Video: 'The March of the Bonus Army' (Bonus Marchers evicted at 15:57)
(Thursday, July 28, 1932, the U.S. Army attack began at 4:45 p.m. EDT, during the Great Depression) — President Herbert Hoover today ordered the U.S. Army, under General Douglas MacArthur, to forcibly evict the “Bonus Army,” tens of thousands of World War I veterans who, desperate for financial assistance, had come to Washington to lobby Congress to accelerate the year when they would be eligible for their cash bonuses.
Initially, U.S. Attorney General William Mitchell had ordered the veterans and their families removed from government property, but when the veterans resisted the D.C. police at their encampment on the banks of the Anacostia River, shots were fired. Two veterans were wounded in the melee and later died.
When told of the violence, President Herbert Hoover ordered the army to clear the veterans’ campsite.
Under the command of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the Army chief of staff, infantry, and cavalry regiments, including six battle tanks, formed on Pennsylvania Avenue. The veterans, who thought the troops were marching to honor them, cheered until Maj. George Patton ordered the cavalry to charge them with fixed bayonets and tear gas. Some civil servants, who had left work to watch, cried: “Shame! Shame.”
Video: '28th July 1932: Bonus Marchers forcibly evicted from Washington D.C. by the Army'
As the veterans fled across the Anacostia to their campsite, Hoover ordered troops to stop the assault. But MacArthur ignored the president’s instructions and ordered a fresh attack.
The Bonus Army marchers were evicted, along with their wives and children. Their shelters and belongings were burned. Fifty-five veterans were injured and 135 arrested.
At the time, Maj. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the nation’s president from 1953 to 1961, was an aide to MacArthur. “I told that dumb son-of-a-bitch not to go down there,” Eisenhower said later. “I told him it was no place for the chief of staff.”
Both Hoover and MacArthur were heavily criticized by the American public for the way they dealt with the veterans, contributing to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s landslide victory in the presidential election later that year.
