The Bonus Army : An American Epic [Hardcover]

Paul Dickson (Author), Thomas B. Allen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 2004

In the summer of 1932, at the height of the Depression, some forty-five thousand veterans of World War I descended on Washington, D.C., from all over the country to demand the bonus promised them eight years earlier for their wartime service. They lived in shantytowns, white and black together, and for two months they protested and rallied for their cause—an action that would have a profound effect on American history.

President Herbert Hoover, Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur, and others feared the protesters would turn violent after the Senate defeated the "bonus bill" that the House had passed. On July 28, 1932, tanks rolled through the streets as MacArthur's troops evicted the bonus marchers: Newspapers and newsreels showed graphic images of American soldiers driving out their former comrades in arms. Democratic candidate, Franklin Roosevelt, in a critical contest with Hoover, upon reading newspaper accounts of the eviction said to an adviser, "This will elect me," though bonus armies would plague him in each of his first three years.

Through seminal research, including interviews with the last surviving witnesses, Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen tell the full and dramatic story of the Bonus Army and of the many celebrated figures involved in it: Evalyn Walsh McLean, the owner of the hope diamond, sided with the marchers; Roy Wilkins saw the model for racial integration here; J. Edgar Hoover built his reputation against the Bonus Army radicals; a young Gore Vidal witnessed the crisis while John dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson, and Sinclair Lewis wrote about it. Dickson and Allen also recover the voices of ordinary men who dared tilt at powerful injustice, and who ultimately transformed the nation: The march inspired Congress to pass the G. I. 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. The Bonus Army is an epic story in the saga of our country.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Before the Million Man March, the Million Mom March or Martin Luther King, Jr.'s March on Washington, there was the Bonus Expeditionary Force (BEF): 45,000 WWI vets who, in 1932, swarmed Washington, D.C., in freight cars, crank-start jalopies, on motorcycles and even on foot from as far away as Portland, Ore., to demand payment of the bonus promised them at the end of the war. As Dickson and Allen show throughout this empathetic and well-researched volume, the BEF meant different things to a number of groups vying for power in the tumultuous political climate of the early '30s. Communist organizers saw the veterans as the shock troops of the emerging "American Soviet Government"; the Hoover administration viewed them as mostly "ex-convicts, persons with criminal records, radicals, and non-servicemen" trying to strong-arm the government; and corporate America saw them as competition for dwindling government aid money. To most Americans, however, they were underdogs fighting the government and the corporate corruption that, in their minds, was responsible for the Depression. The book moves beyond these broad generalizations to find the personal stories of the march, fleshing out both minor and major players surrounding the BEF. And in describing the use of tanks, bayonets and tear gas to expel the unarmed vets and their families from Washington-as well as the deadly mistreatment of BEF members in government work camps after the march-Dickson and Allen highlight the sacrifices these women and men made on our own soil to win fair treatment for veterans of future wars. Their important and moving work will appeal to both professional historians and casual readers interested in the history of America's changing attitudes towards its soldiers.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From 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.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Walker & Company; Original edition (December 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802714404
• ISBN-13: 978-0802714404
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,100,244 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Compelling Book July 6, 2005

By David Montgomery

Format:Hardcover

Allen and Dickson have written a very compelling book on the history of the Bonus Army, veterans from World War I who converged on Washington in 1932 and subsequent years to demand their promised payment known as the "bonus". The authors give us a good background as to who some of these veterans were, what conditions were like in the country during the years of the First World War and the next two decades after that, who some of the major players were in the debates and issues concerning the Bonus Army and their time in the nation's capital, and lastly how our nation would treat veterans of future wars.

This book details some of the men who made up the bonus army and where they came from in their move towards the nation's capital, with special emphasis on Walter Waters and his group of men from Portland and their journey eastwards. In addition to these Bonus marchers we learn of Pelham Glassford, the Washington D.C. Police Chief who oversaw the gathering veterans, citizens and groups who gave aid to the veterans on their journey to Washington and while they stayed in the city, politicians like Representative Wright Patman who became a leading advocate for the veterans in the halls of Congress, and of course other political and military figures who would play crucial roles in the issues and events surrounding the Bonus Army.

We also learn of how America perceived these veterans as they marched towards Washington and during their stay there. One of the constant worries of some in power at the time, those in the Hoover Administration, the Congress, and the military was the threat of communism, i.e. the Red Scare. Some believed many of these veterans weren't real veterans, believing many had criminal backgrounds and held communist views who wanted nothing less than to incite violence in the nation's capitol or even overthrow the U.S. Government. These worries were vastly over exaggerated as there were very few communists in this group of veterans, and those that were had little or no influence. These were loyal Americans who had fallen on hard times and needed and deserved some help from their government.

The events of the end of July 1932 have garnered the most attention and left the most indelible impressions on the minds of those who have any knowledge of the Bonus Army. This was when the military was called out to disperse the veterans who had encamped in vacant city buildings as well as the larger concentration of veterans who had gathered at sites like Camp Marks on the Anacostia River.The use of force to disperse the Bonus marchers became a damaging symbol that left a stain on the Hoover Administration as well as the reputation of Gen. Douglas MacArthur who had led the effort to rid the city of these veterans. The authors of this book are fair in spreading blame and correcting some myths that had developed after these events, for example there were not upwards of 100 casualties in this event, which is detailed in one of the appendices at the end of the book.

Even FDR did not support the bonus payment, but his veto was overridden by both houses of Congress in 1936, thus the bonus became a reality. But the real accomplishment, as the authors mentioned, was the piece of legislation known as the GI Bill passed in 1944, helping veterans from the Second World War to secure the needed and well-deserved assistance from the federal government to help them fit back into civilian life. As the authors believe, the Bonus Army of 1932 and those that followed had led the way in securing even greater promises for future veterans who deserved and still deserve the thanks from a grateful nation. Allen and Dickson are to be commended for writing this compelling and important book on an often all too summarized period in American history.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An Important Book about American Veterans January 17, 2005

By William Young

Format:Hardcover

The Bonus Army: An American Epic is a compelling historical narrative that reveals how a political issue during the Great Depression became part of a much larger American story. In 1932, 45,000 World War I veterans marched on Washington and built shantytowns in the city in order to lobby Congress for a wartime service bonus which they had been promised but would not be paid until 1945. Authors Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen explain the political dynamics that led Herbert Hoover to send troops with bayonets and tear gas (led by General Douglas MacArthur) to destroy the shacks and drive the veterans out of Washington. Government officials and military officers were so concerned that the protest was being infiltrated by communist and fascist elements that they ignored the glaring reality that most of the vets had come to seek relief from homelessness, unemployment, hunger, and desperation. The authors document how the routing of the vets in 1932 contributed to Hoover's defeat by Franklin Roosevelt later that year and ultimately to the passage of the G.I. Bill in 1944.

The Bonus Army really is a story about attitudes toward American veterans during the period between the end of World War I and the latter stages of World War II. At the beginning of one of the chapters, the authors include the H.L. Mencken quote, "In the sad aftermath that always follows a great war there is nothing sadder than the surprise of the returned soldiers when they discover that they are regarded generally as public nuisances, and not too honest." The narrative of the authors is filled with examples of how the patriotic "support our troops" attitude during World War I was forgotten when the troops returned home and tried to put their lives back together. Neither the Republican Hoover nor the Democrat Roosevelt displayed much sympathy for the veterans' plight. Dickson and Allen describe other political obstacles faced by the vets, including racist politicians who preferred to deprive white veterans of help if the same assistance would be given to blacks, and elitist university presidents who worried that providing tuition assistance to vets would compromise the standards of the American higher education system.

The details presented in The Bonus Army reveal the roots of some of the subsequent political events of the 20th Century and mirror many conditions at the beginning of the 21st Century. As America now awaits the return of hundreds of thousands of new veterans from the Iraq War, the gripping and tragic story told by Dickson and Allen should serve as a warning about what our current troops might encounter when they arrive home.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Bonus Army tells story of forgotten heroes January 29, 2005

By Phillip A. Drye

Format:Hardcover

In The Bonus Army: An American Epic, Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen have unearthed the sad but fascinating story of the Bonus marchers, a ragtag, determined group of veterans who changed the face of the United States.

When these men were young, they helped win World War I and a grateful nation promised to make their retirement years a little easier by paying them a bonus of a dollar a day for every day of service ($1.25 for overseas service) payable in 1945. When the Great Depression left thousands of them destitute, however, the vets banded together and asked their government to help them by paying the bonus immediately. But after the Senate refused to authorize payment, they were contemptuously chased out of Washington, D.C. by General Douglas MacArthur.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave many of the vets jobs, including about 600 who were sent to work camps in the isolated Florida Keys in 1935. There, administrators who were ignorant of the late summer dangers in that part of the world left the vets unprotected to face the most powerful hurricane ever to strike the U.S. More than 250 were killed, and the survivors were forgotten. My book, Storm of the Century: The Labor Day hurricane of 1935 (National Geographic Books, 2002, paperback 2003), also tells the story of this tragedy.

In their fine narrative, Dickson and Allen carefully and vividly explain how these woebegone men did a second noble service for their nation after their military service. The Bonus marchers called attention to the often-shabby treatment of veterans and insisted that former members of the armed services be treated with the respect they deserve. And they laid the foundations for the creation of today's prosperous American middle class by prompting political leaders to enact programs ensuring better treatment of vets returning from World War II. Among the vets' programs was the GI Bill of Rights, which put a college education within reach of anyone who had served honorably in the armed forces.

The men and women returning from military service in Iraq will be treated better than the vets who returned from Europe in 1919, and this latest generation of American vets will have the Bonus Army to thank for that. With The Bonus Army: An American Epic, Dickson and Allen remind us of shameful events in American history - the eviction of the vets from Washington and the needless deaths in the Keys - and give long overdue credit for the contribution these men made to our way of life.