BATTLE OF THE BONUS ARMY

When angry US Army veterans marched on Washington during the Great Depression, their protest exposed deep fault lines between military loyalty and political authority

- CLIVE WEBB

Defying orders, General Douglas MacArthur led the operation of infantry, cavalry and tanks to drive out the enemy. Armoured columns rolled forward, horsemen charged with sabres drawn and dense clouds of tear gas choked the air. It sounds like a dramatic scene from the Southwest Pacific in the Second World War. In fact, it took place not on foreign soil but in the heart of the United States - and the foe was no wartime enemy but former servicemen who had once fought for their country.

In the summer of 1932, thousands of First World War veterans - many left destitute by the Great Depression - had marched on the nation's capital, Washington, DC, to demand early payment of a bonus promised years earlier. Their protest ended in smoke and chaos as US troops turned their weapons on men who had once worn the same uniform. The symbolism was shocking and politically explosive, exposing an administration hopelessly out of touch with a nation in despair.

The Great Depression swept across the United States after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, leaving the country in economic turmoil. No industrial nation endured greater hardship: the US economy shrank by nearly a third, banks collapsed, factories fell silent, and by 1932 one in four Americans was out of work.

Only a year before the crash, Herbert Hoover had ridden to the presidency on his reputation as the man whose relief work had spared Europe from starvation. Ironically, the great humanitarian who had saved another continent now watched his own country sink into ruin. Clinging to his creed Of “rugged individualism”, Hoover resisted direct federal aid. He urged volunteerism and launched public works projects, but these cautious measures were dwarfed by the scale of the catastrophe. As poverty spread and shantytowns derisively nicknamed ‘Hoovervilles’ multiplied across the nation, the president's reputation crumbled under the weight of despair.

Birth of the Bonus Army