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B . E . F . : T H E W H O L E S T O R Y O F

T H E B O N U S A R M Y

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––––––––––––––––––––––– W. W. Waters –––––––––––––––––––––––

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 pre-payment 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.…

The final eviction of the B.E.F. (Bonus Expeditionary Forces) 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.

This story is told with no malice or bitterness toward any one but I evade

nothing that is necessary to the truthful recording of this chapter of recent

history. This book is not an attack on any political party. I purposely withheld

publication until after the elections to prevent any one from supposing such

motives. I have refused and I shall refuse all offers to let any special group profit

by my experiences. I sold out to no one. I was broke when I began the Bonus

March. I was broke and in debt when I finished with it.…

My own background is typical of the sort of American who joined the B.E.F.

I was born in Oregon, of old American stock, in 1898 and was reared in

Idaho. In 1916, restless, with no further “West” to conquer, I joined the

National Guard and went to the Mexican border as a private…and sent overseas

in the winter of 1917. We entered active service at the front in July, 1918.

Armistice Day found us still on the firing line. After that we were ordered into

Germany as a part of the Army of Occupation. We returned to the United States

in June, 1919, and I was honorably discharged with the rank of sergeant.

Shortly after my return to civil life my health failed. I spent several months in

a hospital…for which, by the way, the Government was not asked to pay.

Then, like millions more, I attempted to take up the threads of my life where

I had dropped them some three years before. Like many others of my age, I had

no occupation or profession to resume. Everything had to be commenced for

the first time, and it was a discouraging problem. In the next few years I made

numerous serious attempts to get going in some profitable business or position,

as a garage mechanic, an automobile salesman, a farmhand, a bakery helper.

Each new venture was begun with the same high enthusiasm. Each one ended

as an equally dismal failure.…

In 1925…I hitch-hiked into the State of Washington and there got a job in the

harvest fields. I even used a new name, “Bill Kincaid,” the first name to flash

into my mind when asked, as if to break the more decisively with the past.

Under that name I met and married the girl who is now my wife.…

I found a job in a cannery near Portland, Oregon, worked up to be assistant

superintendent and for once I seemed to have escaped from the failure that had

followed me in the past.

I lost that job in December, 1930, due to the depression, and went to

Portland in search of employment.…

My wife and I had a thousand dollars saved and I felt that we would get along

somehow until work was obtained.

Our savings vanished and the hope of work with them during the winter of

1931–1932. In the meantime our personal belongings, one by one, found their

way to the pawn shops and by March, 1932, we were not only penniless but

had nothing left except a very scanty wardrobe. There were many days that

winter when we experienced actual hunger while earnestly trying to find any

job that would provide just the necessities of life.

In my ceaseless beating about the city I found family after family in the same

general condition or worse. I saw men half clad, in threadbare clothing, pacing

the streets in soleless shoes. On their faces was the same look, part of hope,

part of bewilderment, as they searched for a chance to earn a few dollars at

honest work. I talked with hundreds of these men and found that, with few

exceptions, they wanted not charity but work that would enable them to live

and to regain their self-respect.

…I found that a large percentage of these men in Portland were, like myself,

ex-service men. They had fought, so they had been told a few years before, “to

save the nation”; they had fought, it now seemed, only in order to have a place

in which to starve.

Among these men there was profound discontent with conditions. There was

a ravaging desire to change them but a complete and leaden ignorance of the

way to do it. Yet, among these men, hungry, desperate, downcast, there was

little or no talk of the need for violent action. It was every man for himself. One

can merge one’s individuality in the mass when active, even in wartime when

death taps at the shoulders of men, one by one; but starving makes a man think

of himself first and foremost. Yet these men were just as loyal to the nation as

they had ever been. They were just as patriotic, just as law-abiding as their more

fortunate neighbors who had jobs. In other nations similar conditions might

lead to revolution. Among these men the very thought, let alone the desire, was

never in their minds.

These men did think and talk a great deal about the so-called Bonus. The

name “Bonus” is unfortunate. It is not a gift, as that word implies. It is a

payment of money to compensate those men who served in the Army for the

difference in pay between that of service men and non-service men in 1918. The

bill, asking payment in full of the adjusted compensation for wartime service,

was introduced by Representative Patman of Texas and, during the early winter

of 1931, was pending in Congress. The majority of veterans were hoping that it

would pass.

These men had fallen far down into the valley of despair. Some push was

necessary to start them out and up over the hill. Jobs would have provided the

best sort of impetus but there were no jobs. The Bonus, a lump sum of money,

could act in the same fashion. Debts could be met, doctors’ bills paid, a fast

fraying credit renewed, and one man could look another in the eye once more.

It mattered not that the Bonus was not due, legally, until 1945. What man,

having a promise to pay at a later date would not ask his debtor for it in advance

if he believed that the debtor could afford the money and if his own need was

not only great but critical? These men felt that the Government had the money.

Newspapers, which can always be picked out of trash cans in the parks and

public places, published stories of extensions of credit to foreign nations.

Headlines told of loans to railroads and to large corporations.

This is not the place to argue the justice or the fallacy of the demand for the

immediate payment of the Bonus. The point, continually forgotten, is that the

Bonus in these men’s minds became a substitute or a symbol for that long

dreamt of new start, a job. These men had nothing to which to look forward

except to the shiny shoulders of the man in front of them in the breadline.

Whenever I asked these men which they would rather have, the Bonus or a job,

the reply was nearly always the same: “A job, of course. But where’s a job

coming from? I’ve looked every day for over a year and haven’t found one.”

When asked what they would do with the Bonus, their answers were alike:

“First, I’d buy the kids some clothes, then I’d pay the rent, then the grocery bill.

And believe me, we’d have at least one good Sunday dinner.” Frequently one

heard, “Well, I could at least pay my debts and then maybe my credit would

hold up until I do get a job.”

All this could not fail to impress me because it conformed exactly to my own

condition and viewpoint.…

Early in March, 1932, I had come to the conclusion that Congress was

purposely playing football with the Bonus bill and had no intention of giving it

favorable consideration regardless of the demand which ex-service men were

voicing through the various veterans’ organizations. I knew that during 1931

and again during the recent months there had been pilgrimages to Washington

by freight train, of small groups of ex-service men. I had heard of Coxey’s Army

but I had never heard that it had gotten anything; its demands were too vague. A

small Bonus March had gone to Washington from Portland in 1931. I had also

read the Constitution of the United States which grants the right to American

citizens to assemble and to petition Congress peacefully for a redress of

grievances. Gradually the determination to go to Washington to lobby for the

Bonus bill grew on me. The more I thought about it, the more it appealed.

Other lobbies had moved to Washington, supported by money. We had no

money, but perhaps a group, whose only support was in its numbers, might go

to Congress and make some impression.…

I asked a member of the Portland assembly of the National Veterans’

Association to secure permission for me to address it. He told me I might come

to the meeting on March 15th. This was to be my first speech before an

organized body and I wrote it out and memorized it while pacing around the

block at night, sometimes until dawn.

Feeling all the sensations of stage fright, I told the several hundred veterans

present that the tactics now being employed to bring about the payment of the

Bonus would fail. “Writing letters to Congressmen,” “signing petitions,”—all

these provided things which could be tucked away in a desk drawer and most

conveniently forgotten. But several hundred men at the capital—I foresaw no

greater number—might be more difficult to forget. Our only hope was in

following the successful tactics of Big Business; when its representatives wanted

something from Congress they went to it personally and said so. No tariff

schedule was ever raised merely by having Pennsylvania manufacturers write

letters to say they would like it so.

The audience was interested, up to a point. I admitted that the only way to get

to Washington was by freight train but added that the weather would soon be

warm and that such a trip would not be overly difficult. I closed by saying that if

not fewer than three hundred men were willing to organize under strict military

discipline, we could probably attract a few hundred more men en route and

have perhaps a thousand men in Washington.…

At the end of April I noticed in the newspaper a statement that a meeting of

unemployed ex-service men was to be held outdoors, to organize a march to

Washington. At the meeting there were a hundred veterans. I was asked to

speak.…

I repeated at this next meeting what I had said in March. More gatherings

followed and very slowly there was a distinct increase in enthusiasm. More and

more veterans showed their willingness to make the journey, even though they

believed it eventually futile. After all, there was little difference between hunger

in Washington and hunger in Portland. Every man who addressed the slowly

increasing crowds made it clear that such a march must be marked by proper

organization, discipline and obedience to law and order, both en route and

while in Washington.

Then, in early May, the Bonus bill was shelved “for good” by the Ways and

Means Committee of the House of Representatives.

It was this which brought the nucleus of the B.E.F. from an idea into a reality.

The crowds started to increase at the daily meetings. Men signed up by the

dozens and plans to get started were under way. From the beginning, and to the

end, every man who wanted to join had to show evidence of his war service.

Each man had to declare “to uphold the Constitution of the United States to the

best of my ability and swear an unswerving allegiance to its flag.” Each man had

to agree to be law-abiding and to submit to proper discipline as administered by

elected officers.

A final meeting was held on May 10th. A “Commander-in-Chief” was

chosen who was to travel ahead by automobile, arranging for food and

transportation. A “Field Marshal” with his assistants was appointed. The men

were divided into companies of forty each, in charge of a “Captain” who, in

turn, appointed his “Lieutenants” and “Sergeants.” I held the rank of “Assistant

Field Marshal.” Our little army, at the final roll call, numbered two hundred

and fifty men. After a few days en route it increased to nearly three hundred.

Thus the first group of the B.E.F. arose.

WALTER W. WATERS,

Commander, B.E.F.

Source: B.E.F.: The Whole Story of the Bonus Army by W. W. Waters (New

York: The John Day Company, 1933), pp. 1–17.