Uncle Harold
I got a text last night that Uncle Harold was in Hospice, and that the end was near.
His family was with him, and they watched NASCAR on the tube. Harold put on his USMC hat, and was lucid and in good spirits.
He left us in the early hours this morning, at peace.
Harold had been a private Marine in World War II, and once, long ago, we were seated on a couch watching flickering images of an acient newsreel. A young man in fatigues was spouting flames from a nozzle in his hands, fueled by jellied gasoline in tanks on his back. It was quite extraordinary, and I must have given a low whistle, since Uncle Harold commented mildly that it could have been him, on a Pacific Island.
That was his job, for a few weeks. He made it through alive, and started his life again when it was over. The Marines called him again, though, and he had to go off to Korea, leaving little Harold and his young wif e behind. He did not complain.
I called Mom to tell her the news, and when we had talked about the bluff young man with the bright eyes and broad shoulders she remembered behind the wheel of the convertible, cigar clenched in his teeth at a jaunty angle like President Roosevelt.
At the end of the call, I remembered to ask her if she had any more recollection of her father going off to join the Bonus Army. She said she did not. She was eight at the time, the oldest of the three girls, and while the departure was vivi d enough, there was nothing else except the vague recollection of him waving from a train.
“Nothing else?” I asked. “How long he was gone, or when he came back.”
“No. Your great Aunt Barbara would remember, though.”
“I know, Mom, the last time I talked to her and asked about Grandpa, it was as thought he had just stepped out for a beer. But she has been gone five years now.”
“She is the last one who would have remembered, Vic. Sorry.”
“Maybe I can check the archives at the local newspaper when we=2 0are back in Ohio for Harold’s funeral,” I said. “Do you remember if he hopped the freight from the track, or left from the Depot?”
“We were all living with my Grandmother then, because of the Depression. The tracks were right behind the house on the hill, but no, I don’t recall, except that I know he waved.”
Dad chimed in, saying that the first time he stayed in the house, after the war was over, the train was so loud in the night that he thought it was going to come right into the back bedroom.
That is the stuff of memory. Some of the recent past is lost to us as soon as it passes. Other things are burned into the memory, indelible and permanent.
It is too bad I did not know the questions to ask Great Aunt Barbara when I had the chance. I know that times were bad, or Grandpa would never had permitted his family to move in with his mother-in-law. The Bonus would have given him a chance to get back on his feet and get his pride back. He was a proud and pugnacious guy, the last 100% Irishman in the family.
Rough dark humor of the times survives, and is oddly evocative of the present moment. If someone bit an apple and found a worm in it, for example, President Hoover would get the blame. Desperate encampments of tin and cardboard shacks like those of the Bonus Army were called "Hoovervilles."
There were "Hoover hogs" (armadillos fit for eating), "Hoover flags" (empty pockets turned inside out), "Hoover blankets" (newspapers barely covering the destitute forced to sleep outdoors), and "Hoover Pullmans" (empty boxcars used by hobos and people a little down on their luck like my Grandfather.
I know that Grandpa would have stayed in Washington long enough to see the Patman Bonus Bill through the House, and certainly long enough to see it fail in the Senate, on the grounds that it was fiscally irresponsible. Emotion was running high in Camp Marks, and in the little hovels around town where the increasingly angry Vets were camped out.
Thoroughly alarmed, the Senate quickly passed a resolution introduced by Nebraska's Howell to provide transporta tion home for the Bonus Army, the money to be deducted from the adjusted service certificates when they came due in 1945.
The bill went to the House, where Representative Copeland of New York, "speaking as a medical man," urged the appropriation of $100,000 to get the BEF out of Washington before the unhealthy conditions started a plague.
Most of the veterans were exhausted by the humidity and hunger and accepted the money. I assume that is what Grandpa did, since he had a young fami ly to worry about back in Ohio. But as my Great Aunt told me with twinkling eyes, he had a bit of a temper, and was an unpredictable man. He would have know that he could always get on a train, with a wink to a fellow engineer or fireman.
He might have been among the 2,000 determined Vets remained in town, and violence was a possibility. They marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, singing one of the songs of the day:
"Mellon pulled the whistle,
"Hoover rang the bell,
Wall Street gave the signal,
And the country went to hell."
I can certainly imagine Grandpa’s high clear voice bouncing off the Old Post Office Building.
President Hoover had enough. He notified the Army Chief of Staff that the Vets had to be cleared out of town. The situation was being exploited by the Reds and God knew who else.
Douglas MacArthur, supported by an able Major named Dwight Eisenhower and a cavalry officer named George Patton, made preparations to move down the hill from Fort Myer. Regular Army against former private soldiers, who had answered the call.
That is all I can mange this morning. Tomorrow we will talk about the how the Regular Army ran the former private soldiers out of town.
One thing, though. We are not very bright here in Washington, but if hit hard enough, we can learn. The Bonus Army ensured that there was no chance that Uncle Harold, or my Dad or yours was going to get shortchanged by the Federal government when their war was over.
Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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