The Bonus Army: An American Epic

by Paul Dickson, Thomas B. Allen

In the summer of 1932, at the height of the Depression, some forty-five thousand World War I veterans-whites and blacks together-descended on Washington D.C., from all over the country to demand the bonus promised them eight years earlier for their wartime service. Fearing violence after the Senate defeated the "bonus bill," Herbert Hoover's Army Chief of Staff, Douglas MacArthur, led tanks through the streets on July 28 to evict the bonus marchers. Through seminal research, including interviews with the last surviving witnesses, Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen tell the full story of the Bonus Army, recovering the voices of ordinary men who dared tilt at powerful injustice. The march ultimately transformed the nation, inspiring Congress to pass the GI Bill of Rights in 1944, one of the most important pieces of social legislation in our history, which in large part created America's middle class.

Genres: History, American History, Nonfiction, Politics, World War I, Military History

384 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2004

About the author

Paul Dickson is the author of more than 45 nonfiction books and hundreds of magazine articles. Although he has written on a variety of subjects from ice cream to kite flying to electronic warfare, he now concentrates on writing about the American language, baseball and 20th century history.

Dickson, born in Yonkers, NY, graduated from Wesleyan University in 1961 and was honored as a Distinguished Alumnae of that institution in 2001. After graduation, he served in the U.S. Navy and later worked as a reporter for McGraw-Hill Publications.
Since 1968, he has been a full-time freelance writer contributing articles to various magazines and newspapers, including Smithsonian, Esquire, The Nation, Town & Country, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post and writing numerous books on a wide range of subjects.

He received a University Fellowship for reporters from the American Political Science Association to do his first book, Think Tanks (1971). For his book, The Electronic Battlefield (1976), about the impact automatic weapons systems have had on modern warfare, he received a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism to support his efforts to get certain Pentagon files declassified.

His book The Bonus Army: An American Epic, written with Thomas B. Allen, was published by Walker and Co. on February 1, 2005. It tells the dramatic but largely forgotten story of the approximately 45,000 World War I veterans who marched on Washington in the summer of 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, to demand early payment of a bonus promised them for their wartime service and of how that march eventually changed the course of American history and led to passage of the GI Bill—the lasting legacy of the Bonus Army. A documentary based on the book aired on PBS stations in May 2006 and an option for a feature film based on the book has been sold.

Dickson's most recent baseball book, The Hidden Language of Baseball: How Signs and Sign Stealing Have Influenced the Course of our National Pastime, also by Walker and Co, was first published in May, 2003 and came out in paperback in June, 2005. It follows other works of baseball reference including The Joy of Keeping Score, Baseballs Greatest Quotations, Baseball the Presidents Game and The New Dickson Baseball Dictionary, now in it's second edition. A third edition is currently in the works. The original Dickson Baseball Dictionary was awarded the 1989 Macmillan-SABR Award for Baseball Research.

Sputnik: The Shock of the Century, another Walker book, came out in October, 2001 and was subsequently issued in paperback by Berkeley Books. Like his first book, Think Tanks (1971), and his latest, Sputnik, was born of his first love: investigative journalism. Dickson is working on a feature documentary about Sputnik with acclaimed documentarians David Hoffmanand Kirk Wolfinger.

Two of his older language books, Slang and Label For Locals came out in the fall of 2006 in new and expanded versions.

Dickson is a founding member and former president of Washington Independent Writers and a member of the National Press Club. He is a contributing editor at Washingtonian magazine and a consulting editor at Merriam-Webster, Inc. and is represented by Premier Speakers Bureau, Inc. and the Jonathan Dolger Literary agency.

He currently lives in Garrett Park, Maryland with his wife Nancy who works with him as his first line editor, and financial manager.

Reviews

[Fredrick Danysh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Following World War I, many veterans returned to the United States to find that their jobs were gone and that others were finically well off while the military had been paid $21 per month. After several years of struggle the veterans were promised some money but would not be able to collect until 1945 or they died. When the Great Depression struck the veterans were in even worse shape financially after having made sacrifices for their country. In 1932 large numbers marched on Washington, D.C., asking for what Congress had promised so that they had a chance to survive. The president turned out troops to focally eject them. This work is a history of that struggle and despite the author's naive beliefs otherwise shows gthe contempt for veterans by the American population and government.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I marched off to war in 1917, I remember a Civil War veteran, over seventy years old, telling me, Son, you are all heroes now. But some day they’ll treat you like dogs.” Benjamin B Shepherd of the BEF.

Any US vet who has taken advantage of the GI Bill or its variations should read The Bonus Army to understand how these benefits came into being. The veterans of WWI were only paid $1/day during the war, much less than the men who stayed home. Often the returning vets could not return to their old jobs. Some states paid veterans benefits while others did not. The US government only took care of the wounded and disabled from the war.

After the war, there was a call for a special bonus to veterans. A small payment of $60 (two months’ pay) was made. It was called a “bonus” by the Stars and Stripes and the idea of a bonus was established. It was not enough and a flurry of bills were introduced to establish a substantial benefit. Every president: Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover and Roosevelt opposed paying any bonus to the veterans of WWI. Mostly it was due to economic reasons. The bonus would cost between $2-4 Billion, about the same as the annual US budget at the time.

There were other reasons: Wilson’s was racial (no surprise)-afraid that the black veterans would quit work if they received a large bonus thereby hurting the labor force; Coolidge opposed it as unfairly favoring one special interest group over other citizens; Roosevelt even cut existing disabled veterans benefits by 2/3 to balance the budget and help pay for his other programs like the CCC. The various presidents either got their cronies to bottle up the legislation in Congress or vetoed bills that arrived on their desks. Coolidge’s 1926 veto was overridden. Every veteran would get a bond that could be redeemed in 1945 for an average of $1,000 (just like today-pass the bill on to the kids).

The Great Depression changed the situation. For many vets, the bonus “bond” was the only asset they had and it was only paid out, before 1945, to the family if the vet died. The vets wanted a cash payout or ability to borrow against the bond. So in 1932 in the depth of the depression, a group of vets from the west coast began a march on Washington that grew. This march is covered in fascinating detail. Upon arrival in DC, the vets build camps at various locations and put pressure on Congress and the President. Again, very interesting in how this transpired and the conditions:

…General MacArthur authorized the setting up of an Army field hospital at Fort Hunt, an abandoned military site across the Potomac River and about eleven miles south of Washington.

The establishment of the field hospital came in the wake of a report by the District of Columbia’s chief medical officer, who feared that primitive sanitary conditions-swarms of flies, half-buried garbage, mosquito-breeding puddles, mess kits passing from hand to hand-could bring on an epidemic. Waters believed that a typhoid epidemic never happened because all the veterans had been inoculated when they went to war. There were no amenities. Folded newspapers served as plates for those without mess kits. Spoons and forks were rare. But, as Waters philosophized, “No landlords came daily threatening eviction. No bill collectors called. . . . the absence of gas and electricity had at least the compensating comfort that neither could be cut off for non-payment of bills.”

One interesting aspect of the Bonus Army was the integration of blacks and whites, no color line existed in the camps:

Roy Wilkins, a rookie reporter for the Crisis, suggested that the NAACP monthly move away from its lofty “ebony tower” approach to issues and report them firsthand rather than write essays about them. Putting words into action, he headed from New York by train to Washington’s Union Station and then to the teeming Camp Marks in Anacostia for a few days and nights in June. “There I found black toes and white toes sticking out side by side from a ramshackle town of pup tents, packing crates, and tar-paper shacks. Black men and white men, veterans of the segregated army that had fought in World War I, lined up equally, perspired in sick bays side by side. For years the US. Army had argued that General Jim Crow was its proper commander, but the Bonus Marchers gave lie to the notion that black and white soldiers-ex-soldiers in their case-couldn’t live together. ”45

At Camp Marks, he noted, “there was one absentee, James Crow.” If the bonus marchers could unite across racial lines, Wilkins asked, why couldn’t the entire fabric of American life be desegregated? He hunted for several days and nights to find an example of segregation and finally found one at Anacostia, where a small group of “colored bonus’ers” from New Orleans and other towns in Louisiana had erected a section of shacks for themselves, insisting on their own mess kitchen.

There are many fascinating characters. One of the best is the DC Police Chief, Pelham Glassford, a remarkable man. There is plenty of “fake news”: communists were running the show, kids were killed by tear gas, 100 vets killed when MacArthur cleared the camps out, etc.

The authors are reasonably fair in reporting the story. Yes, “Hoover sent in the Army while Roosevelt sent his wife” but you also find out that “Hoover burned the camps while Roosevelt sent the vets to disease-ridden camps in Florida to drown in a hurricane.” Roosevelt sent his crony, Harry Hopkins, to investigate the hundreds of vets killed in the 1935 Labor Day hurricane. A whitewash ensued and the investigative materials disappeared from the Congressional record storage.

One thing stands out, it’s nice to have a public relations operation that gives friendly media and historians. Both Coolidge and Roosevelt vetoed bonus bills and were overridden by Congress. Coolidge is vilified for his principled stand against a special interest group and resisting financial burden while Roosevelt is celebrated for his stand against the same special interest group and wanting to use the money for other schemes.

4 Stars

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-written account of a now-pretty-much-forgotten episode in 20th-century American history. Which is kind of sad since these events contributed to the political demise of Herbert Hoover and the rise of FDR, as well as the passage of the GI Bill of RIghts, one of the most generous public programs ever created.

Unfortunately, current veterans don't fare as well as those of WW II or Korea, but apparently, America's treatment of its veterans has always bordered on the execrable.

One thing that mystifies me is how Douglas MacArthur sustained the career he did when his shortcomings seemed to be chronically on display, even in the 1930s. Another putz was Patton, who was inclined to treat the protesting veterans as criminals deserving no quarter when they were finally displaced from Washington, DC. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed (only somewhat, though, as the vets and their wives and children were still treated pretty roughly).

I almost forgot to mention that FDR was opposed to providing the veterans their "bonus, " which wasn't really a bonus at all. It was really a retroactive increase in pay, considered fair to supporters since everyone who served in the military during WW I and the occupation of Europe that followed was financially disadvantaged compared to those who stayed out of the military. That, coupled with the Great Depression, left many veterans homeless and jobless, so the retro pay could help offset their immediate problems for a significant amount of time.

[John E · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent and reliable history of the Bonus Army and the treatment of veterans following World War I. A great story of the resilience of people and the perfidy of leaders both Republican and Democrat.

[Googoogjoob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Generally solid. This is an important book in that it synthesizes a ton of information on this oft-misrepresented series of events, but the material sometimes threatens to get out from under the authors (journalists rather than historians by background). This covers the antecedents of the Bonus Army (briefly sketching out a history of American government-veteran relations) through to the GI Bill, the political culmination of the BEF's struggle.

The Bonus Army is presented basically sympathetically, though not hagiographically. The authors are at some pains to counter the smears that the Bonus Army was comprised of lying non-vets, criminals, and Communists, and do so quite thoroughly.

The authors like characters and anecdotes, and the book is populated by heroes and villains. Heroes like DC Police Chief Pelham Glassford, who went to great lengths to try to accommodate and collaborate with the vets in keeping order, and spent much of his own money feeding them, or Evalyn Walsh McLean, who struck up friendships with the vets and donated food to them. For villains, there's MacArthur and the rest of the Army command, who were demonstrably paranoid and delusional, insisting that the BEF was mostly fraudulent vets, riddled with Communists, hiding machine guns, etc. MacArthur is noted to have called out the Army to rout the BEF out of town before any hints of violence had occurred, when the evacuation was still proceeding mostly smoothly and peacefully, and to have disobeyed orders in crossing the river to Anacostia and driving out the vets there. Somewhere in between the two camps we have Walter Waters, the BEF's de facto leader, who had poor political instincts, and briefly drifted towards fascism (with the bonus-hungry vets as putative power base) before giving up and going home; and John Pace, a Communist veteran group leader, who sought to exploit the BEF to start a revolution, but who never got much traction at all, and abandoned Communism shortly thereafter.

As for the material threatening to overcome the authors- they were dealing with a ton of material here (both primary and secondary sources), and sometimes struggle to whip it into a coherent narrative. There are some slips- eg an anecdote about a 1936 veto by FDR is first introduced, erroneously, in a footnote about a 1935 veto; then retailed, in nearly the same words, in the body text about the correct, 1936 veto.

[Mark McTague · Rating 4 out of 5]

Popular history, but well-written and well-researched by two Maryland professionals, this book examines the development and playing out of the Bonus Army (for readers unfamiliar with 20th century American history, this was the Depression-era "March on Washington" by tens of thousands of WWI veterans demanding payment of the "bonus" promised them for their war service but delayed because, among other reasons, the claim of financial constraints of the Great Depression). The book describes in rich detail their struggles not only with the privation of being nearly penniless in the Depression but also public perceptions of them as "bums, petty criminals, and 'Reds'." To be sure, class conflict was part of their story, but nearly all of these men and women were pressing not for revolution but for, in their minds, a "fair deal" from the government, the same favorable treatment that they saw corporations receive who "suffered" from their wartime service. Perceptive readers will recall that former Marine Corps General Smedley Butler, two-time winner of the Medal of Honor, railed against just such corporate class favoritism in his "War Is a Racket" essay, a diatribe against the same unscrupulous profiteering that began in the Civil War and continued through WWI, WWII, and most recently in Iraq. This is but one of many issues that make this story not only edifying in terms of this period but illuminating in the larger socio-political context of the time, and in so doing the authors draw out issues relevant to anyone interested in American society and history - racial and class disparities, the gap between political statements and actions, and the ways that politicians exploit public perceptions and try to manage public perceptions. Sound familiar? It is. In many ways this story of the struggle of these veterans over 80 years ago sounds depressingly familiar today. Thus the book is also a reminder that social class has continued to be a major fault line throughout American history, one that gets far less attention than it deserves. Then again, that's a key part of our national myth, isn't it? The classless society. It wasn't, and as the last two decades have shown, it still isn't. As the French say, "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."
Well-recommended.

[Kenneth Barber · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good book about the bonus march on Washington DC in 1932 by WW1 veterans They fought hard to get a bonus for their service during the war. However when it finally passed it wasn't to be paid until 1945. With the onset of the depression the money was needed immediately The veterans did a march on Washington to get the bonus now. The book tells about the efforts of the vets and the establishment of their camp at anacostia flats. They ended up being driven out by the army with MacArthur , Eisenhower and Patton in command. Charges of communism were leveled at the vets. Worth the read.

[Ronald Golden · Rating 4 out of 5]

The tale of the “Bonus Army” is the story of one of the dark chapters of our American government. For much of mankind’s history, civilizations have raised armies to fight their wars only to discard the warriors when the war was over. America in the early 20th Century was not much different. When American vets returned from World War I there were no provisions to help these vets assimilate back into civilian society. While there was a pension provided for disabled veterans of the war, able bodied veterans were expected to return to society and pick up where they left off. In 1924 Congress approved, over President Hoover’s veto, a veteran’s compensation package. This package, in the form of certificates could not be cashed in until 1945.
The Great Depression hit most veterans particularly hard. They formed “The Bonus Army” in 1932 to march on Washington and lobby for their bonuses. Despite the peaceful nature of the protest, Hoover ordered the Army to remove the protestors from Washington. Led by General Douglas McArthur, the Bonus Army was brutally crushed.
The Roosevelt Administration did not have a much better record on the subject. In fact, President Roosevelt vetoed a similar bonus bill in 1936. The Roosevelt Administration was also largely to blame for the deaths of hundreds of veterans in the Florida Keys hurricane of 1934 due to lack of preparation in evacuating personnel.
The silver lining in this entire story is that the events described in this book about the Bonus Army directly led to the present G.I. Bill, enacted in 1944. I found it appalling that many heads of major educational institutions such as Columbia opposed the G.I. Bill because they felt that the sudden influx of what they deemed “common men” would somehow harm academia. How arrogant!
Overall an excellent read and highly educational.

[Javier HG · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hace años, no recuerdo muy bien cómo, me enteré de que en la década de los años 30 del siglo pasado, miles de veteranos de la Primera Guerra Mundial habían marchado sobre Washington DC y, debido a las penurias de la Gran Depresión (para mí, después de la Guerra Civil, el peor momento que han vivido los Estados Unidos de América), habían pedido que se adelantase el pago de un bonus que debía cobrarse en 1945. Un tiempo después vi este libro en Amazon pero no me decidí a comprarlo. Años después, lo encontré en una tienda de libros de segunda mano y no me lo pensé.

"The Bonus Army" muestra que muchos de los conflictos que pensamos que son actuales no lo son tanto, vienen de muy atrás. En el libro hay pasajes de periódicos de la época en los que se habla de "Wall Street", "de los que no tienen", de la parálisis en Washington, etc. Está bien documentado y te traslada a un momento en el que el país pensaba que se podía perder en la anarquía y la revolución, con millones de personas vagando por el país en busca de trabajo. Desesperados, miles de veteranos (blancos y afroamericanos), marcharon sobre la capital para pedir que se pagase un bonus que los sacase de la desesperación. Pero a un coste de más de 1.000MnUSD de la época, no encontraron el apoyo político suficiente, a pesar de que acamparon (llegó a haber 20.000 en total, sin contar sus familias) durante meses. Al final, el presidente Hoover ordenó su expulsión por medio militares, a las órdenes de MacArthur, Eisenhower, y Patton. Pero ahí no acabó la historia...

Recomendable para aquellas personas interesadas en la Gran Depresión en los EE.UU.

[patrick Lorelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always remember hearing about this. Though my grandfather did not go to Washington to march he did talk about it for he did fight in World War One in Europe some did not, and I still have his uniform and medals. Yet what strikes me about this book is these veterans were promised something and this was not the first or last time that the politicians from Washington would take back on that promise. Yes, there was depression but some of these same men were the reason for that as well, forgiving foreign debt that was credited by banks in the ’20s when people were told what would happen yet they still chose to wipe out debt from around the world. Now you have all of the player's presidents, men who would become President Congressmen, and Senators playing the game then coming up with the G.I. bill that will be changed throughout the years, decades. The reason I am still pissed is for many reasons.
One these men marched without entering any buildings, two men veterans did die from being shot by the police, Hoover did send in the Army and MacArthur even brought tanks with him. Since then the government would continue to change benefits for the G.I.’s most people don’t know this yet my family has fought in every war and I have seen the changes, now just this week the people in Washington vetoed again to take away benefits for veterans so this book has many meanings for me even though I am not explaining it all that well. A very good book.
I received this book from Netgalley.com

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The assembly/march of about 45,000 WWI veterans the summer of 1932 to Washington DC from every corner of the country, is an event in US history that few of us were taught about. The men's demand to be paid a bonus, promised to them 8 years earlier for their wartime service, was met by forceful removal from DC by Hoover's Army Chief of Staff, MacArthur, after the Senate defeated the bonus bill. This march ultimately led to the passage of the GI Bill in 19f44, one of the country's most important pieces of social legislation. The history is easy to follow in this book, and holds your interest because of so many first hand accounts of the events. The positions of the politicians of the era would never be acceptable today. This was well worth the read.

[Michael Belcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Superb story of the military veterans who marched on Washington D.C. to claim the long-overdue bonus promised after their suffering in World War I for slave wages. Driven equally by hunger, patriotism, and principle, their encampment and eventual ejection by military forces (led by General Douglas McArthur) set the precedent for similar Civil Rights marches in the 1960's. A must-read for students of the period as well as the effectiveness of passive resistance.

[R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Veterans have been given the short end of the stick since at least the time of the Roman legions and probably much before that. This is the story of just such an instance in American history. The persistent courage of those who faced down all the odds through the tumultuous years culminated in the GI Bill.

[NCHS Library]

From Follett: Based on extensive research, this highly praised history recounts the 1932 march on Washington by 45,000 World War I veterans and the protest's role in the transformation of American society. "Recommended." -- Library Journal.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a part of American History which most American are not taught in school and which needs to known.

[Curt Buchmeier · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strong 4.5 stars. Extremely well-written and researched, the notes alone read better than some books. The Bonus Army is like a Greek classic, a real-life odyssey. And like The Odyssey, it has a bit of everything going on. Heroism in war, political intrigue and graft, bootleggers and hypocritical politicians, reds and fascists, parades and petitions, tanks and tear gas on the streets of DC. It ends with a deadly hurricane and the GI Bill, the last leads directly to the economic success story that was the middle class in the 1950’s and 60’s. I can’t think of a more important book to read this summer(2020) or any other time.

[Lucas Foster]

The app gives option to mark review for “spoilers,” which is sort of interesting in this case: although the bonus march was a huge story that got major play on the newsreels of the day and even influenced a monumental US presidential election, that was almost 100 years ago, and Americans are famous for our amnesia. I sent away for the book bc bonus army was one of those phrases that’d been swimming around in my clinically r*tarded head ever since getting a two minute lesson on it in 11th grade. So in that sense it was an impulse buy but not one I regret. Written in the plain English of your professorial grandfather, this accessible history is a trip to an at once more innocent and beastly America, chockablock with vivid details like how many pounds of hamburger the bonus marchers went through one afternoon, and where exactly “j-woke” radio broadcaster father coughlin figured into things. Is it “timely as ever” given revitalized national discussion surrounding militarized law enforcement? Yes, but that’s not why I read the damn thing, I just wanted to be transported back to the halcyon days of hobo encampments and rotgut whiskey, which this book does a fine job of sketching out for us. The boners, which unsurprisingly they got called by their detractors, should be remembered for their opposition to austerity, cross racial solidarity and inspiring strained allegorical readings of “King Kong.”

[Alger Smythe-Hopkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really excellent and detailed chronology of the Bonus Marchers, and the BEF in particular. That so large a protest, and one that had such lasting effects on American society, is now just sort of mentioned in passing during a high school history class is simply mind boggling.

I have long considered that the actual starting date of the Great Depression was not the market crash of 1929. That marks the start of the economic depression. The dispersion of the Bonus Army in 1932 instead marks the moment when the public acceptance of hands-off government and total Darwinian self-reliance that so typifies the 1920s collapsed into a stark realization that the government could, and perhaps should act to prevent suffering. This is the moment where the last hope of a quick fix and an immediate recovery finally surrendered to a long siege. When Hoover's government continued to deny veterans a fair wage for their time spent fighting WWI on what was essentially a technicality, and furthermore allowed those veterans to slowly starve and die in the shadow of the Capitol before violently evicting them, something changed deep within American society that redirected the role of government and its responsibilities to the public for the following sixty years.

Of the flaws in the book, I found the antics of the splinter communist affiliate reported in far more detail and given more prominence than it deserved. This includes the cover photograph and continues throughout the text, where they appear far more often than their numbers warranted. I suspect this might be a subaltern problem, where even though the Reds were only a few dozen in a sea of thousands, they had writers in their group, and journalists following them around, and the FBI, and the police. There is no shortage of information about their movements, so there is just more to report.

Similarly, we know about the movements of the Chief of DC Police, and his efforts to feed, house, and contain the swelling crowd. We know about Doug MacArthur, and Patton. We know about Commander White, who started the BEF movement and dreamed of making it his springboard to political power. Meanwhile the men of the camps appear in impressionistic glimpses taken and as anonymous bodies in a faceless mass heading from one location to another. Given these mens' fate of becoming the forgotten men of the 1930s, I found myself saddened that this moment that brought their suffering and desperation into such clear focus for everyone to see was not also an opportunity to rescue more of their individual stories.

[Justin · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s a shame that this is one of the few books that cover this period of American History. A few of the biggest problems I have with this book:

1. The authors appear to be on the defensive about the Communist element that was present throughout this entire occupation of Washington. When members of the march are confronted with accusations of being Communist, the author dispels them with the illogical argument that the said individual or individuals were decorated veterans, therefore not Communist. It is painful to have to write out the obvious: The decorated veteran(s) could also be Communist(s).

2. The first 1/3 of this book would appear to cover the march from the West Coast to Washington D.C. The only problem is that it only covered the story of one group (a few hundred). I’m sure it is intended to represent the hundreds of other groups that made similar journeys, but we are forced to assume a lot about thousands of other marchers using the standards, beliefs and makeup of one small group.

3. The authors openly admit that there were Communist groups in the city during these protests, that speeches were regularly given by Communist leaders and that Communists were involved in several, if not in all, of the confrontations with the police. However, the authors attempt to completely discredit and marginalize any concern shown by the Federal Government of a Communist uprising, either independent or in conjunction with the veterans.

4. Hoover gets a bad rap. He vetoed the Bonus Bills as hard as FDR did after him. It took overriding FDR’s veto YEARS later to actual pass the latest and greatest Bonus Bill.

5. And lastly, let’s not forget that three of the greatest military minds in history were on the opposite side of this and they thrived after this episode. They are known and studied for their decision making abilities. These are the same minds that won WWII. If this episode was as “embarrassing” as the authors described they would not have seen the military or political light of day.


It would be very telling to explore the other side to this story or at least examine the motivations of some of the other groups from around the country that made their way to Washington D.C.

[Al · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you saw the recent PBS documentary "The Roosevelts," you may have been jarred by the disturbing images of the shanty towns of poor WWI veterans camped in Washington, D.C. with hopes of getting financial assistance passed by Congress. Under Herbert Hoover's Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur, they were gassed, torched and driven out of town in a case of overreaction that remains horrifying to this day. Paul Dickson (the great baseball historian) and Thomas B. Allen lend their considerable skills at a even-handed and thorough review of one of the less proud moments in American history. They rightly correct misconceptions about the largely non-violent protest that left a final black mark on Hoover's legacy. FDR's image doesn't escape unscathed either with a Katrina-like disaster in which over 400 WWI vets sent to a highway work camp in the Florida Keys were killed in a powerful hurricane due to government failure to get them evacuated in time. The authors make a successful case that the later highly successful GI Bill would not have occurred had it not been for the political impact of the earlier work of the Bonus marchers. Highly recommended.

[Bookmarks Magazine]

The Bonus Army is a feat of research and analysis-a thoughtful, strong argument that these marches were among the most important demonstrations of the 20th century. Dickson and Allen speculate about why the episode is not more widely known. They cite as possible reasons the encampment's integration in segregated Washington, the ease with which the marchers could be dismissed as Communists, and the fact that no political party stood to gain from the movement's success or failure. Some critics suggest that the authors failed to prove any of these theories or provide any convincing reasons for the Bonus Army's eventual failure. But, Dickson and Allen do paint moving, harrowing portraits of individuals' plights and make clear how the corps' ordeal laid the groundwork for the legislation that became the G.I. Bill of Rights.

This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.

[Harvey Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting read, in that it covers history of the taking care of American service veterans that has not been widely passed down through the years. The WWI vets got really substandard pay for battlefield service, and not a lot of help when they got home. Then the depression hit, and prohibition, and there was a mass of veterans who were penniless, and without homes in many cases.

By banding together, traveling to Washington D.C., and camping there protesting, after several years with starts and stops, they finally got the U.S. Congress to grant a veterans bonus to the "Bonus Expeditionary Army" as they were given to calling themselves.

This WWI action then led to the WWII G.I. Bill of Rights that tried to help veterans after that war, and subsequent wars since.

The B.E.F., by occupying Washing D.C. and demanding fairness got it for all veterans since.

[Heather G]

Very Engrossing

My husband is a vet from the recent war in Iraq so this book was especially interesting to me. I'm ashamed to say I didn't know much about the WWI bonus marchers before reading this book and didn't even know this happened before buying this book. Now I want to read more, not because this book wasn't thorough but because it was so fascinating I want to study it from different perspectives and learn all I can about it.

[Rocky · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little disappointing because of it's uneven handling of some of the root causes of the conflicts that arose, and a little too dismissive of the economic realities of the time period. Give FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt a little too much credit, and Hoover a little too much blame...and someone does not answer the question of how MacArthur came out of this with so little damage.

[Dorf · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as in-depth as one might like for a piece of history that included such a wide variety of Americans, but it's informative and readable. Hard to believe these events took place in the USA.

[Martin Bihl · Rating 3 out of 5]

to read my review, please visit theagencyreview.wordpress.com/bonus-army

[David Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is one great reason why I love non-fiction. You just couldn't make this up. An incredible story, meticulously researched and well written.