Citation Needed - Bonus Army

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

The Bonus Army was a group of 43,000 demonstrators – 17,000 veterans of U.S. involvement in World War I, their families, and affiliated groups – who gathered in Washington, D.C., in mid-1932 to demand early cash redemption of their service bonus certificates. Organizers called the demonstrators the Bonus Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.), to echo the name of World War I's American Expeditionary Forces, while the media referred to them as the "Bonus Army" or "Bonus Marchers". The demonstrators were led by Walter W. Waters, a former sergeant.

Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, a podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia, and pretend we're experts. This is the internet, and that's how it works now. I'm Heath, and I'll be leading this military operation. My call sign is... call sign, obviously. And I'm joined by the usual squadron. First up, we have Tom, call sign gravy seal, and Noah, call sign Marine coronary. Gravy seal, that's a call sign

I wasn't just given Heath, but I earned. I guess somber fi. Somber fi. And we also have Eli, call sign Fly B.S., and Cecil something battalion. Amazing. To be untrue? To be untrue? Keith, I'm going to boop your nose here.

We separately wrote the exact same joke on the exact same episode. 100% cheers to you, my friend. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers to you, Cecil. All right, Noah, what person, place, thing, concept, phenomenon, or event are we gonna be talking about today? Today we're talking about the bonus army. All right, and why did you pick that topic? Because we record these episodes in advance, Heath, and by the time this airs, Trump will have been president for like a week and a half. By then, I feel like that time the president

ordered the army to clear out peaceful protesters with chemical weapons and tanks has a really solid shot of being topical at that point. Yeah. You do run the risk of the mutants who make up our next generation of listeners not knowing what a president was. So it's tough, right?

Oh man. Jesus. All right. So what was the bonus army? It was a group of protesters with a legitimate grievance against the government, forced to wallow in squalid conditions for weeks and weeks before being forcibly ousted at gunpoint. Okay. Kind of like Occupy Wall Street, but like way better organized. Yeah, a lot like that. Yeah.

So now in defense of the government, nobody was killed in this action. Or I'm sorry, only one person was killed. It was a 12 week old baby, but it was already pretty fucked up. It was all fucked up already, though. That being said, anytime the president directly orders cavalry and tanks to march against American citizens and his chief of goddamn staff personally commands them and they've committed no crimes, it's definitely worth a few pages in the history books. I believe we actually now call that a day of love, Noah.

Yeah. That's what it says in the pardons. Those people are all pardoned now. So good. That's what it says in the pardons. Yeah, so people are all pardoned. Yeah, so good in the interest of context and in the interest of making the word count, we're going to start with the bonuses themselves. Since the very beginning, war bonuses were a thing in the US military. They weren't going to be a thing. But then George Washington had a major conversion on the issue after a mass desertion at Valley

Forge. But the idea was that in addition to whatever pay the soldiers were getting for being soldiers, at the end of the war they deserved a bonus in line with how much more money they would have made had they not been in the army the whole time. Basically, it's a way to defer the payment to soldiers until after the war, which is a great deal for the government because A, countries at war are cash-strapped, B, you might not win the war and you don't have to pay them and C soldiers die a lot so any deferment of payment works out great for the people paying the checks okay feels

like you're setting up a bunch of murders there at the end you know what I'm saying like I've alas wars almost done just one last thing just need you to head over to to Eurasia in the kayaks? You gotta go. You gotta go. Look, guys, I know we're having a good time with this barbaric remnant of history, but is it really any crueler than promising an 18-year-old with PTSD that you're gonna pay for his college education?

Oh, no, no, this was the better, right? Yeah, these are the good old days. So these bonuses led to unrest pretty much right away. The Continental Army was demobilized in 1781 and by 1783 veterans were marching on the Capitol and surrounding the state house to demand back pay. This was back when Congress of course met in Princeton, New Jersey. And if you're thinking to yourself, but no, Congress started out meeting in Philadelphia and then went on to DC. There was never a point where they met in Jersey. You're underestimating how scared they were of these veterans

The motherfuckers fled from Philadelphia to Jersey for several weeks until the marchers were pushed out by the Continental Army's replacement the US Army Yeah Jersey's actually where Ted Cruz ran to during January 6 Okay, holly was too fast. Yeah It was all right. Okay. Holly was too fast. Yeah. No, of course, the early government was cash poor, but they were also land rich.

So at first, a lot of the bonus came in the form of a land grant. A Continental Army private, for example, got a bonus of $80. That's about two grand in today's money. Not a lot, but he also got 100 acres of arable land, which is 100 acres of arable land in today's land in today's land. That's fucking huge. But it also served Congress's other purposes of going on and populating all this land they were trying to run the natives out of. So in 1855, they actually increased the land grant to a hundred and sixty acres. And that applied to anybody

who'd served them in the military for at least 14 days or Small any time whatsoever in battle. Okay, just lots of sprained ankles right when the battle started like every time You out of the battle for that though Everybody's rolling around like a soccer player got slide So fun fact this land grant is the basis of a ton of sovereign citizen bullshit. Right. So from what I understand, and I don't, is it's insane. The reason people are corporations and laws are secretly military laws is that this bonus army land grant secretly owes the entirety of the U.S. to the military.

And so that's why that doesn't make any sense at all. Nope Nope nothing Of course eventually you start to run out of land by 1860 the government had given out some 73 and a half million acres of land like this. A full 40% of the arable land in Tennessee was accounted for by these land grants, which sounds way higher than it is given how little of Tennessee is arable, but still it's a lot. In 1860, the government decided because of that to switch to a cash only

bonus system, and after the Spanish-American War, they switched to a you'll get fuck all and you'll like it system everyone just wiping their brow quietly saying thanks they're not getting cursed with land in Tennessee thank goodness but but World War one was a much more brutal conflict in the Spanish American war why for the American half of that war anyway and it touched far more American lives. Nobody alive at the time could suffer under the illusion that glory was sufficient payment for the sacrifice that those veterans had made. So the government gave them 60 bucks. Now, like that's, yes, it's worth a thousand dollars in today's money, but still, that is an insultingly small sum of money to offer as a bonus for World

War I. So veterans demanded more. The American Legion was created the year after that war ended largely to advocate for better treatment and compensation for veterans of that conflict. And then it quickly turned into a bar that smells like mothballs and spilled Miller Lite. Yeah, well yeah, that was inevitable. But it is a fitting reminder that there's actually

no group of Americans that those in power won't fuck over and ignore until they organize, including literally the war heroes they pretend to laud. Yeah. Well, and also let's not forget that a lot of those heroes were only heroes because they got drafted. So they heroically had no choice. So like I think being press ganged into trench warfare deserves more than

like a Starbucks gift card or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Well, well, so did they, Tom. And by 1924, there was enough political pressure to that end to convince Congress to pass a bill granting larger bonuses to World War I vets. But then President Calvin Coolidge vetoed it. Boo. President Calvin Coolidge vetoed it. Boo! Yeah, right? Saying, quote, patriotism bought and paid for is not patriotism, end quote. But ultimately, Congress overrode his veto and passed the World War Adjusted Compensation Act, which would offer reasonable bonuses to the tune of 10 grand in today's money, eventually.

Right? So they'd give the doughboys their bonuses, but in the form of a certificate of service that would mature 20 years later. Wow. Jesus Christ. You also get a carton of Lucky Strikes. Enjoy those. Keep getting those for sure. Also a non-fungible wooden nickel. Here it is behind your ears.

Yeah. Now, to be fair to the government, the adjusted value of the bonuses that we're talking about here is $65 billion. The government didn't just have an extra $65 billion laying around. And back then, they actually had to have the money to some degree to pay for their shit. So they actually did need time to collect these funds. Plus, the veterans were allowed to borrow up to 22% of the certificate's value from the fund

that it would eventually be paid through. So there was an immediate payout and a significant one. So most of the vets begrudgingly accepted that compromise and collected their certificates. But then, along came the Great Depression. Yeah, the US government is that buddy who was totally gonna pay you back, but then, but then his mom's dog died

and he just can't right now, okay? He can't, he loved that dog. Hey, it was a monkey, Eli, and I'll pay you back after the factor check, please. Jeez. All right, so now, when the Depression hit, Congress did up the amount that you could borrow from the fund to 50%.

And there was a lot of support in Congress for just allowing them to redeem the certificates early. But by then, Herbert Hoover was president and he was physically incapable of making a good decision. He argued that paying the bonuses off early would force the government to raise taxes, which would stifle the recovery that already wasn't happening. Better idea. How about we give all the certificates to really rich people, and then all that money will just eventually trickle down, what do you say?

There you go. Right. Found another wooden nickel behind your ear. Salary worker. I love how there's a debate here about how much of their own money people should be allowed to borrow. Yeah.

What the fuck is wrong with us? What is that? So along comes former army sergeant Walter W. Waters, a man so influential that they would eventually name the worldwide web after him. So WWW was a perpetually out of work veteran. Trip dubs. Fuck yeah. The trip dubs. Hextrupil you there.

He was an out of work veteran who kept running into other perpetually out of work veterans. So he got together with like 400 other guys and they decided to head towards Washington, DC and demand full payment of their bonuses. And crucially, they were starting from Portland, Oregon. So their group had a lot of time to pick up other perpetually out of work veterans along the way. By the time they reached DC, their numbers were in the thousands. And then word got around that thousands of marchers were descending on Washington to get their bonuses. So those numbers swelled to the tens of thousands. Yeah. And all of them were sporting, I survived the mustard gas and all I got was this lousy

war bond t-shirt. So tens of thousands of angry veterans marched through DC, they yell at the Capitol building a bunch and nothing happens. Congress apparently takes a weighted out approach. They've actually been doing that since Obama's first term too. Haven't they? Right? Now, but these haven't they? Right now. But these veterans, they're all unemployed.

They're all homeless. So they just fucking stayed. They found a big open area on the Anacostia Flats that the police agreed to kind of look the other way about. And they set up a Hooverville, a makeshift town built from whatever cardboard boxes and scrap tin

they could find in nearby dumps. As you can imagine, this impromptu shanty town was disgusting. The area it was in was a swampy, muddy, flat area to begin with, and that's before you stick 30,000 people into it with no running water. That being said, the town was, by all accounts, well-disciplined. The veterans didn't have much else to do, so they did public works. They built sanitation facilities, maintained roads, kept the mud clean, and they policed the area heavily. Now, Waters, who just sort of fell into the leadership role by accident,

he knew that their whole ploy relied on public support and nothing was going to rob them of public support quicker than stories of drunken debauchery at the camp. Cool. Yeah. So pretty much nothing likeuchery at the camp. Cool. Yeah. So pretty much nothing like Occupy Wall Street. Really? This is where it diverges. Yeah.

They also wouldn't like communists in. And if you're wondering where these people's families were, well, they were there in the Shantytown. They even set up makeshift schools and the Salvation Army set up a library and a mail facility so that people living at the camp could receive mail. And in order to live in the camp, you had to prove that you were a veteran that was honorably discharged from the US military. And to their credit, they did a commendable job keeping the place peaceful. Nice. The DC police, not so much. Okay. Well, this time,

I think I want them to stop the steel and storm the capital like I really do See how it goes after a quick break or something related Sir? Yes, Private? How are things down at the camp? They are too good, sir. Too good? I see a bunch of vagabonds. How can they be too good? Well, sir, they've kept themselves in check. You see, they've maintained their own roads, even built in sanitation.

Not much mucking about for us to jump in and condemn them for. But how exactly have they done that? I don't know, sir. They just did it. But they have no mayor, no town council, no alderman. How have they made policy and applied it? Again, sir, they just, apparently they just do things. But if people can just do things and take care of each other, that would make the government largely unnecessary,

which it is not. Definitely not, sir, not, no. Governments build roads and, and schools. That's right. And, and you can't, you can't do those things without a government. No, no, you, you can't. We backed into anarchy again, didn't we? We did, sir.

I'll, I'll find us a minority to kill. Yes. Thanks. And do please hurry. And we're back. When we left off, an extremely ethical protest was happening. So time for the cops to yell, stop resisting and do some murders. What's that? Something like what I just said? That's it. That's it. Spoilers.

Heath, I guess we can close now. You want to do the quiz too? Yeah. Okay. So to understand the story, you have to realize that almost everybody is on the side of the bonus army. Everybody in the country agrees that World War I veterans got fucked. Everybody agrees that everybody needs every penny they can possibly get at the height of the depression. So dangling these vouchers worth thousands of dollars in front of broke ass starving people who are half tempted to burn them for warmth seemed particularly cruel. The police are on their side, the the the army's on their side. The camp in fact was

named Camp Marx after a friendly police captain who helped coordinate food deliveries for the residents. And those food deliveries, the supplies, came in the form of donations from all over the country from people sympathetic to their cause. Could you imagine if you protested our current government with a camp that even remotely sounded like Marx? Holy shit. Oh, see, so there's so much awesome stuff about communists trying to infiltrate this camp that I wanted to fit in and there wasn't room for.

I could almost do another essay on that. It's really fascinating shit. But okay, so everybody- You start seizing the means of the soup that's coming in for free. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What?

Not season, seize in. So, but okay, at least one person though had no sympathy for the Bonas Army whatsoever. And that was the guy who was in charge of the country at the time. So in late July of 1932, two months after the Bonas Army has started their squad, Herbert Hoover pressed

the DC police to clear protesters out of abandoned buildings in the city. Right? Like I said, you had to be a veteran to live in the shanty town, but a lot of people who showed up weren't veterans, didn't have certificates, and were just there because they wanted the government to give them some damn thing. Those people had to go somewhere. So they started just squatting in vacant buildings around town. So once it became clear that they weren't going to just drift away on their own, Hoover ordered that the buildings be cleared by force.

Okay, it seems like we need a new rule. Like if you own a building, a vacant building like that, it only works for like paintball or a lair at that point. And you don't set up paintball or a lair. People can just live there. So I'm sure it'll surprise nobody to learn that the efforts to clear the buildings turned violent. During an altercation, a cop named George Chennault drew his pistol and fired on two protesters, both of whom would later die of their wounds. Both men, William Hushka and Eric Carlson, were World War I veterans, and they were both

interred at Arlington National Cemetery. Chennault died eventually too, but nobody gives a fuck where they buried him. Oh, so I'm just supposed to pee on random graves and hope? No illusions? You have to read the read the headstones. But at this point, I don't read. But at this point, with protesters killed, the clock was ticking before the whole thing exploded and clearly it was a job too big for the DC police. So Hoover called out the literal fucking army. And it is crazy how much

top brass is involved in this thing. So the military action is directly commanded by then army chief of staff, Douglas MacArthur, along with his junior aide at the time, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and he had a cavalry regiment that was commanded by George fucking Patton. Hey, boss, we're going to get ours though. After this though, right? Like you pinky swore, you pinky swore it. Amazing. Because this is just my 14 days, you see. So shortly after the pull my ankle, my ankle.

So shortly after the police shooting, MacArthur's forces started to amass on the ellipse south of the White House, which is fucking nuts to visualize, right? This force consisted of an infantry regiment, a cavalry regiment and half a dozen light tanks. We're talking about a thousand soldiers, half of them on horses, complemented by another 800 policemen forming up on the ellipse and then marching in formation down Pennsylvania Avenue.

And this march, it happens, by the way, right at 5 p.m. just as thousands of civil service workers are getting off for the day. So they just end up lining up, watching this huge force march against a fucking shanty town on a Thursday evening. OK, if this is New York City, a bunch of people are like, ah, that's going to fuck up the commute. God, you want to join the Shani army? I'm out here anyway. Yeah. Actually, according to Waze, it just says time to home a standard Chicago. So not good.

It's bad. So in, in perhaps the saddest note in this whole fucking story, when the bonus army folks first get sight of this army that's marching against them, they assume it's like a parade in their honor. Oh no. Yeah. they were legitimately cheering for the troops that they assumed were coming out to like, you know, pay their respects or whatever, right up to the point that Patton ordered his cavalry to charge them. After the

cavalry charge, the infantry advanced with fixed bayonets and tear gas, a chemical called Adam's site, which the Wiki describes as quote, an arsenic, a vomiting agent, end quote, which sounds unpleasant. Yikes. Yeah. OK. OK. I know it's not funny what's happening here, but good. Two guys fighting while they're both vomiting is objectively funny. It's physically funny. It's true. You got a point there. Just a whole line of horses slide past on the vomit. Their legs flailing like Scooby-Doo making that bongo sound effect. Just right past. See? No, that's good stuff. Thank you, Cecil. Cheers. Now, this first attack was against the unofficial camps that had sprouted up in vacant warehouses

and shit. The bonus marchers that weren't arsenically vomiting from the tear gas or whatever, they mostly fell back across the river to Camp Mark, where at least they briefly formed up like they were going to fight this army. It's okay. They're killing the other guys would come to be the new American ethos for a hundred plus years. Yeah Yep, and now we're making the episode all ironic Thank you Eli one's listening to it on ham radios. Anyways, it's gonna be like a

digital restoration project by the aliens right So at this point the specifics get a little harder to pin down because everybody involved would spend the rest of their lives blaming somebody else. Once the buildings are cleared and the protesters had gone back to the sort of officially designated space for them, Hoover ordered the army to fall back. That much is definitely true. But either that order wasn't delivered to MacArthur or MacArthur got it and chose to ignore it.

Given what we know about MacArthur, it's real easy to believe that he just ignored it. So despite specific orders not to enter Camp Mark, MacArthur sent his army across the bridge and mowed it the fuck down. They're just trying everything and one soldier turns to another, look at how clean this mud is, it's amazing.

Yes. Yeah. Hrm. So. Yeah. All right, so we can't say for certain It's amazing! HWAAA! HWAAA! Alright, so we can't say for certain who started the fire. Billy Joel started it.

No, he didn't. That's the whole point. He's been trying to fight it. I don't know any Billy Joel songs. You were conceived to a Billy Joel song. No! I was conceived a Glenn Miller dude See what happens when you knock

So we're in the mood Well done well done, okay So we don't know who started the fire that burned the place down But I feel like it doesn't matter when it comes to blame Right because once a thousand armed men march against unarmed, starving homeless veterans and their families who are like just taking part in a peaceful protest, I feel like they're responsible for whatever the fuck happens. And what happened is that Camp Mark burned to ash, destroying all the meager belongings of the

residents. 55 veterans were injured, 135 more were arrested, one woman miscarried during the retreat, and a 12-week-old baby died in the hospital during the tear gas attack. Now, officially, that baby died of an intestinal inflammation called enteritis, but as a hospital spokesman pointed out at the time, the tear gas didn't do him any fucking good. I notice none of us wrote into this space for hilarious shapes, Noah has left us here. Don't everyone crowd in at once now? Hey, hey, Tom wrote in, damn it, I can always count on Tom. Still better than this year's Norovirus outbreak? There it is!

Thank you, Tom. Another Billy Joel song. Yeah. Thank you, Tom. Another Billy Joel song. No. So the public reaction was severe, but ephemeral. People were furious that the US Army was called out against peaceful protesters, but the commanders in charge weren't punished. In fact, as you may have noticed, they would go on to have some of the most distinguished

careers in the history of the American military. One of them would go on to be the fucking president, speaking of which, the only person in charge who did suffer any real consequences was Hoover. His reaction to the bonus army marches largely believed to have contributed heavily to his landslide loss to Roosevelt in the election later that year. To be fair though, when the popular nickname for dire homeless encampments made of garbage is Your Last Nameville, I feel like you were going to lose that election one way or the other.

Okay, if that's how you get a new deal, we need to get a new deal. We need to round up some crisis actors and make that deal again. In a few weeks, we won't need actors. Oh, there you go. Oh my god. Brightside. Oh, by the time this episode comes out that joke will be stale. So it's worth adding here that the DC police superintendent at the time, a guy named Pelham D. Glassford, was so furious over the handling of the situation that he later resigned. He was one of the main forces in organizing food and medical supplies for Camp Mark. He was a vocal supporter of the bonus marchers.

He was a firm believer that the police could have cleared the space with no tanks being used at all. Now, so after the military intervention, the bonus marchers mostly just drifted west. There were so many of them riding the rails, in fact, and so much local interest in getting the fuck out of DC that rail lines just got in the habit of adding extra empty box cars to each train just to accommodate more of them. Yeah. And when they stopped the train, they would let those veterans board with group one.

No, of course, their bonuses were still unpaid. They were still broke and they still have all these worthless fucking certificates. And there was a new president on his way. So in 1933, veterans got together for a second march in May, two months after Roosevelt was sworn in. But Roosevelt, who had come out against the bonus army's demand during the campaign, had a radically different strategy in how to deal with them.

First, he set up a special camp for them with 40 field kitchens that supplied three meals a day, gave them a warm place to stay. Also, they had bus transportation back and forth to the Capitol, and entertainment in the form of military bands. Fan favorite Eleanor Roosevelt even visited the camp and helped hand out food and shit, leading one protester to quip, quote, Hoover sent the army, Roosevelt sent his wife, end quote. One thing Roosevelt did not offer, though, was to redeem the certificates early. But he did offer the veterans something that they wanted way the fuck more.

He offered them jobs. He issued an executive order allowing for the enrollment of 25,000 veterans in the Civilian Conservation Corps, which exempted them from the normal requirements that CCC employees be unmarried and under the age of 25 and then... Wait is that like demand side economics? That doesn't even make sense. I don't even understand what you're saying. Right? And then a couple years later Congress overrode Roosevelt's opposition and his veto and they redeemed the bonus certificates early.

Though to be fair they were 11 years in at that point on the 20 year clock so it wasn't that fucking early. All right. If you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be? Somebody should have randomly thanked these poor guys for their service at a grocery store. That could have solved so many fucking problems. Are you ready for the quiz? I'm always ready for the quiz.

All right, Noah, this week's story is a great reminder of what? A. We have always treated our veterans like the dead bodies we hired them to be. Jesus Christ. B. The non-violence of the bonus army brought exactly zero of them back to life. C. The myth of the successful peaceful protesters a direct propaganda reaction to the rise of the black militia after the death of Malcolm X or D Something Cecil doesn't have to edit out Alright I feel like MLK and Gandhi would disagree with you about the success of peaceful protests if we hadn't killed them All right, no, uh, what would my nickname be if I were in the bonus army?

A, general rebate. B, major savings. C, company discount. Or D, buy one, get a paramilitary. It would have been Cecil something battalion. You wrote that joke first. The fact that you wrote it at the end and Heath wrote it at the beginning, that doesn't change that fact.

Is anybody going to correct the fact about what happened there time-wise? All right, Noah, we have the right to peaceably assemble to ask the government to fix shit. Why? A. Because it doesn't work. So really what's the harm? B. As long as protests are confined to free speech zones, nobody will bother you. C. Violent mob actions become a day of love if you're the one the violent mob loves. Secret answer D. Until they decide to take it away.

Always. Every time. Also, you stumped him though somehow. Tom you win. Okay. All right. I don't know how this works. I'll uh. Hey Cecil you should do an essay next. All right sounds great. All right well for Cecil, Noah, Tom and Eli I'm Heath. Thank you for hanging out with us. We'll be back next week and Cecil will be an expert on something else. Between now and then you can listen to Cognitive Distance, Awful Assembly, Here Old Dads,

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