Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - episode 8 - The Bonus Army

Episode Date: August 14, 2018

On this episode we talk about the Bonus Army! A rag tag Army of unarmed WW1 veterans to marched on DC to demand the money they were owed. If you think the government has a level headed reaction to this you must be new to our show. Joe gets emotional and goes on a communist rant while Nick fails in his attempts to reel him back to reality. Follow the Podcast on Twitter @lions_by Follow Joe on Twitter @jkass99 Follow Nick on Twitter @nickcasm1

In their last stand at the United States Capitol, the Boneless Army broke through police lines and surged up the steps as they staged a final demonstration which they hoped would induce the government to pay the cash they demanded. As the huge throng waited on the steps and the plaza, they learned that Congress had adjourned without taking any action and had left the veterans who were besieging the legislators with nothing to work on. While thousands stood about the entrance to get the latest news, a determined few kept shuffling along on a futile march of protest. A weary patrol around the capital...

And welcome to another episode of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I am Joe. I am Nick. And today we are, if you couldn't tell from our intro, we're doing something a little bit different today. I couldn't find any music that pertained to the air that probably involved flappers and the like. And that would bring in licensing issues and everything else. But the intro kind of gave away what we're talking about today. But before we get to that, how are you doing, Nick? I'm doing great. Drinking shitty whiskey.

We try to theme what we drink for every episode i mean we're pretty loose with it like pretty much every russian episode's random vodka that we find british episodes we drink british beer french episodes we drink wine we we did not drink tequila for a mexican episode because we felt like making it through the whole podcast right so we figured we're doing the bonus army, meaning the Great Depression. Everybody's broke as shit. What would they drink? Obviously, we're not going to go find some moonshine here

in the Puget Sound area of western Washington. From somebody's fucking bathroom. Right. So we went and bought, and by we I mean Nick, went and bought really, really cheap whiskey, and it's called Old Crow, and it is not good. It is a plastic jug that is probably hidden behind the counter

to stop shoplifting. I'm fairly certain they'd rather have people shoplift it. It's like one of those... It tastes like it's actually made out of crows. It's disgusting. So bad. But we'll push through. Yeah, it just tastes like chemistry.

But it's like chemistry that I did, which means it's bad. And tastes like... I like take chemistry, so... I didn't either. That's why I said it. So, yeah yeah my school funny story i befriended with the college um i went i went to college and took college chemistry and i assumed it was like an entry-level chemistry class right it's not they actually

assume that your high school taught you chemistry before you got there mine did not fuck i was fucked i had to drop the class i had to quit uh anyway so today's episode brings us to the united states of america for the first time and people have actually given a shit for this and we we kind of deserve it uh we haven't covered any american anything other than you know north america as a whole um until we got here and it's not the civil war it's not the revolution think again like i said and like our intro gave away we're talking about the bonus army very obscure um it's not taught in history classes it's kind of glossed over i mean it's kind of i i guess to give an excuse to history teachers everywhere it's that it's overshadowed by the Great Depression. But I am going to say, personal opinion, not a historical fact here,

but it is glossed over because America has propped up some kind of sacred cow altar on veterans as a whole. And we don't want to remember the times, other than like Vietnam, where people say they spit on veterans in the airport, even though that didn't happen. They didn't want to remember the part like outright violence was taking part and this is uh compared this is also paired with um anti-union violence at the time where people literally died so you could have your weekends right so those two kind of compare kind of smash together throw in a dash

of communism and socialism and your history teacher does not want to teach it um so me and nick are going to be your history teachers for the day which means i feel sorry for you good luck i know i'm vaguely familiar with the bonus army but that's mostly because I'm a unionist and a socialist, so I tend to study these things a bit more, and other union, anti-union riots and violence at the time, which actually we're going to touch on a little bit because of an organization that's involved in this situation. But Nick, did you know anything about this? In all honesty, the only thing I knew from this was

Hatton was involved, MacArthur, and I knew of some train shit that happens, and we'll get into that, because I knew some guy when I used to reenact that was totally into trains. Cosplay. It's not fucking cosplay, goddammit. So before we get into the saga that is the Bonos Army,

we have to talk a little bit about how bonuses historically worked in the u.s army up to this time and i know i can hardly contain myself either this is going to be exciting talking about enlistment bonuses um so a good example of enlistment bonus and service bonus because we're not talking about pensions. Pensions are when you retire. We're talking about bonuses. My first enlistment bonus, I enlisted back in 2005 for four years. That bonus was $4,000 and I thought that was really, really great

because I was 17 years old. Right. Did you get a bonus? No. At all? I was supposed to get a bonus for my re-enlistment and once I signed the paperwork, it said, oh yeah, you don't get a bonus, just so you know.

I was like, oh. Your bonus was the big green weenie. Basically, which is... My re-enlistment bonus was $20,000 for six years, which I didn't end up completing because my broke ass fell apart. So the practice of wartime and enlistment bonuses began all the way back in 1776 in the days of the militia and the Continental Army. Back then, a soldier would have his day job salary evaluated against how long he would have served, and the Continental Congress would just pay the difference. So you would have made X amount of money if you didn't go shoot at Redcoats, so we're going to pay you X amount.

So the normal, the continents weren't rich. Your normal soldier, just like today, is poor and from a farm. So you get the difference. You don't get a huge bonus, but when you get out, you get a little bit of seed money because kind of like today, when you get out of basic training, you haven't spent any money in four months because you haven't been allowed to. So it's a nice chunk of change. Yeah, and then you blow it.

Yeah, you blow on something stupid. Back then it was probably like horse cart spinners. Today it's a Challenger with like 24% interest. Challenger, Charger, Mustang. Either one of the three. Pick your poison. But on top of that, they would also be gifted land. Which is a pretty big fucking deal

in a society of farmers the size of the plot would depend on what rank you held at the time of your exit so at war's end a continental army private a private if you're unfamiliar at all with military ranks and rankings are the lowest of the low would get 100 acres of land in about 80 bucks. Today, 80 bucks is about $1,900. So it's a decent chunk. In order to qualify for these benefits, you had to serve a minimum of 14 days or fight in one battle. Now, I guess you kind of have to think about the time when large groups of men congregated together in the field.

Dysentery and other, like typhoid and other shit was rampant. So surviving 14 days without dying, I guess it's a high five. The feat of itself. Yeah. And, you know, surviving a battle, I guess, I don't know if I want to consider anything. I was ever involved in a battle because you think of battle as like thousands of people and thousands of people. But, you know, surviving a line battle against a British regular army is a pretty big deal. Oh, yeah.

So, you know, today we get free college. I get free health care for the rest of my life. But I feel like I would trade it in for the 1700 version of the benefits package. I would, too. Because I have VA care for the rest of my life. too because like i have va care for the rest of my life but the quality of health care that they dispense is about the quality that a continental army private would get anyway um you know might as well give me some land too yeah 14 days right fuck yeah that's not even basic no you know like some half brain dead doctor sawing off my my leg with a kitchen knife and then just prescribing me way too many opiates.

So, like, it's virtually the same. It's fucking two weeks of my time. Like, fuck it, let's do it. Yeah, and I did some research. 100 acres, so we're in western Washington. If you can't really picture that, Puget Sound, Tacoma, Seattle area, even though we're in a town you've never heard of, so I just use those. 100 acres would make me a millionaire right now uh where I live I looked it up and no one is even selling 100 acres but the closest thing you can find is 78 acres for 1.4 million dollars

I doubt a continental army private had a deal with like Jeff Bezos's legion of asshole tech workers pricing them out of the market but that's still a pretty sweet deal. Anyway, this package is really easy for the government to handle because the U.S. regular army at the time was incredibly small. This is a different era of, like, they didn't have a constant forever-worn-a-million-man army. In fact, the Continental Army was kind of considered shady. They were ragtag as shit.

Well, I mean, even beside that, like every state wanted its militia to check the Federal Army. And that's why, I mean, in its creation, that's why the Second Amendment existed is because large standing armies were thought of as being a possible future enemy because that's what the Redcoats used their army for, you know with the non-paying of quarters and being garrisoned everywhere that's actually something i'm going to get into a little bit more uh i'm writing a book with bill fulton about the history of the second amendment um called saving the second and i'll shill that more as it comes to fruition but keep that in your mind for down the road um anyway at the time land was plentiful uh assuming you weren't bothered by the fact there's actually natives living on it and you had to kind of kick them off to keep your land and if you know anything about u.s history no one was bothered by this at the time none so not at all free land um eventually there was indian wars crawled on

and then the indian war veterans um were grandfathered into this so they also got land and land holdings were passed down through family lines as was tradition at the time people began to see the issue with this benefits package as veterans stopped dying so quickly it became a major political issue as veterans eventually found themselves in possession of nearly half of all the useful land in seven states and if veterans back then are any different than veterans today and i'm assuming we're a little different but we're also still the same um they probably fucked the land up oh fuck that um anyway uh soon there wasn't any land left to give out and in 1855 they decided to move to a cash only system and in some occasions they said fuck the cash you get nothing i feel like it was more of like an iou type of thing in in theory it probably was supposed to be and then yeah and then it was

like what happened to you we're like yeah we'll totally give you a bonus and then the bonus never came yeah sweet ten thousand that never or like what happened to me when i reenlisted i got twenty thousand dollars i also got an education deferment which means uh i my commander science paperwork and i get to go to college for six months because who didn't guess who didn't get to go to college for six months this guy nice yeah so uh veterans of the spanish-american war didn't get any fucking bonus at all and uh the loophole they used is that the regulars who fought in the spanish-american war weren't technically regulars they were volunteers but not militia volunteers they volunteered under the national army um but

because they were quote-unquote volunteers they got no bonus but the same volunteers in the civil war got a bonus so the government's just cheap and it's give a fuck uh which will be a reoccurring thing here um and it still goes on yeah yeah they're not cheap if you're like northrop grumman or boeing and you're making weapons yeah but if you're like chet from connecticut and you want to enlist get fucked yeah basically yeah uh so uh when world war one rolled around the brave soldiers of the american expeditionary force which is what our mission was called to france would receive only 60 for their service their cash bonuses taking a hurting because the u.s military grew rapidly from a small suspicious like uh national army to a massive national one um and it would overtake the state

militias for the first time um and this kind of happened i guess officially for the first time during the civil war because all the militias were nationalized and that's when you have things like the 20th maine the 24th michigan but um this is like the first time where nobody's even playing the game of state militias it's just like no no you're the fucking united states army you're the marine corps let's stop playing this game right but anyway you grow from a 7 000 man army to a half a million man army money's gonna run pretty short very especially because up until that point soldiers were training with wooden rifles that didn't actually function so yeah they were

played they're what we called hua bullets the your unit didn't have actually have enough money to use ammunition so you can make gun noises with your mouth um but you know a whole army and they suddenly had to create a million rifles and that sounds very familiar to world war one on the british side yeah which we talked about before in our hague episode first episode sorry second episode yeah first episode was luigi cadorna i am stupid um so as you can imagine these vets after suffering and surviving the horrors of the great war were pretty fucking pissed about getting shortchanged and getting 60 bucks right um the so this is where i talked about the the anti-communism

and the union crushing coming in and it's it's weird it's like i dubbed it in the pebble episode i believe pralines and dick pralines and dick ice cream flavor it is how i would describe the american legion now i know a lot of people maybe i don't know what wing our audience fluctuates in i assume they follow one of us on twitter or found us somewhere so they're generally centrist to left wing so they're okay with me insulting the american legion um but i'm not insulting as much as i am quoting historical facts and that is something that i always make sure I point out. And I'll try to point out whenever it's me just getting petty, which I'll do later too.

But the American Legion was a veterans' embassy group, and it still is. Some people listening might actually be a member and just don't know their history. So it was formed in 1919 and immediately began demand a higher payment of bonuses for world war one veterans and that that's the prelates part um they're veteran activists um but that's when we have to look at the american legion for what it really was so uh we covered this a little bit during our hag episode and a a little bit, tiny bit, during our Cadorna episode. So World War I in the trenches during the later portions of the war, especially in the French side, where you have to remember is where a lot of the American expeditionary force ended up, the French were sick and tired of the war. sick and tired of the war there had been multiple mutinies right which would involve several people being lined up against the wall shot which is actually going to be a topic we're going to cover

at a later date but morale was an all-time low at the same time the bolshevik revolution pulled the russian empire out of the war and it the bolshevism and marxism did not stay in eastern europe and in russia it spread throughout the trenches to include france and a lot of people in the french trenches were talking heavily about hey they got out of this war why can't we right why are these people sending us to die uh in this meaningless war that gods and kings started effectively because you have the Kaiser and the fucking Tsar and the King and the Emperor and all this other shit. Then you have

Private Jock who is sick of surviving his third fucking day ever done. Suddenly they want more equality. Right. These guys are fucking ran thin. And American soldiers would walk right into that mess um and they would be exposed maybe for the first time in socialist and communist ideals and marxism and

which would turn to bolshevism um that was terrifying to general john pershing who was in charge of the american expeditionary force. So when he saw American morale falling and being heavily influenced by these leftist ideas that the French soldiers had, he had to think of something. And that something was the American Legion. He pulled together a whole bunch of incredibly conservative officers who wanted to form something to get people's morales up. And they did. They may have been based on politics but you know they got um activities for soldiers

in the front lines to do uh they came up with new ideas because one of the things that he did was hey how can we raise morale and like well let's rotate people from the front more often let's get movies or let's get you know bands and musicians to to the rear troops before they rotate to the front to the front so they really did good like i said praline's a dick the anti-political stuff is the dick and here comes the bigger dick um so the legion would go on to be involved in a massacre against the industrial workers of the world in centralia washington which i am very familiar with for reasons i won't go into um so what happened was is the iww wanted to organize labor in the area and the american legion said that was bad pretty much

what it came down to was unions weren't forming with the iww want to create a union hall pretty much a place where workers could get together after work have a beer and try to organize unions instead what happened is the american legion attacked them and four people were killed. Now, that's not a terrible large number. And it is, because they're assaulting people for wanting to unionize. But when you look at other massacres from the union eras uh it gets worse but and i know there's this might be a rose-tinted glasses type situation but what it came down to is the american legion were

armed and the iww were not so one came to fight with that and and another part of legion history was in legion commander elvin oswale when speaking in 1923, said that Italian-style fascism was the best way to defend the nation. And he personally repeatedly invited Benito Mussolini to speak at Legion events all the way up until 1930. What the fuck? Yeah. So, pralines and dick. Who would buy that plane ticket?

And, you know, there's a Legion Hall I see every day driving through, what is it, Tenino? And you won't hear or see any of this stuff in their history because they know it's dirty. But it still exists. But, like I said, they do advocate for soldiers' rights. They were one of the leading advocates for the Montgomery Jai Bill. But I mean, that's like, I think I said it earlier, it's kind of like, and I really hate to invoke Godwin's Law here, but the Nazis outlawed smoking in public too.

Like, horrible organizations can do good things, but it doesn't make them a good organization. But to bring it back on topic, now that I'm off my pedestal. In 1924... Really fucking high. It is. It's a high pedestal. You fucking lost me.

No, I learned some shit, so that was cool. Fun facts, but not so fun because a bunch of people died. And also, Benito Mussolini almost went and talked at veterans events. but not so fun because a bunch of people died. And also, Benito Mussolini almost went and talked at veterans events. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge vetoed a bill that the American Legion pushed forward that would have granted a larger bonus to World War I veterans, saying, quote,

patriotism bought and paid for is not patriotism. And as big of a dick move that is i kind of agree i'm not a patriot i may have enlisted and got benefits for fighting in america's wars but i i do not consider myself a patriot maybe it's because the term patriot's been kind of polluted um but i i wouldn't consider myself patriot i consider myself an employee a lot of people have their own definition of patriotism and a lot of people have their own definition of patriotism, and a lot of people have really fucked up definitions of patriotism, which I know a lot of people who have really fucked up definitions of patriotism.

Absolutely. I think it's measured by how big the truck nuts are. Yes, and your lift. Yeah. How many flags and Gadsden flags do you have on your truck? Don't come at me. and gads and flags you have on your truck don't come in me um so after he said that which i assume he did not accept his paycheck for his work either because i mean he's the president of the united states he's a civil servant um civil servants are obviously supposed to work for free

congress thankfully overrode his veto enacting the world war adjusted compensation act each veteran reserved a dollar a day for each day of domestic servants sorry domestic service up to a max of 500 and a dollar 25 for each day of overseas service with a cap of $625. Amounts of $50 or less were paid out immediately. Everyone else would have to wait 20 years. Basically, the big green weenie just looms around the corner and says, you don't get a dime until 1945. And I know they passed this law without thinking of the future, but and they wouldn't know what's going to happen in 20 years.

But still. Conspiracy! But, you know, I could that's a conspiracy I'll buy into. The government actually started another word to create more veterans to fuck over payment to other veterans. No government plans 20 years ahead of time.

No. But you can also get this money if you die yeah so which is why it was also known as the tombstone bonus

tombstone bonus it was known as also the tombstone bonus why the fuck didn't we come up with that name for our SSI because

so for people who aren't aware, if you die, you don't even have to be in combat, if you die in active service, and I actually carried mine over, because I'm, under various circumstances, I get to carry a lot of my benefits over,

and we'll go into my service history, but it's worth a half million dollars. But we never came up with a sweet nickname for it. The tombstone bonus is fucking awesome. I hope you carry that forward. I wish I could. They won't let me do a lot. I've also tried asking for a Viking funeral,

which they said I cannot do. You have to change your religious preference to pagan or something. Still won't let me do it. That's a shame. Because I also asked for a Jedi funeral and said I'd be a Jedi. What the fuck is a Jedi funeral?

They lay you on a piece of wood and you burn to death. That's a Jedi funeral if I said I'd be a Jedi. What the fuck is a Jedi funeral? They lay you on a piece of wood and you burn to death. Well, you're already dead. That's a fucking funeral. Yeah, but you're not going out into some sweet water.

Does that mean you have to go into space? Some dude is just with an arrow that lands perfectly on your boat. You have to think of the logistical issues

here of finding an archer who can fire a flaming arrow into your boat. Not a lot of people in the army can do that. No, it's not. I'll do for you the crossbow.

I want longbow. I'll probably Not a lot of people in the Army can do that. No, it's not. I'll do it for you with a crossbow. I want a longbow. I'll probably just end up shooting you in the tank. Not even lighting a fire. Bringing it back around. Like Nick said, these bonuses wouldn't be paid out until 1945 or until they died. And these isn't for bonuses

they should have gotten prior to 1918. All attempts to get the Congress to pay out the remainder failed, and soon the nation was neck deep in the Great Depression, meaning that not only were tens of thousands of veterans pissed, they are now unemployed and desperately broke. Now, before we get into this next part, I know a lot of you are probably going to be pissy because we're not bringing up the other marches on washington dc for uh benefits and unemployment and everything else and i would but one it's not really i will yeah i would but it's not really uh important to this story and

i'm trying to keep the podcast under an hour and a half to two hours but just know that just know that uh marching on dc was kind of normal it's kind of like not necessarily marching on dc now uh because it rarely happens but i think even more like picketing your local state building or i don't know um taking over a bird sanctuary in oregon it happens but you know um so on march 15th 1932 unemployed former army sergeant walter waters held a gathering of veterans in the greater portland area he was furious at government action and urged them all to march on dc it's not like they had anything better to do it's not like they're going to work no um soon out 300 of them began to make their way to the nation's capital most of them through rails so before this a lot of veterans were just like who the fuck is this guy

and they'd basically shoo him off and they wouldn't listen to him so another month would pass by he'd say something he'd stand up again and say we need to say something they would shoo him off and they wouldn't listen to him so another month would pass by he'd say something he'd stand up again and say we need to say something they would shoo him off again and then this round this time frame mid-march ish around march they go you know what yeah something needs to be done like shit's going downhill we gotta get something i think they realized that yeah it wasn't getting better yeah no it wasn't they're not getting their fucking money for fucking years yeah and you know i'm actually gonna pose a question to both of us um at the end of this podcast but um the this this is money that they

the government said was theirs right um and they just weren't getting it and it's the time where the entire country is scrabbling to make a living um and the 300 or so give or take uh began to make their way towards nation capital jumping on rails um and this is you know the 1930s but as they headed east the media took an interest in their story radio shows newspapers and film crews followed them around like some kind of weird peacetime camp followers and report on their every mission and you know what i'll go a little bit more into it just because it's kind of fucking cool it's kind of funny uh as soon as they got to st louis around the baltimore area like the railroad like took a stand and said you know what no you guys cannot travel free you guys need to pay or something right because before then all the rail workers were sympathetic because even though they The railroad took a stand and said, you know what? No, you guys cannot travel free. You guys need to pay or something. Right, because before then, all the rail workers were sympathetic because even though they had jobs, they were being crushed by anti-union forces

and they were having a hard time making a living. So they're like, fuck yeah, dude. Go stick it to the man. Yeah. And then they're like, you know what? We should really get paid for this too. But a standoff ensued. We should really get paid for this, too.

But a standoff ensued, during which the veterans refused to allow any, like, movement of trains going eastbound. And they soaked the lines. Did they? Yeah, so they effectively made the railroad inoperative. Soaping the lines is old-timey speak, for they literally lubricated the lines so it was unsafe for trains to use.

Fuck that. What the fuck? So they just wouldn't use them. Get fucked. Yeah, pretty much. So basically the railroad company just tried going around the veterans and whatnot, but it didn't really work out because now the National Guard got involved, and they didn't want anything to do with it.

So they just basically transported him saying, you're not our problem. You're the next state's problem. What was even dumber was like the Illinois governor, a guy named Louie Emerson, called out the National Guard. But his excuse was the veterans were disrupting mail service. What the fuck? Yeah.

So like, you know, they stopped all of the trains from running so therefore nobody can get their mail and you know whatever the 1930 version of jeff bezos was he's trying to ship shit over the rails we're like hey where the fuck's all my money um but thankfully uh a guy who we will demonize in a little later, Chief of Staff General MacArthur. He's a fucking nut. He is, but he had enough foresight at the time to see sicking soldiers on poor distraught veterans would look bad. The optics were terrible, and he shot the plan down to send in the National Guard. He resolved the stalemate by organizing veterans who had been on the train to get on

trucks instead um which is a surprising amount of foresight for a guy who's about to fuck up magnificently later basically passing off the problem to the next guy and it quickly became like national news right when this shit happened like this shit's coming and you know i think mcarthur maybe instead of to play devil's advocate wasn't necessarily trying to kind of push the responsibility on somebody else i think he knew soldiers don't just assume they'd get bored and go home. Like. I don't know. I think I'd want my money more than. Right.

But I mean, I know. And at that time, I don't have anything to do. There's not really like fucking internet porn. There's not like. I mean, he's the chief of staff. He probably. So I might go live it up in a fucking Hooverville. Right.

It's the best you can hope for anyway. Yeah. And I mean, I think he misunderstood. I mean, he's the chief of staff. He wasn't living rough. Right. Nobody in government is living rough. He misunderstood

and misunderstood, underestimated the, um, the motivation of everybody because it was either we get our bonuses or we fucking starve.

Right. And I think they thought they were just dealing with a bunch of broke people and not a whole bunch of broke desperate people.

A whole bunch of broke desperate soldiers who just sat through the fucking Western Front of World War I. And I've seen what desperate soldiers do when they're broke. Yeah. And these guys didn't even marry any strippers. Because I'm pretty sure stripping was illegal. And rough.

Yeah. So, on May 25th, 1932, the first veterans arrived in D.C. with Waters and his train terrorists arriving a few days later. Within a few weeks, they were joined by about 20,000 more people. They popped up camps wherever they could, built out of anything they could get their hands on, and a massive shantytown, which this is the Depression area, so they were known as Hoovervilles, sprang up seemingly overnight around the anacostia river soon this 1900s version of occupy wall street turned into a local attraction people flock to the camp to hang out give supplies and cook for the veterans

and this is a pretty big deal this is the great depression nobody has disposable income nobody has disposable food but people are still showing up to donate and cook and feed these guys right so you know before toby keith started singing about support the troops people actually just went out and did it and right they didn't have bumpers to put stickers on so they actually just want to take care of them right and this is this is more than the veteran thing because people did this for a lot of people in Hooverville at the time. There was a Washington, D.C. police chief who was a former brigadier general during the Great War. They named the camp after him. Exactly.

And he gave abandoned buildings that were scheduled for demo in the future to these guys, basically saying, I'd rather have protesters than have rioters on my hands. Right. And he tried to basically give, like, what's the word I'm looking for? It wasn't necessarily appeasement, he supported them. Right. They named a camp after it and named it

Camp Marks. He gave them, what was it, 48 hours in Washington, D.C. technically? At first. Yeah, and it ended up being like three months. Well I mean I think he realized that these guys had a point and they weren't doing anything wrong. And not to mention

what difference is this who revealed the name of the other ones that popped up? I mean this camp got so big it turned into a weird pseudo city with named streets, a library, a post office and a barber shop and you know i'm going to assume it's as gross as every other town that pops up around every army base yeah like every single city that pops from army base is gross very true yeah and i assume

this is like worse than that fuck yeah. They even published their own newspapers and staged games and shows for the growing populace. Kant-Marx rules were few but strict. No booze, no weapons, no fighting, and no begging. Which goes to show this generation of veterans cannot be more different than the one I am currently a part of. I know a dozen dudes overseas who took part in some or all of those activities within the last 24 hours. They also had a strict no communist rule remember the american legion is involved here but that rule will end up being broken and we're going to take a slight sidestep here to tell you a little bit about a guy who came and spoke to the veterans and was beloved by the veterans and they listened to him a marine corps legend and retired major general named Smedley Butler.

He showed up to speak and encourage the marchers. He led a life so weird, it's definitely worth a mention. Butler was one of 19 people to ever receive the Medal of Honor more than once, and fought in the Spanish-American War, in the Philippines War, the Boxer Rebellion, and countless actions in South America, and of course the Great War. in the Philippines War, the Boxer Rebellion, and countless actions in South America, and of course the Great War. He was also an avowed socialist who was propositioned by a powerful industrial tycoon group to lead a fascist coup

against President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in a conspiracy that is now known as the Business Plot. Obviously, he shut them down and reported them to Congress as if he could, but nobody was ever punished for it. Though he was a supporter of prohibition, so Praline's a dick. After Butler's camp speech, also point out

Smedley, he's the only dude that could pull that off as a first name. Smedley. I don't even think then, because Smedley's such a... Dude, he has two Medal of Honors. He has two Medal of Honors. His name could be fucking Taint. He's fine with it.

His name could be Stacy. Stacy. I really have Stacy. Smedley. Smedley. It sounds like... Fuck it. It sounds like a mixture of smell and medley.

So, Butler's speech at Camp Marks eventually made the Hooverville grow to the largest in the entire country. Um, though there were signs posted and everything, so that makes it super official. Communists were everywhere in the camp, as you can imagine. This is obviously common at the time. This is the Great Depression. The entire country was a shining example of the failures of capitalism at the time. This is the Great Depression. The entire country was a shining example of the failures of capitalism at the time, and the veterans had brought

back leftist sympathies from the trenches of the Great War. This is not to say that the Bonus March was a communist movement. It definitely wasn't. I do not mean to frame this in a red light, but there's definitely sympathies. Others may say this is a communist

gathering. That's what they wanted it to well that's exactly that's what they wanted it to sound like and that's what got the justice department turned against them and the fbi investigating um but this vast amount of um government was sympathetic within the days of the arrival waters had created a full-scale lobbying effort in washington with several sympathetic congressmen. Veterans hounded the representatives and crowned their office, too. So that definitely helped.

So, like, the representatives are trying to carry out everyday business, but there's, like, 16 dudes that smell like crap piled in their office because they live in a shanty town out back. And you know what? Like, yo, where's my money? Where's my money? Where's the money, bro? Where's the money, bro? I see you can afford that sweet tweed jacket, but where the where's my money? Where's my money? Where's the money, bro? Where's the money, bro? I see you can afford that sweet tweed jacket, but where the fuck's my money? Smedley.

I assume there's lots of people named Smedley. Yeah, that's what I feel like, too. You Smedley fuck. Chester. I want to point out how Waters was so organized with his own fucking shanty army that he had. Basically, the bonus expeditionary force was organized in military fashion as well. He was elected regimental commander and had subordinate commanders that were appointed. He had buglers for state teams.

He even had fucking military police empowered to maintain discipline and to discipline and formations and marching drills were held for his army. So like he held marching drills to go and protest? Yes. Nice. Which is holy shit. You know who does that

today? Antifa. Fun fact. Very. But I just thought thought how interesting that was because he just gathered up a bunch of fucking all of his buddies and said hey let's do this uh one army thing one more time i mean it's the only thing they were good at yeah uh which i can sympathize with yeah that's true um you know and he was really good at either motivating or guilt-tripping these representatives to force this project through. But, you know, eventually the realities of government happened, and government back then, there's a lot of government now, just with different names, and people start bullshitting them. One congressman, Edward Elsick of Tennessee, who was speaking in favor of the bill, simply dropped dead in the middle of his speech.

That probably wasn't a good omen. What the fuck? Yeah, just dead, gone. He's probably drinking Old Crow. Yeah, that's how I'm going to die. On June 17th, Waters was summoned to the Senate and informed the bill had been defeated. In the following days, many marchers just gave up and went home defeated, and I can hardly blame them.

I mean, they had done, I don't know, probably the most politically successful large gathering of people that I have personally heard of they actually got a bill on the floor and and i know well that's going to sound stupid when you think that we just broke the record recently for the metoo marches for the the largest gathering of people in the united states but that legislatively did nothing right um during the vietnam war all the peace marches legislatively did nothing during the iraq war the code pink marches legislatively did nothing. During the Iraq War, the Code Pink marches did legislatively nothing, which speaks volumes of the representality of our government. But these guys actually got a bill on the floor. It was shot down, but at least they did it.

But Waters and around 20,000 others said, we will stay here until 1945 if necessary to get our bonuses. And a lot of guys didn't even have anywhere to go either way. No. Being unemployed. So a lot of the times the Hooverville was their home. Yeah. They built their homes.

I mean, that was probably the same situation they'd find themselves in Portland or Seattle or Detroit or wherever they came from. It's not like they even had any jobs to go back to. There were no jobs available. To make matters worse, they were making the government incredibly nervous. So despite the fact that they were unarmed and never once threatened violence, the government was terrified

at the idea of some kind of popular insurrection being touched off by them. There's 20,000 dudes camped out here in the capital but you have to think nationwide hundreds of hoovervilles full of desperate people who are looking for someone to blame for what they're going through and uh maybe they weren't entirely wrong at pointing a finger at the federal government but at the same time who better to be the vanguard for some kind of popular interaction than a whole bunch of pissed off veterans

camped on the front lawn there's a lot of people that I would assume try to play devil's advocate like say that some of these vets are basically asking for a payment that was not yet due but it was their money and don't think they have much of a case that sounds more like

an organized temper tantrum i know that's very devil's advocate hot take yes hot take and i know that's why i feel like some people would probably take it as i would say historical visionism would find you correct and that people that seems to be a thing that there would be a legion of bootlickers who would side with the federal government here. Right. In that they technically were not due payment until 1945. But that's, you know, it's kind of weird when you look at the crowd that would scream that argument would also be the ones who would call for a small government in the first place.

And a lot of these dudes would go right back to war in the 1940s, before they even got their fucking bonuses. Well, sorry, before they were even scheduled to get their bonuses. But, yeah, that's just... I know some people would probably think that way, because I know a lot of people who would. I know a lot of people who think that way currently. Probably about me, and how I collect a check every month. So around the same time that all this

is happening conditions in the camp began to worsen as popular support was withdrawn on july 28th president hoover ordered police chief glassford to evict them must which must have really sucked because only a short while ago glassford a world a World War I veteran himself, had toured the camp and gifted the veterans with food, supplies, and organized medical care for them. So he's probably pretty conflicted about the whole situation. But, I mean, orders are orders. It's a Great Depression.

He doesn't listen. He's probably unemployed, just like with the vets, right? He's living in the Hoovervilles with them, smelling the same old ball of sweat, dick cheese. And I'm not giving them a pass here. Following orders that are bad orders make you a bad person. Oh yeah, I totally agree. But this is

different times, I suppose. I'm not going to give them credit for historical revisionism here, because we never did that. We never gave that we never extended that hand to anybody else that we've ever covered. But, I guess at least he was conflicted. I don't know. He's not the donkey here, but he's definitely an asshole.

Because, I mean, he was just organizing medical care for these dudes. Right. His past support, however, did not stop him from obeying orders and unleashing a phalanx of 100 policemen on the veterans. And this is where Glassford is a donkey because he's sending 100 dudes against thousands of dudes who he apparently forgot that were just fighting in the western front fighting off waves of veteran german infantry and charging across the horrible killing fields of world war one those hundred cops didn't stand a fucking chance no dude like

i can imagine some of the veterans going to one of those fucking Hank Hill's grandpa's fucking PTSD rages. Yeah. Ah! That was fucking... So, the veterans who were once unarmed armed themselves with bricks, bits of wood, and anything else they could get their hands on, and just went to fucking town on the cops. At one point, a policeman opened fire fire because they're cheaters and the veteran and uh they ran off uh one was all over one veteran lay dead and one was mortally wounded

three policemen were injured by flying bricks now once the understanding uh that general macarthur had was gone um he had enough of this shit. And taking direct control of regular army units, which is I don't think something a chief of staff has ever done before. He ordered the camp, which is Camp Marks, to be

cleared. And at this point in D.C., like Nick had said, the vets had moved into abandoned buildings. They had been on the streets. Because they had effectively been gifted to them. There's about 8,000 of them were in various buildings around the city. It was only a fraction of the once-used bonus floors, but it was still sizable. There's also women and children set up in these camps as well. They took their whole families because

these dudes who best case scenario were working odd jobs on the side oh yeah handyman type shit like that's the only thing i could really imagine handyman and this is the 1930s they're not gonna wire money home no they're not gonna mail money home they all that if they went to dc their whole family went with them um but and you know thousands of civilians had come down to include women and children to witness what was going on in the streets because they realized oh shit shit has changed the cops are fighting him um you know veterans are chucking bricks at people like something's changed and you know this is the 1930s and the great depression it's like they're watching tv or going to work this This is the entertainment. They're not team either. Yeah.

I imagine they just go watch Buildings on Fire go watch crime scenes like oh cool shit. Yeah. It's like it was like NCIS except

you know Constable Bill was thrashing that dude upside the head. And no commercials. Yeah. The only commercial break

was when a kid ran by the newspaper. So an eyewitness a guy named fred belcher was 16 years old and was standing on the corner uh that day waiting for a trolley and he said quote by god all of a sudden i see these cavalrymen come up the avenue swinging down at the mall which is the area where the veterans were camped at. I thought it was a parade, Belcher later said. I asked a gentleman standing there, I said,

Do you know what's going on? What holiday is this? He said, No, it's no parade, bud, he said. The Army is coming on to wipe all these bonus people out of here. That's right, I said cavalrymen. And I say this wearing a stetson some conflicted nearly 200 mounted cavalry sabers drawn rode out led by someone you may have heard of a major george s patton and And we are going to take a sidestep here to talk about George S. Patton, who would eventually go on to lead the United States Army to glory in Western Europe. But he was an unrepentant piece of shit.

Dude was a bucket of piss, dude. piece of shit dude was a bucket of piss dude um major patton was an alcoholic who fucked his niece was a vicious anti-semite and racist and he actually during world war ii would physically abuse several of his soldiers who had broken down in defense of ptsd right and now while i understand ptsd was not fully understood at the time, this kind of physical abuse towards mentally broken soldiers didn't even happen during World War I. I feel like all he cared about was his ego. Yeah, his ego. So Praline's a dick.

He was an absolutely amazing tactical commander. He was the anti-Paval Gratchik, in that he was really, really good at big operations and terrible when the magnifying glass got put on him. Right. You can also play devil's advocate on that one, too, is that he was going up against an almost-defeated Wehrmacht army who was fucking battered to hell.

You know those actions in Italy and North America were pretty solid, too. North America? North Africa. We are getting into the North America actions. And, you know, sure, you can say that he was following orders, and you would not be wrong, but to further underline how big of a piece of shit he was. So during World War I, Patton was wounded

and had to be drugged to safety by a soldier that served alongside of him, an enlisted man, who drug him to safety under enemy fire. That man was in the Bonus Army, and he came up to Major Patton and said, Sir, please don't do this. Patton's first and only words out of his mouth towards that man were, Arrest that man.

And it should be noted, Patton absolutely recognized and knew him. Right. So the dude's name was Joe Angelo. Yep. And Patton went on to quote saying, I do not know this man. Take him away under no circumstances

permit him to return but Patton absolutely knew him there is no way that he did not know him at all it was a cop out in front of this man and that is me speculating

sure but as someone who has been involved in combat, you do not forget somebody who does something like that, ever. But Patton's a dick. More dick than pralines. So, those

200 cavalry were followed by 5 tanks and 300 armed infantrymen, bayonets fixed and loaded rifles this is the first and only time tanks have ever been rolled through an american street in offensive capabilities um i wish that could be the first and only time armed infantrymen have been mustered like that, but Kent State happened. So the charging cavalry didn't seem to care who was who, and they drove everyone back off the streets.

Soon the veterans and the civilians that were along with them were driven back to Camp Marks, their backs against the river. MacArthur, still in command, gave the marchers 20 minutes to evacuate the women and children from the camp. Some left, and many families stuck together. They were terrified of what might happen to them next. I mean, could you really blame them? I don't think in their wildest dreams they could ever imagine that the federal army is going to be sent against them.

And now that MacArthur, the guy who literally just chased them off the streets with tanks and sabers, is telling them to leave and they'll be safe, would you trust them? Fuck no. Yeah. Right. And now that MacArthur, the guy who literally just chased them off the streets with tanks and sabers, is telling them to leave and they'll be safe, would you trust them? Fuck no. Yeah. So, a lot of them stayed where they were. And among these camps that they've raided, Camp Anacostia? That's the river that it was based on. Right.

And they basically burned that shit to the ground. Right. He set it on fire and launched tear basically burned that shit to the ground right he set it on fire and uh launched tear gas into the camps in the end 55 were injured a veteran's wife miscarried and 12 week old bernard meyer died of tear gas inhalation these were against unarmed veterans and this is not like when the cops came down them they did not try to line up and fight these guys they ran for their lives the marchers who were not stabbed shot were arrested retreated towards the maryland state line where they boarded trucks who that macarthur had set up for them and slowly trickled back home macarthur held a press conference afterwards saying that quote had he let

it go another week the institutions of the government would have been threatened. And the funny thing about this is both President Hoover at the time and MacArthur would claim that the Bonus Army was comprised of communists and criminals that were intent on destroying the government of the United States. Right. And like I said before, while there were communist and socialist sympathies in the ranks, this was absolutely no means a communist movement. The United States has never, and probably will never, see a communist movement that is 50,000 veterans strong. It's, I guess, maybe in the 60s, but they didn't even really understand what communism was, as much as it was anti-government. But they framed it as their enemies of the state. They had to be taken care of.

Unfortunately for him and the entire government, this reframing just didn't work. Newsreels, like the one that we had played at the intro of this episode, showed the cavalry charging on unarmed marchers, and those news reels played all around the country, leading people to publicly boo the Army and President Hoover. Three months later, Hoover lost his bid at re-election to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in a landslide. President Hoover was fucking sitting on a fucking parking cone ordering the troops on these veterans.

This dude's a dick. He was bad. But he's not the only one to blame. No, he's not. And that's why I think both him, MacArthur, Patton. Patton, fucking straight. And I'm giving Eisenhower a little bit of a pass because Eisenhower was also involved. Eisenhower was the deputy chief of the Army at the time,

which I have a few quotes from him here in a little bit, which are enlightening, which is something Eisenhower always tends to be. But like a lot of people currently in government, who I won't name, Eisenhower has a lot of really good quotes and a lot of really good action to go with them. And this is not discounting him as a military commander. I will say Patton was a piece of shit as a man and a military commander. Can't say the same for Eisenhower.

So unfortunately for the bonus marchers, horrible shit was not being done visiting on them. So in 1935, one of the government programs that came out was a rehabilitation camp system. And I know what the feeling for the term rehabilitation camp is. It's not what this is. It was like working camp. You go build trails out in the woods, things like that. It was to put them to work building infrastructure. Unfortunately for them, the camp they were in were on the Florida Keys.

And, well, a hurricane swept through the area and killed about 200 of them Jesus so in the backlash I guess I can call it a backlash of what happened with the bonus army how if you were to play the layman here

how do you feel like these military officers were punished for their actions at this time? I mean, could you imagine, say, next week, me, you, and 20,000 of our buddies march on Olympia here and demand something, and a joint base Lewis and Kort sends strikers down the road and machine guns us? What do you think happens? Well, for our thing, there's a lot of shit that would happen but for their time i don't

think a lot of shit would happen absolutely nothing happened yeah there are no repercussions for anybody involved other than i guess you could say hoover because he lost the election which he's probably going to lose anyway he was going to lose anyway yeah i mean they named their shanty towns after him for a reason um how shitty they were, just like their president. But, I mean, I'm not even saying that MacArthur and Patton should have been railroaded out of the military and thrown in jail, though that would have been nice, but you'd think their careers at least would have been fucking tanked.

Yeah, like leading men into battle. Against their own people. Yeah. So none of that ever happened none of their careers were impacted in any way and two of the commanders involved end up becoming supreme commanders um at one time or another and one became a two-time president of the united states so with it with an interview with historian stephen ambrose um general macarthur's aide during this time a dwight eisenhower like you said later said the situation i quote i told

that stupid son of a bitch not to go down there there's no place there for the chief of staff yeah um don't get your hopes up though he fully endorsed macarthur's actions and didn't just didn't like the optics of the chief of staff personally or in the crushing of a veteran gathering in public. Police Chief Glassford resigned in disgust. And as a small microscopic cherry on this fucking shit cake, Congress passed the Adjusted adjusted compensation act in 1936 and the veterans who were still alive at this point finally got their goddamn bonuses um now yeah i said before i was going to pose a question and you covered it briefly um but do you think the veterans were right in marching for their bonuses?

I believe they are, in all honesty. I believe they earned it in every way fighting on the Western Front. I agree. Seeing those horrors. But like I said, how other people, like how they view it, which I've gone over, they might see it the other way. But that's how I see it. I believe they deserve it 100%. I agree with you to the extent that their bonuses that they got on initial investment were obviously horseshit.

Oh, yeah. And the bill that the government passed was a cop-out because they were hoping in 20 years a large chunk of these dudes were going to be dead. That's why I feel like it was like a huge IOU. Yeah, and that's what it was. And this, I mean, during the Great Depression, I understand that they're hurting for money. But, I mean, don't start wars if you can't fucking pay for them. Right. It's just like, you know, if you have to try to find money of where to pay for veterans' benefits or to pay for college or to pay for the VA,

then you don't have the money for war. And this is obviously discounting acts of national defense, which World War I was not. Actually, none of the wars that we went over here, other than the Revolution, were wars of national defense. So if they couldn't find the money for them, then they didn't have the money to fight them. And that's something I feel to this day. And another reason, I touched on it briefly

while we don't get taught a lot about this, is because we don't like remembering how badly this country treats our veterans. And I don't mean... So I will say that I have been decently taken care of to the extent of the services that I rendered and that I have gotten everything that was promised. I have my college money.

I have my disability paycheck. I have my health care because of the situation in which I found myself. That being said, it has been a long road to get to this point um to this day there's still i mean the va system is a complete mess but i'm pretty sure the va spends more money on support our troops bumper stickers than actually fixing the va. And we don't put the people in place that could fix the VA to fix the VA. We don't invest in things and infrastructure that can help bases like, I think it was Bragg that had water that was poisoning people, and Camp Lejeune had water that was poisoning people,

and they gave people malaria pills that caused them to kill themselves and get cancer, burn pits that give people lung cancer. It's all window dressing. It's a window dressing to say that we're taking care of you. And I think that's something that Coolidge was going for when he says patriotism paid for is not patriotism because he was saying effectively um you know you serve because you love it stop complaining about it that i think the only thing missing was him calling somebody a snowflake yeah definitely um i know it's a it's a little bit off topic but i mean it might be 100 years in the past

but i also feel like it couldn't be more current very no yeah i can see that and because the benefits that you get when you get out i don't know when you're gonna get out but they're gonna be different the benefits that i got when i got out because they're cutting them to effectively because nobody's looking um and that's what they did with these guys. They stopped getting their land plots. They stopped getting a larger differential in pay because nobody was paying attention. And that's what they're doing.

They're saying that we all love you and you're our sacred cow and you fight for our freedom, but then the second you actually ask to be taken care of, you're a freeloader and a whatever else. In this case, you're a communist that needs to be put down. Right. We need to burn your shit down. Yeah. I mean, it's timeless, and it always will be for as long as we're an imperial power.

Right. And we're constantly doing shit like this. But that's not here or there with the bonus army that is a podcast and i'm not sure that i have the right to host um there's other podcasts that are better but that is the bonus army now everybody's really depressed and sad um sorry this episode wasn't very uh. You know, it's important. Sometimes, and somebody asked us why we started this podcast, and I think this is a good example.

Oh, yeah. You know, there's great podcasts out there that focus on very important parts in history. The Age of Napoleon covers the Napoleonic era better than we ever will. Oh, no. I totally agree. The Revolutions podcast covers revolutions better than we ever will. Dan Carlin will cover World War I better than we ever will. The Revolutions podcast covers revolutions better than we ever will. Dan Carlin will cover World War I better than we ever will. But there's not a lot of podcasts out there that are going to cover the small points in history that aren't necessarily world-defining

and they're not necessarily the most well-known. And I think that's where we come in and that we can kind of say you know, the bonus army wasn't a footnote in history. The bonus army could happen in 2020. When we have a million pissed off global war on terrorism veterans like, hey, what happened to our college money?

You know, we signed something saying this is what we get. We're to go. This is something that will happen again. 20-page IOU. I promise this is something that will happen again because the army that was created during World War I is a lot like the army that was created for the global war on terror. Not that it was conscription because World War I was,

but the army grew unsustainably for years to the point that it simply couldn't be controlled or funded, and in order to appease them, they created something they knew they wouldn't have to handle 20 years in the future, and that's what's happening now, and that's what's going to happen in 10 years from now in our next war or 15 years from now when my kid that I don't have yet is fighting a war whatever your promise or whatever he's promised just isn't going to be there

and then it's going to happen again and I think that's why not necessarily our podcast in particular but topics like this is important oh yeah I totally agree I always feel the green weenie is always looming around the corner. It is. And wherever I go.

It's kind of like a shadow in that you may escape it for as long as the light's on, but you'll turn it off and it'll be there. So thanks for tuning in again now that we've made everybody nice and sad um we're doing a q and a

i posted on the twitter um you can dm me or nick directly on twitter i'm pretty responsive on my personal account you can leave it on the podcast account if you'd like i'll answer as fast as you can um i haven't done this on the podcast before my book the hooligans of kandahar comes out on august 19th um buy my book buy my book i enjoy eating food um um it's been highly reviewed and if everybody who listens to this podcast buys a book then i will be able to afford a month of rent so that would be lovely you know what i'm i consider myself a avid book reader, but this one was by far one of the easier ones I've read of based on the military shit I usually read. It took me about three sittings, and it was really fucking good. Thank you.

Also, anything you'd like to talk about, plug anything you're reading right now? Anything I'd like to plug is probably the Hell in a Very Small Place it is fucking amazing by Bernard Fall one of the premier military histories so fucking good he also wrote another book

called Streets of No Joy about the French War in Indochina which I am familiarly familiar with because my grandpa fought in it

before the Americans got there and I really hope we do cover D&B and Food inbn food oh we absolutely will because uh this book is fucking amazing yeah we are lining up some interviews with uh some doctors of military history and an armor officer with the united states army who uh fancies himself a armor historian, which will be really interesting. So, yeah, find that Q&A. Ask us literally anything. We'll answer it.

Literally fucking anything. We do not care. We are having fun. Someone asked me a very, very, very deep philosophical question on the Vietnam War in comparison to the war in Afghanistan. And then somebody asked me who I'd like to get fucked up with. So, like, literally anything's cool. Literally anything goes, and it's great.

So, follow us on all of the social media things. I'm at jcast99. NickcastM1. And the podcast is at lions underscore bye. So, that is it for today. Like, share, and review us because we need your sweet,

sweet reviews. And we will see you next time. Later.