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Vets Owe Debt to WWI's "Bonus Army" …
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On Veteran's Day, this op-ed appeared in the following newspapers: Anniston Star, AL, Arizona Daily Star,Tucson, AZ, Athens Banner-Herald, GA, Birmingham News, AL, Buffalo News, NY, Duluth News Tribune, MN, Fort Worth Star Telegram, TX, Fredericksberg Freelance Star, VA, Gainsville Sun, FL, Houston Chronicle, TX, Montana Standard,Butte, MT, Myrtle Beach Sun-News, SC, Orlando, Sentinel, FL, The Providence Journal, RI, Sacremento Bee, CA, Santa Barbara News-Press, CA, Shreveport News, LA, SunHerald, MS, Tallahassee Democrat, FL and Tampa Tribune, FL

The Legacy of the Bonus Army

By Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen

Today a new war continues to produce another generation of veterans who can claim benefits for their service to the nation. They are, for example, eligible for up to three years of college or training when they return to civilian life. Few of them know, however, that they owe a debt of gratitude to veterans of World War I, who petitioned hostile politicians for a promised reward for service.

Veterans have vexed politicians since the days of Caesar's legions. Returning warriors were both a potential power bloc and a threat..As Anthony J. Principi, U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs, remarked in 2001, "History is littered with governments destabilized by masses of veterans who believed that they had been taken for fools by a society that grew rich and fat at the expense of their hardship and suffering."

Even as noble a cause as the American Revolution ended with a disgruntled army, menacing the politicians. After the British surrendered at Yorktown, many in the Continental Army were mustered out without pay. In June 1783, a band of Pennsylvania soldiers marched on the capitol in Philadelphia, demanding back pay. They surrounded the State House and poked their bayonet-tipped muskets through the windows at the assembled Congress. Fearing a coup, Congress "quit the building," pushed through the jeering mob, and headed to Princeton, New Jersey.

The soldiers grew into a mutinous mob of 400. Finally, after terrifying the citizens of Philadelphia for weeks, the veterans were expelled by soldiers sent by General George Washington. Though two leaders were sentenced to be shot, they were pardoned by Congress at the last minute. A result of this episode was that Congress created a new kind of capital-a protected Federal enclave: Washington, D.C. And it was to Washington that some 45,000 veterans of World War I marched in 1932. Jobless victims of the Great Depression, they called themselves the Bonus Army. They walked, hitchhiked and rode boxcars to Washington, where they set up racially integrated shantytown camps, in the still segregated city, and petitioned Congress for immediate payment of a "bonus" promised in 1924 but not due to be paid until 1945.

The Senate voted it down.

The Bonus Army refused to leave, vowing to stay until 1945 if necessary. Although the vets had caused no trouble, jittery politicians feared revolution, so President Herbert Hoover ordered downtown Washington cleared. General Douglas MacArthur exceded Hoover's orders, and drove out all the veterans, using bayonets, tanks, and tear gas. The Army's action, opposed by MacArthur's aide, Major Dwight D. Eisenhower, stunned America and helped to defeat President Hoover.

When a smaller Bonus Army returned to Washington in 1933 and 1934, President Roosevelt, loke of the four presidents who preceded him, led the opposition against the bonus. In late 1934, the last remnants of the Bonus Army were sent off to "veterans' rehabilitation camps," where they worked for a dollar a day. The worst hurricane ever to strike America smashed into camps in the Florida Keys on Labor Day, 1935, killing more than 250 vets. Finally, in 1936, Congress, shocked by the deaths, overrode Roosevelt's veto and authorized immediate payment of the bonus.

Early in 1944, as General Eisenhower was planning the liberation of Europe and General MacArthur the liberation of the Philippines, leaders of veterans organizations and members of Congress began looking at ways to keep another Bonus Army from mobilizing at war's end. Their efforts produced a proposed GI Bill of Rights. Racist politicians opposed provisions of the bill that would put money in the the pockets of black vets and some elitist educators opposed higher education as a benefit. "Colleges and universities," warned Robert M. Hutchins, President of the University of Chicago, "will find themselves converted into educational hobo jungles."

But on June 22, 1944, Franklin D. Roosevelt, putting aside his longstanding opposition to "privileges" for veterans, signed the GI Bill into law. By 1956, it had helped to produce 450,000 engineers, 238,000 teachers, 91,000 scientists, 67,000 doctors, 22,000 dentists, and more than a million other college-trained men and women. Eleven million of the 13 million houses built in the 1950s were financed with GI Bill loans.

The GI Bill helped to create a well-educated, well-housed, new American middle class whose consumption patterns fueled the postwar economy. Economist Peter Drucker wrote, "Future historians may consider it the most important event of the 20th century."

The legacy of the Bonus Army veterans is that they raised the bar for all of those who came after them.