Share Your Information and Thoughts:

An early and defining moment of the Great Depression occurred in the late spring of 1932 when 20,000 World War I veterans converged on Washington, D.C., to ask Congress and President Herbert Hoover to grant them the "bonus" they had been promised in 1924, but which was not due until 1945. Many vets called it the "Tombstone Bonus" because it could not be redeemed in cash until a date when many veterans thought they would be dead.

When the payment of the bonus was defeated and the Marchers showed no sign of leaving Washington they were evicted by the U.S. Army. Using tear gas, tanks, and a troop of saber-wielding cavalrymen commanded by Major George S. Patton, General Douglas MacArthur eventually drove the Marchers out of Washington. The incident, which would cast a long shadow over MacArthur and Hoover, essentially ended Hoover's presidency and paved the way for Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal. But the ordeal of the veteran would continue until 1935, when several hundred were sent to work on the extension of U.S. 1 into the Florida Keys. In the worst hurricane in U.S. history, nearly all of them would die. A witness named Ernest Hemingway would call their deaths murder. The Bonus was finally paid a year later and the struggle to get the Bonus became a part of the American Memory and became a cautionary tale in the passage of the GI Bill of Rights.

As part of our research into the Bonus Army we are trying to gather as many recollections as possible on event and its effects. We are looking for eyewitness accounts, diary entries, photos, postcards and bits of family folklore. We are also looking for information on familes affected by the payment of the bonus in 1936 as well as thoughts from people with an interest in the topic.

The information and objects we are trying to locate will not only be used for our book, "The March of the Bonus Army ? A Depression Odyssey That Changed America," but also for a traveling Museum show sponsored by the City Museum of Washington, D.C. and a television documentary now being filmed by Emmy-award winning director Bob Uth and producer Glenn Marcus.We realize that this event took place in 1932 but we have already found more than a dozen witnesses to the event and are looking for more to interview and, in some cases, film.

SAMPLE:

Charles P. Greene, on the day the Bonus Army arrived in his Washington, D.C. neighborhood:

"One day we were down to the Park. There was nothing that told us kids that these Bonus Marchers were going to be in there. We noticed that people were setting up shanties down in the flats and the number of people setting up these shanties were increasing. We used to go down there and watch them build their shanties ... watch the strange way that they were cooking meals. They would get hold of a big pot and then throw everything in it and then sharing it all. Some people were sleeping in cardboard shanties and tents and what not so finally these people started getting organized. They had M.P.'s down there and the officers in charge. They had flag raising ceremonies and blew a bugle and we used to go down there and just listen to some of those guys tell stories. They would talk down there and have entertainment for the people there plus some of that entertainment was to draw people down there who could donate money or bring things to them. I remember the time they had this fellow ? a Bonus marcher ? who they buried alive down there. We would go down there to see how long he was going to be able stay underground. Couple of times they had people sitting on poles to attract people."