Walter Waters - B.E.F.: The Whole Story of the Bonus Army

Not long after I returned from Iraq in 1991, I became heavily involved in veterans issues, particularly health issues related to Gulf War veterans who had been exposed to a variety of toxic substances during the war. Over the years after that, I heard many references to the Bonus Marchers of the Great Depression, but knew little about them.

Finally, in the late 1990s, I got my hands on a used copy of this book. It had been out of print for more than thirty years at that time, I situation which I found somewhat depressing given the significant importance of the Bonus March in American history.

How different would all of our lives have been if President Hoover had not ordered the Army to forcefully evacuate Anacostia Flats? It is impossible to say for sure, but the distinct possibility exists that Hoover would have won re-election later that year, and Franklin D. Roosevelt may not have ever become President. The later direction of our countryindeed, the worldmight have been very different.

This is the story of the Bonus marchers written not by a scholar or government official, but by W. W. Waters, a World War I veteran who was a key organizer of the original group that left Oregon in the spring of 1932 and traveled across the country in order to petition Congress for redress. Waters spends much of his time in the book justifying his own actions at various points, and in several places takes a defensive tone. In some key points, his description differs from that of other contemporary accounts. All the same, the core events are herethe arrival of the bonus marchers in Washington, DC; the ambivalent relationship with DC Police Chief General Glassford; the accusations that the organizers were communists; and the final episode of that tragic summer, when General MacArthur led Regular Army troops into the streets of Washington, DC to evict peacefully protesting veterans of what was then known as the Great War.

At that time, the bonus march was the largest protest gathering that had ever taken place in Washington. Its importance in our historyboth as a pivot on which turned the election of four-term President Roosevelt and as a example later followed by the Civil Rights movement, antiwar movements and many later organizing effortscannot be understated.

Because of all of these facts, Im proud to be involved with reissuing a new edition of B.E.F. The True Story of the Bonus Army. If you are a student, or interested in learning more about both the history and the story of the bonus marchers, you are invited to visit www.bonusmarch.info, where we have posted original FBI documents and other interesting information about the Bonus Expeditionary Force and its impact on American history.

Charles Sheehan-Miles

Charles Sheehan-Miles served as a Abrams Tank Crewman in the 1991 Gulf War and is a former President of the National Gulf War Resource Center and co-founder of Veterans for Common Sense. He is the author of two novels and a forthcoming nonfiction title, Saving the World on $30 A Day. He can be contacted through his website, www.sheehanmiles.com

TO MY WIFE, WILMA,

WHO STOOD BY

W.W. Waters, Commander, BEF

Collaborators Note

I have written this story of the Bonus Army as it was told to me by W. W. Waters and from various documentary material which he collected.

Independently, I have checked to my own satisfaction Mr. Waterss statements, wherever possible, against newspaper accounts and in conversation with Washington newspaper men, with various Washington officials, many of whom are mentioned in this book, and with numerous members of the B.E.F.

William C. White.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Article I.

Constitution of the United States

Introduction

MANY GROUPS of citizens have marched on Washington at one time or another for various purposes but never until June and July, 1932, when the Bonus Expeditionary Forces camped in the capital did such a movement include so many followers. Sixty thousand to eighty thousand American ex-service men in all were in that army at various times.

I have decided to set down the facts concerning the B.E.F. for many reasons.

The B.E.F. began as a group of men demanding the prepayment of their adjusted service certificates voted by Congress in 1924. It soon became for a vast number of men a means of protest against the economic conditions in our country in 1932, a safety valve for dissatisfaction. It was not recognized as that at this time. It will be remembered as that in American history. The spontaneity which marked its rise and the great popular appeal which brought twenty thousand men to Washington in the first two weeks were something new in American life.

Coming three thousand miles overland with a few hundred of these men as their leader and soon commanding thousands of them, I can tell of the motives and desires which led men to initiate the Bonus March. Their ambitions have been seriously impugned by high official sources. It has been charged that the Bonus March was inspired, sponsored and supported by Communists. It has been said that the marchers intended to foment revolution and to take steps to overthrow our Government. These slurs on honest, American ex-service men must be corrected.

I tell this story for the sake of putting the facts about the B.E.F. on accurate record.

My position gave me an opportunity to see an amazing cross-cut, a close-up view of American life, in contacts with high government officials, in daily meetings with the men in the ranks, and from thousands of letters received. In this record I have tried to describe that view of America to the reader. It is not a class-conscious America. It is a poverty-conscious America, demanding that something be done about it.

The final eviction of the B.E.F. led to one of the most disgraceful episodes in recent American history. The full truth about the steps that led to that eviction and about the event itself must be on record. There was murder done on Black Thursday, July 28th. The methods of eviction on that day revealed a stupidity and a cupidity among Washington politicians that is almost unbelievable. The event itself disclosed to thousands of American citizens who had never before thought particularly about it that the men whom they elect to represent them too often forget who it was that put them in power.