The Regulars
(MacArthur mops as Dwight enjoys a smoke, 1932)
My Grandfather was a professional railroad man, and a citizen soldier for a brief time in the Great War. He was a working man, and the ranks of the Bonus Army were filled with those just like him. Working stiffs, common men who were badly hurt by the downward spiral of the Depression.
They were not interested in a hand-out, they were interested in getting what the government had promised them. If there was a certain amount of wishful thinking in that, it is only to be expected.
Walter Waters, the charismatic unemployed cannery superintendent from Portland, was a working man, too. With the 43,000 members of the Bonus Army he raised to come to the capital, it was also be expected that a certain number of wild –eyed visionaries should come as well.
Left or right did not matter much to those who faced despair, and strong leadership has a way of wrapping itself around the political spectrum to meet in a common area. Styling himself Commander Waters, his Bonus Expeditionary Army was taking a page from the playbook of the Italian Benito Mussolini, including 's Il Duce's march on Rome a decade before.
His tanned face and surfer-blonde hair glistened with brilliantine as he rode in the official BEF car, and strode around Camp in whipcord riding breeches and shiny tall boots. He summoned his subordinates and decreed that there were to be daily drill periods for the BEF to keep the men occupied.
If it was tough for the Bonus Marchers, they were learning something the regular officers had always known about Washington.
Life in Washington, with the balls and entertainment, literally required an independent income as Brigadier General Billy Mitchell enjoyed in the 1920s as he agitated for an independent Air Service. He could afford life in the fast lane, since his father was a Senator and the richest man in Wisconsin at the time.
Other regular officers found that life in the capital required creative life-styles. Several of them, including the young Chester Nimitz and Dwight Eisenhower, sought to ameliorate the expenses of entertainment by founding their own insular intuitions. The Army-Navy Country Club, founded in 1924, was such place.
It was a product of a schism in the staid Army-Navy Club located up the street from the Department of War, State and the Navy (today’s Old Executive Office Building, now named for Dwight Eisenhower). Some members wanted gold and tennis, others simply wanted a club-like facility near their offices to have private lunches.
The Country Club was founded on the grounds of a civil war fort in Arlington, with a mission to ” ...provide, at moderate expense, recreational facilities at, or near, the National Capital for, and to promote social intercourse among those citizens, military and civilian, who are bound together by the fraternal and patriotic spirit of serving the best interests and efficiency of the National Defense."
There were legends in the founding board of the Club, which utilized the Corps of Engineers to lay out of the fairways and greens. In those days there were certain unpaid perquisites that went with national service, and seemed fitting, considering the paltry nature of the paycheck.
One of the traditions of the Club is that members may provide their own alcohol at the table, stored in private lockers and secured at whatever rates might be secured under Prohibition.
The Club was convenient to officer housing at Ft Myer, which encircles Arlington Cemetery, and is home to the famed 3rd Infantry Division, the Old Guard, and the 3rd Calvary, one of the eight white mounted regiments of the post-Civil War Army.
Two others made periodic appearances at Ft. Myer, though the 9th and 10th Colored Calvary, the Buffalo Soldiers, were intentionally never assigned east of the Mississippi River for the first fifty years of their existence as independent units.
Troop K of the 9th served as escort to President Grover Cleveland in 1891, for example, during a special parade. These soldiers cut a fine figure, but there were issues with their presence on the soil of Virginia. They returned to Fort Robinson in Nebraska in 1894.
General of the Armies John J. Pershing, supreme commander of the AEF in France knew them well. Pershing had earned his nickname, 'Black Jack,' by leading black regiments early in his career, and throughout his life he continued to have a high regard for the black regiments. He personally reviewed members of the 10th Calvary at Ft Myer in 1932, when in retirement he still occupied an imposing office in War State and the Navy as Chairman of the American Battle Monuments Commission.
Pershing's occupancy of the office was interrupted only once during these 26 years, when President Hoover was forced to relocate his offices following a Christmas Eve fire in the West Wing of the White House in 1929.
He had led the 10th in the punitive expedition against Pancho Villa in 1916-17, the last time independent American horse cavalry went into combat. Among those who served in the Mexican expedition was a young officer named George S. Patton, served as Pershing’s aide de campe.
When the AEF deployed to France, Pershing took him along commander of his headquarters troops. From there, Pershing saw that he was immersed in the secret weapon that provided a hope of busting out of the stalemate of trench warfare. Patton was assigned to organizing and training the 1st Tank Brigade near Langres, France, and led the unit in the St. Mihiel drive in mid-September 1918.
Wounded at the beginning of the Meuse-Argonne offensive (Marine Maj Lloyd Williams: “Retreat? Retreat hell, we just got here.”) After the war, he performed the duties expected of a cavalry officer, and did so in the style of an officer of independent means. His assignments included two tours in Hawaii, a tour in the office of the Chief of Cavalry, War Department, and three tours with the 3d Cavalry at Fort Myer, Va. He also furthered his professional education, graduating from the Command and Staff School in 1924 and from the Army War College in June of 1932.
He reported to the 3rd Calvary at Ft. Myer as regimental XO just in time to confront the Bonus Army.
Patton was suspicious of the Vets, as were most of the career soldiers. The letters of his wife at the time complained of Congress pandering to anything that appeared to let a ray of hope into the downward economic spiral. To demonstrate how stark the gulf was between the professional officer and the Vets at Camp Marks, Patton accepted the position of Master of Foxhounds at the Cobbler Hunt on a large parcel of property he leased near Warrenton. The position and rental cost annually more than the life-time bonus my Grandfather was seeking.
Still, the view that there were radicals in the camp of the veterans was quite accurate, and the mood of discontent was infectious. Reports in the day showed the contrast between the red-brick officer houses at Ft. Myer and life in Hooverville. There, the “stews were thin, the rain cold, the sun hot and politics rampant in the camps,” According to Time Magazine.
Left or Right, the devil provided a means to occupy idle hands made edgier by hunger. Four radical veterans were caught by Commander Waters volunteer MP’s and turned over to the real DC police. Two more were roughed up in the process.
General Pelham Glassford, superintendent of the DC Police had initially been supportive of his fellow vets, provided housing and food for many. Having committed himself to equal treatment for the protesters, he urged the assaulted Communists to bring charges against their assailants.
Leadership of the BEF changed again and again in June of 1932 in the humid camp along the Anacostia River. Most Some of the idle veterans were inspired by the June Democratic convention in Chicago that nominated Franklin Roosevelt to oppose Herbert Hoover in November. They decided to hold their own convention and elect a commander-in-chief.
Time reported it this way:
Commander Waters staged a coup d'état. He and his erstwhile "staff" drove out to muddy Anacostia in the Waters "official car." Mounting a shack, he harangued his audience into re-electing him commander by acclaim. Then he returned to B. E. F. headquarters on 11th Street, SE, posted sentries as a precaution against a counter coup by his political enemies. That night Commander Waters' driver reported that the official car had been fired upon.
In mid-July, the food supply for Camp Marks reached lowest ebb. The Red Cross provided 9,000 Ib. of Farm Board flour, but that did not go far enough to feed the 20,000 vets who filled the camp. The legislative process of the Patman Bonus Bill was languid. Dyneentary broke out in the camps.
The BEF treasury was empty, and District officials who had looked on the peaceful protest with favor were distancing themselves.
George Alman, a fiery ex-lumberjack who refused to condemn the small cadre of communists decided to lead the Vets away from Camp Marks and into more comfortable billeting in derelict Federal buildings downtown. He was overheard at one point to say: "I know where there are warehouses bursting with food in this town. I'm going to march the boys down there and let them help themselves."
At the White House, Mr. Hoover was becoming alarmed. At Fort Myer, General Doublas MacArthur, youngest Chief of Staff in the history of the Army, and a regular officer through-and-through, was becoming determined to do something about the matter to settle it permanently.
Tomorrow: Douglas and Dwight.
Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com