victory in the fall presidential election. President Hoover would be dogged by the aftermath of the Bonus Army debacle. During one campaign stop in November, Hoover referred to the Bonus Army as a mob that needed to be dealt with, creating an ugly response from the crowd. Patton later said that the Army's "acting against a crowd rather than against a mob" ensured Franklin Roosevelt's election.⁶² Roosevelt won the 1932 election in a landslide victory, earning 7 million more votes than Hoover.⁶³

Paying It Forward

Roosevelt's election as president did not change the immediate fate of the bonus movement. A second and much smaller Bonus Army arrived in Washington, D.C., in May 1933. This time, however, the Army was prepared. It transported veterans to Fort Hunt, where tents and field kitchens had been set up. Veterans received money from a previous appropriation that originally had been designated for hosting French veterans. Like the original Bonus Army, the second Bonus Army was unable to secure congressional support for an immediate payment of the bonus. This was in part because of resistance by President Roosevelt, who, at the time, was still trying to maintain a balanced budget.

Instead, Roosevelt issued an executive order waiving the maximum age requirement to join the Civilian Conservation Corps. The age requirement previously had precluded WWI veterans from joining the Civilian Conservation Corps, and, by waiving it, the president expanded the Corps as a jobs program for veterans. In another difference from the previous summer, members of the second Bonus Army received free transportation home with no impact on their bonus certificates.⁶⁴

In January 1936, Congress finally passed legislation to pay the entire bonus immediately, instead of at its maturation date in 1945. This was because the three largest veteran groups finally had agreed on a specific bill to support. At first, President Roosevelt vetoed the legislation, but Congress overcame the veto on 27 January 1936. Congress set the payment date for 15 June 1936, and the federal government worked around the clock to process bonus applications for some 3,518,000 WWI veterans. The total payout was approximately $1.9 billion, and the average veteran received $583. For perspective, the average veteran's annual income during the depression was between $1,400 to $1,600. The payout over the last two weeks of June 1936 was nearly 1 percent of the country's gross national product.⁶⁵

The long fight over the bonus was not forgotten when World War II reached American shores some five years later. By November 1943, there were 11 million Americans in uniform, dwarfing numbers from WWI. With memories still fresh from the bitterness of the depression and bonus struggle, questions loomed over how the current generation of service members would be supported upon its return from war.⁶⁶

The eventual legislation known as the G.I. Bill of Rights went well beyond the WWI bonus and serves as the framework for the benefits earned by current active-duty service members. The bill consisted of six elements: (1) education assistance, (2) loan guarantees for homes, (3) unemployment pay, (4) hiring assistance, (5) construction of Veterans Affairs hospitals, and (6) a system of review for dishonorable discharges. President Roosevelt signed the G.I. Bill of Rights into law on 22 June 1944 after the D-Day landings in Normandy, France. The painful fight for the bonus during the Great Depression helped pave the way for a bill that would enable more than 2 million veterans to enroll in college and would finance more than 11 million home loans.⁶⁷

Lessons Learned

The Bonus Army saga provides lessons beyond how to reintegrate veterans into civilian life better. The Army senior leadership's fixation on communism distorted how it viewed intelligence reports on the Bonus Army. This intelligence failure led to the Army magnifying the Bonus Army's threat and reducing the Army's empathy for the veterans composing the movement. This lack of empathy blinded leadership to the resonance of the bonus movement with the American public and prevented them from predicting that a violent confrontation with veterans, precipitated by the U.S. Army, would be perceived negatively. Additionally, senior leadership failed to coordinate properly with police, who were in daily contact with the Bonus Army and had built a level of trust with the marchers. Supporting the police, as President Hoover had ordered, likely would have resulted in less physical and chemical force and a more orderly dispersal of the Bonus Army. This failure to coordinate, however, flows from the bigger breakdown in civil-military relations.

General MacArthur's decision to act beyond the scope of his orders sidelined the police from participating effectively in the mission. His subsequent decision to ignore presidential directions to halt his military operations displayed a fundamental misunderstanding of both the problem—destitute veterans posing only a symbolic threat to the government—and his role in addressing it. In attacking Camp Marks, MacArthur made a possible no-win situation worse, earning condemnation for the Army and himself and harming the administration. Moreover, his assault did not prevent a second Bonus Army from returning the next summer.

Finally, fiscal law lay at the heart of the Bonus Army dispute. Veterans wanted their bonuses paid immediately, which required congressional action. A more thoughtful use of funds, as demonstrated in the government's response to the second Bonus Army, could have quelled the first Bonus Army's demands in July 1932 better than General MacArthur's direct assault. Moving the Bonus Army to a more geographically remote location, like Fort Hunt, which had better logistical support, would have removed the immediate physical and symbolic dangers and allowed tempers to cool. Also, funding free transportation without creating a lien against the bonus certificate would have reduced the Bonus Army's numbers more effectively. Thus, the adroit fiscal maneuvers of 1933 demonstrated what could have been possible in 1932, had Army leaders not been blinded by their fear of communism.

Knowledge of fiscal law principles, conducting proper intelligence gathering, coordinating with civilian police authorities, and understanding the Army's lawful role in responding to civil disturbances are lessons still relevant to modern commanders and judge advocates.

Notes