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History repeats itself??
Bonus ArmyThe U.S. Army intervenes
On the 28th of July 1932, Attorney General Mitchell ordered the police evacuation of the Bonus Army veterans, who resisted; the police shot at them, and killed two. When told of the killings, President Hoover ordered the U.S. Army to effect the evacuation of the Bonus Army from Washington, D.C.
At 4:45 p.m., commanded by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the 12th Infantry Regiment, Fort Howard, Maryland, and the 3rd Cavalry Regiment, supported with six battle tanks commanded by Maj. George S. Patton, Fort Myer, Virginia, formed in Pennsylvania Avenue while thousands of Civil Service employees left work to line the street and watch the U.S. Army attack its own veterans. The Bonus Marchers, believing the display was in their honour, cheered the troops until Maj. Patton charged the cavalry against them — to which action the Civil Service employee spectators yelled: "Shame! Shame!" against the charging cavalry.
After the cavalry charge, infantry, with fixed bayonets and adamsite gas, entered the Bonus Army camps, evicting veterans, families, and camp followers. The veterans fled across the Anacostia River, to their largest camp; President Hoover ordered the Army assault stopped, however, Gen. MacArthur—feeling this free-speech exercise was a Communist attempt at overthrowing the U.S. Government—ignored the President and re-attacked. Hundreds of veterans were injured, several were killed — including William Hushka and Eric Carlson; a veteran's wife miscarried; and many other veterans were hurt. The sight of armed U.S. Army soldiers attacking poor American veterans of the recent Great War later prompted formal veteran relief funds, and, eventually, establishment of the Veterans Administration. (Bonus Army encamped in 1932; Veterans Administration had already been established in 1930.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veterans_Administration#History) As member of Gen. MacArthur's staff, Maj. Dwight D. Eisenhower had strong reservations about routing the anti-Bonus Army.
The Posse Comitatus Act — forbidding civilian police work by the U.S. military — did not apply to Washington, D.C., because it is the federal district directly governed by the U.S. Congress (U.S. Constitution, Article I. Section 8. Clause 17). The exemption was created because of an earlier "Bonus March". In 1781, most of the Continental Army was demobilised without pay, two years later, in 1783, hundreds of Pennsylvania war veterans marched on Philadelphia, surrounded the State House wherein Congress was in session, and demanded their pay. The U.S. Congress fled to Princeton, New Jersey, and, several weeks later, the U.S. Army expelled the war veterans back to home, out of the national capital.
Officially, the only deaths that did occur were two veterans shot by the police before the army intervened. An infant, Bernard Myers, later died in the hospital after the incident but reports indicated the death was not caused by the evacuation of the BEF.
The story of "42nd Street" begins in late summer, 1932. When Abner Dillon and Dorothy Brock are discussing her new contract for "Pretty Lady," there's a brief screenshot of the contract itself. Only lasting a few seconds, through the magic of freeze framing via DVD digital imaging, the top part of the contract can be read by a viewer. Dorothy Brock's contract with Jones & Barry is dated August 29th, 1932. That minor fact places the time of this fictional masterpiece squarely in the event-stream of 1932, the time that William Manchester calls "Rock Bottom". Barely a month before, at about 11:00 in the morning of July 28th, a former Brigadier General named Pelham D. Glassford -- who was now the Chief of Police in the District of Columbia -- took on the onerous duty of rousting the squatters of the Bonus Army. Glassford, who had made no secret of his compassion for the unemployed veterans, was in an absolutely untenable position. The Attorney General, William D. Mitchell, had ordered the BEF to be moved off of government property, despite the fact that some of the abandoned and dishevelled buildings and lots occupied by the veterans had only recently been purchased by the federal government. The problem was acute. The Bonus Army was there and they had nowhere else to go, for there were fifteen million people unemployed in the States, and more than two million were homeless and wandering. At 10:00 AM Treasury Agents went to bonus marchers on Third at Pennsylvania and told them to leave immediately. Then they left and the bonus marchers stayed. So Glassford formed up his police detachment and began clearing some of the abandoned buildings at about 11:00 AM, on a typically hot and humid D.C. summer day. There were no incidents to begin with, according to Manchester, who writes on the eviction of the Bonus Army with great passion. But by the early afternoon, the greater part of the Bonus Army moved to cross the Eleventh Street bridge from Anacostia, where they had made a huge campground with ramshackle huts and tents. When the police tried to raise the bridge, they found that they were too late, and the surge of ragged veterans became a general melee'. Bricks were tossed and curses exchanged and the melee' became a riot. In one desperate moment the police officers opened fire on the Bonus men. Eric Carlson, a disabled veteran from Oakland, California, was "mortally wounded." William Hrushka, a butcher, of Chicago and the 41st Infantry was shot dead, a bullet to his heart. Within minutes the word of this rioting and bloodshed was communicated to Herbert Hoover. He was having lunch when he heard the news. As Manchester relates it, "the President told Secretary of War Patrick J. Hurley to use troops" against the Bonus marchers. Hurley communicated this order to the Chief of Staff for the Army, and his principal assistant. In the summer of 1932, that was General Douglas MacArthur and one Dwight David Eisenhower, a Major. There were, naturally, some delays in getting things organized, not the least of which were caused by the insistence of MacArthur that armored tanks be brought over with the infantry from Fort Myer. The great general proposed to use tanks and bayonets against unemployed veterans, many of whom were camped in shantytown conditions with their children and wives. The only shots fired thus far had been fired by policemen, and the men killed were Bonus marchers. By late in the afternoon of this sweltering July day, MacArthur and Eisenhower were in uniform and the troops were assembling. Among the detachments were troopers from the 3rd Cavalry, under the command of Major George S. Patton. They advanced with sabres drawn, and the column following them included machine guns and elements of the 12th Infantry and the 13th Engineers. "The operation was the worst-timed in MacArthur's career. Fifteen minutes earlier [ 4:30 PM ], the District's civil service workers had begun pouring into the streets, their day's work done." As Manchester describes it, "twenty thousand of them were massed on the sidewalks across from the bewildered, disorganized veterans. Someone was going to get hurt if the cavalry commander didn't watch out". In an incredible moment of irony, the Bonus marchers first applauded the arrival of Patton's 3rd Cavalry troopers, thinking that the soldiers had been ordered to parade for their benefit. They and the thousands of workers watching were badly disillusioned within minutes. Without "the slightest warning," as reported by J.F. Essary of the Baltimore Sun, the troopers charged into the crowd, which meant that both men and women were "ridden down indiscriminately". George Patton liked action and he wasn't ashamed to see his troopers ride down the innocent bystanders ... including U.S. Senator Hiram Bingham of Connecticut. MacArthur was similarly inclined to take drastic measures. Three thousand gas grenades had been provided to the infantrymen and they used them without hesitation or provocation. Within a few hours most of the Bonus marchers had recrossed the bridge to Anacostia and the main encampment. Herbert Hoover then sent a message to Douglas MacArthur instructing, forbidding, the deployment of any troops across the Eleventh Street bridge "into the largest encampment of the veterans". MacArthur chose to ignore this direct order and marched his soldiers, with Dwight Eisenhower by his side, over to Anacostia and into the campgrounds. "The Anacostia camp was a jumble of packing crates, fruit crates, chicken coops, burlap and tar-paper shacks, tents", writes Manchester. "It didn't seem possible that anyone could have become attached to so preposterous an array of junk, but it was the only home the BEF families had." By 10:00 PM the infantry was in the camp and they routed the Bonus Army and their children with their tear gas bombs. The vegetable gardens planted by the homeless veterans were trampled and by 10:30 most of the shacks and tents were a-blaze. The bravado of MacArthur's troops was considerable. A seven-year old boy was bayonetted in the leg for trying to save his pet rabbit and more than a hundred other casualties were reported. Two infants died of asphyxiation from the irritating gas. The final agonizing irony of this scene from Dante's Inferno came at about 11:15. "Major George S. Patton, Jr. [led] his cavalrymen in a final destructive charge. Among the ragged bonus marchers routed by their sabers was Joseph T. Angelino," notes Manchester, "who, on September 26, 1918, had won the Distinguished Service Cross in the Argonne Forest for saving the life of a young officer named George S. Patton, Jr." MacArthur compounded the tragedy in the hours and days after the Bonus Army was routed. He never mentioned Hoover's direct orders not to cross the Eleventh Street bridge and instead, praised the President for reacting to "a very grave situation". Later he said that the Bonus marchers were "insurrectionists". He was quoted as maintaining that ... "if there was one man in ten in that group who is a veteran it would surprise me." Herbert Hoover and his aides made the situation even worse by laying down an official line that the Bonus Expeditionary Force was under the leadership of communists and criminals. And that there were not that many veterans among them. A version told that survivers werw carried to the swamps by the army. Separated in groups of children, women and men. And then shoot by the soldiers, beginning with children, women, and at last place veterans themself. Bodies were left on the ground. This action was led by Patton.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army
