World War I began in 1914 and ended in 1918. Over 4.7 million Americans participated, which at the time was the largest number to serve in a war. An estimated 116,516 Americans died fighting in the war, with another 320,000 who came home wounded or sick. Chronic respiratory disease after mustard gas exposure was one sickness many veterans incurred.
A popular song during World War I was “We’re in the Army now,” by Isham Jones. The chorus featured a catchy refrain and was used in cartoons and films, and was sung by soldiers in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Poor pay for soldiers has been a constant. Enlisted men during World War I earned $30 a month.
(Chorus)
You’re in the army now
You’re not behind a plow
You’ll never get rich
A-diggin’ a ditch
You’re in the army now
Upon their return from World War I, veterans found high unemployment and a significant wealth gap compared with those who stayed home and earned higher civilian wages.
Pressure “mounted to compensate former service members for the difference between military pay and what they would have earned with civilian jobs”. This frustration sparked a nationwide organizing effort.
Hearst Newspapers — one of the largest media networks in the country — launched a national petition drive urging Congress to pass a bonus bill. Veterans’ groups, local posts, and civic clubs helped circulate the petitions.
The petition text was direct:
“We respectfully petition Congress to pass the soldiers’ bonus act without further delay, and also to levy a sales tax to obtain the money to pay the bonus.”
This message appeared in newspapers across the country, encouraging mass participation.
On May 2, 1922, a Hearst Newspapers truck from New York City drove to the U.S. Capitol carrying more than one million signatures supporting the bonus bill. A bipartisan congressional delegation — including Senator Hiram Johnson and Representative Lester Volk — formally accepted the petition on the Capitol steps. This was one of the largest petition deliveries in U.S. history up to that point.
Inside Congress, the reception was mixed. Some lawmakers supported the veterans, while others dismissed the event as political theater. Representative Walter Lineberger called it a “pageant” designed to “commercialize or politicize patriotism”. Congress passed the bonus bill, but President Warren Harding vetoed it later that year.
Congress eventually passed a new bonus bill in 1924, overriding President Coolidge’s veto — but the payment was deferred until 1945. The law issued certificates whose cash value would not be paid until 1945 — more than 20 years after the war ended. Veterans understood this was, in effect, a forced savings bond, not a bonus.
“They’re paying us when we’re old men.”
Most World War I veterans received Adjusted Service Certificates worth more than $50 and up to $625, depending on how long they served and whether they served overseas. The certificates were designed to mature in 1945 at about 125% of their face value, yielding an average payout of about $1,000. A $625 Adjusted Service Certificate issued in 1924 has the same purchasing power as roughly $11,400 today.
When the certificates were issued in 1924, the American economy was strong, expanding, and deeply optimistic. Industrial output was rising, consumer incomes were climbing, and the U.S. had emerged from World War I as a major global creditor. At the same time, prosperity was uneven: farmers were already in crisis even as cities thrived. Still, the public had been appeased that something had been done for veterans, even though payments were delayed for 21 years. But the economy faltered in 1929 with the onset of the Great Depression.
Veterans were hit as hard as anyone, given their reduced earnings and net worth from time spent serving the country. Many were starving and homeless, though holding certificates that wouldn’t help feed or house their families until 1945, assuming the government could afford to redeem them. The deferred payment became intolerable, and between 1929 and 1931, “bonus marches” began across the country.
The idea of the Bonus Army march on Washington didn’t appear out of nowhere in 1932. It grew out of a decade of organizing, frustration, and earlier mass‑petition efforts by World War I veterans. The seed was planted in 1919–1922: veterans organized nationally. This sparked the creation of local veterans’ committees, pressure campaigns on Congress, and a massive nationwide petition drive. That infrastructure was still in place when the local marches began in 1929.
The idea for a mass march on Washington came from former Sergeant Walter W. Waters from Oregon. In early 1932, Waters and a group of unemployed Portland veterans decided they would travel to Washington and demand immediate payment. They planned to gather more veterans along the way.
Waters called it an “expeditionary force”, echoing the American Expeditionary Forces of WWI. That name became the Bonus Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.) — what the press later called the Bonus Army. Waters didn’t invent the grievance, but he did invent the march.
By 1932, unemployment was catastrophic, many veterans were homeless, and their certificates were the only assets they had. Congress kept refusing early payment. The idea of marching on Washington resonated because it offered visibility, solidarity, and a chance to force Congress to act. Veterans saw it as their last nonviolent tool.
See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The Bonus Army began arriving in Washington, D.C., on June 1, 1932, when about 1,500 veterans reached the capital. They were initially welcomed with sympathy and practical support by the D.C. police superintendent and allowed to build organized encampments. Their numbers soon grew to between 10,000 and 20,000 as more veterans poured in over the following weeks.
Despite later violence, the initial reception was surprisingly supportive. D.C. Police Superintendent Pelham D. Glassford welcomed them. Glassford, a retired brigadier general, was sympathetic to the veterans. He personally visited the camps and tried to ensure they had basic supplies. He even asked Congress for $75,000 to feed the marchers, though the request was denied.
National Photo Company Collection, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Veterans were allowed to build organized encampments. They set up three major shantytowns, including the largest at Anacostia Flats, where they were permitted to camp on private land owned by John H. Bartlett. Camps included a religious tent, lending library, and makeshift post office. The communities were more racially integrated than the United States military, which wouldn’t desegregate until 1948. While some voluntary segregation existed. Many Black and white soldiers shared tents and a mess hall instead of the segregated conditions they had served under.
Federal officials and some newspapers attempted to portray the Bonus Army as “dominated by Black radicals,” “led by communists,: and “racially mixed mobs.” This was a deliberate strategy to undermine public sympathy. The fact that the camps were integrated made them an easy target for racist fear‑mongering. Compare the government efforts then to modern attempts to label protesters as Marxists and domestic terrorists, andthe concerted efforts to demonize Black Lives Matter.
Authorities permitted veterans to shelter in vacant government structures near the Capitol. Reports describe the camps as generally peaceful and run well. The camps were considered well-organized despite being built from “cardboard and crates.”
The shift from initial welcome to violent eviction is among the most revealing aspects of the Bonus Army story. It shows how a government that first tolerated and even cooperated with the veterans gradually came to see them as a political threat — and ultimately used military force against them.
When the first Bonus Army contingents arrived on June 1, 1932, the government’s posture was tolerant and non-confrontational. D.C. Police Superintendent Glassford, himself a former general, helped the veterans and their families find places to camp. He arranged for water, latrines, and basic supplies and tried to keep the peace between veterans and residents. Glassford visited the camps daily.
Congress and the Hoover administration were uneasy, but they did not initially try to remove the marchers. The veterans were peaceful, orderly, and clearly desperate — and the public sympathized with them.
“Let them stay as long as they behave.”
As the Bonus Army swelled to 10,000–20,000 people, the tone in Washington shifted. Inside the Hoover administration, fears grew that the camps were a breeding ground for radicalism. Hoover worried that communists were infiltrating the movement (a claim never supported by evidence). More importantly, the veterans’ presence embarrassed the administration during an election year.
The House of Representatives passed the Wright Patman Bonus Bill, which would have given veterans immediate payment for their certificates. On June 17, 1932, the Senate rejected the bill by a large margin. There was no longer an off-ramp to end the crisis. The veterans recently credited with saving democracy and the world were now an enemy to be dealt with.
By July, the administration viewed the Bonus Army as a political liability, a public‑order problem, and a symbol of economic failure. Hoover and his advisers increasingly framed the veterans as “agitators,” “radicals,” and “dangerous elements.” The war heroes and honored veterans of early June were now being described as a threat to national stability.
The immediate spark for violence came when Hoover ordered the D.C. police to clear out a group of veterans occupying abandoned federal buildings near the Capitol. Glassford tried to carry out the order peacefully, but scuffles broke out, and police fired shots, killing two veterans.
DC Public Library Commons, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons
After the police clash, Hoover made the fateful decision to call in the U.S. Army under some of the officers we know as heroes from World War II: General Douglas MacArthur, Major Dwight D. Eisenhower (as MacArthur’s aide), and Major George S. Patton (leading cavalry troops).
The Army deployed infantry, cavalry, tanks, and tear gas. They drove veterans out of the downtown camps, then — against Hoover’s explicit instructions — MacArthur crossed the bridge into Anacostia Flats, the largest camp, and burned it to the ground. Families fled through clouds of gas. Children were injured. The images shocked the nation.
Hoover wasn’t violating the Posse Comitatus Act because local police (that Hoover effectively controlled) asked for federal assistance, and Washington, D.C., isn’t a state and has citizens who have less protection than other Americans, which is still true today. Hoover rejected advice to declare martial law. Instead, he authorized the Secretary of War to remove the protesters after the D.C. police failed to do so. A disabled veteran from among the Bonus Army wrote to the president.
President Herbert Hoover,
White House,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. Hoover:
The day of all days in the history of the United States finally arrived yesterday when the President of the United States ordered our soldiers to attack the flag of our country, the symbol of our freedom — the freedom our forefathers gave up their lives to give us. The flag we love and will ever follow, in the hands of the veterans, the most loyal soldiers of the United States, has been attacked at the orders of Andy Mellon’s President.1 Had this cowardly attack occurred in any other country in the world, our government would have justly risen up in protest and, Mr. Hoover, I am not so sure that the people of this fair land of ours will not raise their voices in protest when they understand the truth of yesterday’s events.
We, the people of the richest land in the world, have been asleep at the polls too long. During the days before our prosperity was snatched from us by the thieving pack of wolves now in control of our land, we were too busy to care who looked after our affairs of state. Now that the ex-servicemen who came to the seat of our government to peacefully lobby for their just dues and better conditions for the common people of the country have been turned upon by the men at the head of our government I feel safe in predicting that the act of Mellon’s President will surely prove to be a boomerang. The people of the United States certainly will not stand by and see these boys who offered their lives and went through a hell known as “no man’s land” to protect this country blasted out of their peaceful, dingy shanties, which they so diligently erected for themselves and families while they were awaiting relief from the land they have served.
It is true the President had the power to misdirect our soldiers; the power to have a paid “RED”2 throw the first missile; the power to have these soldiers and police murder, beat and gas innocent men, women and children; the power to have these soldiers and police burn not only the meager huts and hovels that these patriotic men had constructed for themselves and their families, and also the power to have hundreds of American flags that were lowered to half-mast in honor of their murdered buddy, burned like so many pieces of rags.
He had the power, Mr. Hoover, to follow all this with unsheathed sabers, fixed bayonets, rifles, machine guns, tanks, gas bombs and arson. All directed against these defenseless, unfortunate ex-heroes of our country. During the war these same boys were equipped with gas masks to protect themselves that they might fight to protect the people and the wealth of the nation. They have not stopped fighting for American people and American principals, even though Mellon’s President has turned our soldiers against them in their time of need.
Did the President who is a great food administrator and engineer offer these boys or their wives and little children food, shelter or gas masks during their stay in Washington or before the disgraceful and cowardly eviction took place?
Most of these people lost their homes through the greed and lust of the few in power. Now these same few drive them out of their crude huts and hovels they had erected for shelter. They were cowardly acts, unpardonable sins, Mr. Hoover; don’t forget that, for I am sure the people of the country will be with you in remembering these depredations.
I don’t expect that this letter will ever reach your eye, nor do I expect it to be published in the press of our land, but I am giving the press a copy of it and, at the same time, I am dedicating the rest of my life to help put this country back into the hands of the people. I am counting on plenty of help, not as a leader but as a follower.
Since I am a disabled war veteran of the world war and a loyal patriotic citizen of the United States, I stand unafraid of our President and his tactics; his powers and cheap politicians that humble themselves to him, but will loyally support each and every true American who opposes him and the conditions that have been forced upon the people of our country during his administration. I am asking the press to check delivery and receipt of this letter.
Just so you will not mistake me for a “RED” or escaped convict, I am
Philo D. Burke,
Liaison Officer, B. E. F.,
Co. C, 350th Inf. 88th Div., A. E. F.
3228922 — C-469986,
Official Pilot’s License №6947
White Water, Cal.
The Bonus Army march was effectively ended when General MacArthur deployed 500 infantry, 500 cavalry, and six tanks against the veterans. Troops used tear gas, bayonets, and mounted cavalry charges. Families, including women and children, were caught in the gas clouds.
MacArthur ignored Hoover’s instruction to stop at the bridge and instead crossed into Anacostia Flats, the main camp. Soldiers destroyed shelters and set fire to the shantytown, burning veterans’ belongings and supplies. Tanks rolled through parts of the encampment, and at least three people were killed, and many more were injured. The images of U.S. troops attacking U.S. veterans horrified the nation. Hoover did not win re-election in the fall of 1932.
A smaller Bonus March returned in 1933, but President Roosevelt defused it by offering jobs in the Civilian Conservation Corps. In 1936, Congress finally paid the bonus early, overriding Roosevelt’s veto.
I was unfamiliar with the Bonus Army and the 1932 march, which may have been my fault because I was known to skip classes for what I deemed a better cause, though History wasn’t usually one of those classes. I have had cause to look up what Florida teaches and found that there is no explicit mention of the Bonus Army, the 1932 march, or the veterans’ encampments in Washington, D.C., anywhere in the K–12 benchmarks. I’m not surprised.
In the end, the Bonus Army didn’t get the money they marched for — not in 1932, not when they needed it most. What they did get was a lesson the country has never fully absorbed: that even the people who served, sacrificed, and believed in the nation’s ideals can be treated as a threat the moment their suffering becomes inconvenient. Their tents were burned, their families scattered, their dignity dismissed as disorder. And yet, for all the force used to erase them, the image of those veterans standing unarmed before cavalry and tear gas has outlived every order given against them.
Of all the monuments and statues in Washington D.C, the only reminder of the Bonus Army and their 1932 occupation is a sundial. It was installed not by the federal government or National Park Service, but by some local activists and veterans groups. I’ll provide a photo in case it wasn’t among your stops when visiting the nation’s capital.
English: NPS Photo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The military careers of MacArthur, Eisenhower, and Patton were not derailed, but the hopes of a second term for Herbert Hoover were crushed. The current president and future presidents aren’t totally to blame for not having learned the lessons of history because it isn’t required teaching in grade school. There is no state in the U.S. whose K–12 social studies standards explicitly mandate instruction on the Bonus Army, the 1932 veterans’ encampments, or the military eviction ordered by Hoover. An ambitious instructor may voluntarily introduce the material. But there could be a risk.
Florida’s current environment makes teachers cautious about covering protests, state violence, or controversial federal actions. The Bonus Army includes all three. So even if it’s allowed, many teachers avoid it. What is permitted is propaganda and American exceptionalism. #Shame
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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