Who made the bonus army and why did they march on Washington?

Answer 1

The Bonus Army was a group of WWI US Military veterans. They were flag-flying, God-fearing patriots, who had served their country during the Great War. The Great Depression had been going on for more than two years, and many of these men had lost their jobs and their homes. Many of them had families, and they were all homeless. In those days, if there was any assistance for people in those circumstances, it was at the state or local level, and you had to prove you had nothing left just to be eligible, only to be told in most cases that what money there was had already been spent, since so many were in the same circumstances and applying for aid. There was no public housing, no food stamps, no "welfare", no unemployment, no Worker's Compensation, nothing. As a part of the reward for their WWI service the government had voted a few years earlier that every WWI vet would get a "bonus" in 1945 of a $500 paid up life insurance policy. This would pay off when the man died, to his beneficiary, just like any other insurance policy, or, the men could borrow against the policy, up to the full amount of $500. This latter was what the Bonus Army men were wanting to do. $500 was a lot of money in those days, and they wanted their Bonus right away, in 1932, when their need was so desperate, instead of having to wait 13 more years. Nobody "made" the Bonus Army, it was a spontaneous thing arising from the desperate circumstances of these veterans from all over the country, who made their way to Washington to petition the government for the Bonus now. When they got to Washington they lived in empty buildings, and in a "Hooverville" shantytown of scrapwood huts they built on the National Mall. They had their families with them, and flew the flag. After a couple of months this got embarrassing for the government, and President Hoover wanted them gone. The police and the US Army moved in, the Army under the command of General Douglas MacArthur, with his aide Dwight Eisenhower by his side, with Colonel George S. Patton, Jr. running up and down the street in a whippet tank. Tear gas was used, which killed at least two of the children of the Bonus men, their shantytown was burned, and they were hounded out of town, over the Anacostia Bridge into Maryland, where they were met by Maryland State Police, who harried them on across Maryland to the Pennsylvania line, where the Pennsylvania State Police took up the persecution. Eventually the Bonus men were able to slip away into the darkness, and go to trouble their government no more.