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The Bonus Army was the name applied a group over 17,000 U.S. World War I veterans who marched on Washington, D.C. during the summer of 1932 demanding immediate cash payment of the service bonuses promised to them by Congress eight years earlier.
In 1932 World War I veterans seeking a bonus promised by Congress were attacked and driven out of Washington, D.C., by troops of the U.S. Army under the command of Douglas MacArthur, Dwight D. Eisenhower and George Patton.
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.
In May 1932, jobless WWI veterans organized a group called the “Bonus Expeditionary Forces” (BEF) to march on Washington, DC. Suffering and desperate, the BEF’s goal was to get the bonus payment now, when they really needed the money.
On July 28, 1932, about 15,000 WWI veterans marched on the capital to demand their back pay. Instead they were forcibly ejected, and two of the veterans were killed. They finally got their owed pay in 1936.
Bonus Army, gathering of some 10,000 to 25,000 World War I veterans who, with their wives and children, converged on Washington, D.C., in 1932, demanding immediate bonus payment for wartime services to alleviate the economic hardship of the Great Depression.
Gaunt and grizzled, some with families in tow, tens of thousands of impoverished World War I veterans traveled to Washington, DC, in 1932. Many had been out of work since the beginning of the Great Depression three years earlier.
In May 1932, Waters and a number of unemployed World War I veterans organized a group they called the Bonus Expeditionary Forces—or Bonus Army—to march in Washington, D.C. Inspired by the Portland group, other Bonus Army units formed in communities across the country.
Out of sheer desperation, some of the veterans decided to march on Washington to ask for the bonus right away. If the movement had an official beginning, it would have been in Portland, Oregon. 400 veterans had gathered there by May 17, 1932, under the leadership of a fellow veteran, Walter M. Waters.
In late May, a group of veterans numbering around 1,000 came to Washington, D.C. to lobby for their cause. Many of these were unemployed and homeless, and they vowed to remain in the nation’s capital until favorable legislation was passed.