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    Council Member TheCurmudgeon's Avatar
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    Exclamation The Bonus Army

    In this period where the government is curtailing the benefits they promised their military members it is good to remember how the heroes of the WWII handled complaints from veterans:

    Few images from the Great Depression are more indelible than the rout of the Bonus Marchers. At the time, the sight of the federal government turning on its own citizens -- veterans, no less -- raised doubts about the fate of the republic. It still has the power to shock decades later.

    From the start, 1932 promised to be a difficult year for the country, as the Depression deepened and frustrations mounted. In December of 1931, there was a small, communist-led hunger march on Washington; a few weeks later, a Pittsburgh priest led an army of 12,000 jobless men there to agitate for unemployment legislation. In March, a riot at Ford's River Rouge plant in Michigan left four dead and over fifty wounded. Thus, when a band of jobless veterans, led by a former cannery worker named Walter W. Walters, began arriving in the capital in May, tensions were high. Calling themselves the "Bonus Expeditionary Forces," they demanded early payment of a bonus Congress had promised them for their service in World War I.

    ...


    Conspicuously led by [then Army Chief of Staff] MacArthur, Army troops (including Major George S. Patton, Jr.) formed infantry cordons and began pushing the veterans out, destroying their makeshift camps as they went. Although no weapons were fired, cavalry advanced with swords drawn, and some blood was shed. By nightfall, hundreds had been injured by gas (including a baby who died), bricks, clubs, bayonets, and sabers."
    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/macarth...ndeAMEX89.html

    Perhaps the lesson to be drawn is that those still in the military have different priorities than those who have already left active duty. Food for thought.


    As an aside, perhaps McAuthur's knack for insubordination towards his civilian masters could be seen decades before he was relieved in Korea:

    Next came the most controversial moment in the whole affair -- a moment that directly involved General MacArthur. Secretary of War Hurley twice sent orders to MacArthur indicating that the President, worried that the government reaction might look overly harsh, did not wish the Army to pursue the Bonus Marchers across the bridge into their main encampment on the other side of the Anacostia River. But MacArthur, according to his aide Dwight Eisenhower, "said he was too busy," did not want to be "bothered by people coming down and pretending to bring orders," and sent his men across the bridge anyway ...
    Last edited by TheCurmudgeon; 01-03-2014 at 01:56 PM.
    "I can change almost anything ... but I can't change human nature."

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