Doug and Dwight
(View of the Capital from Camp Marks)
When Douglas MacArthur became the army’s youngest Chief of Staff in 1930, the most highly regarded staff officer in the War Department was a young Major named Dwight Eisenhower. Even before his assignment to the Army’s general staff at the Munitions Building on the Mall in late 1929, it was destined that the master of minutiae would be drawn to MacArthur.
Eisenhower was laboring under a bit of an inferiority complex. He had missed a combat assignment in the War. Instead, his skill in training had landed him a position as commander of a tank unit at Camp Colt near Gettysburg, where he would later purchase his retirement home as President of the United States.
Meanwhile, the dashing and supremely confident MacArthur had become renowned for his coolness under fire as Chief of Staff of the 42nd “Rainbow” Division at the front. He was the most decorated American of the war, the Audie Murphy of his day. He wore two Distinguished Service Crosses, seven Silver Stars, a Distinguished Service Medal, and two Purple Hearts on his impeccably tailored uniform when he returned.
He was (of course) the youngest Superintendent at West Point, and then was dispatched to the Philippines for two tours and gained a penchant for directing the affairs of nations.
If missing the war stung, Eisenhower dug in and methodically continued to move ahead in an Army that existed in the world that resulted from the war to end all wars. Obviously, the War Department held other views. Eisenhower was an official observer in the great 1919 “East to West” convoy that left the Ellipse in Washington for California.
It was the longest mechanized convoy ever attempted. On the sixty-two day trip, Ike passed through three hundred fifty villages and towns to arrive triumphantly in San Francisco on 6 September, only four days behind schedule.
His report about the trek became a seminal document for the Good Roads Movement, and he was marked as a real comer in the business. The era was filled with improbable and fantastic stunts. The Navy flew great sea-planes across the Pacific and appropriated Zeppelins cruised the skies as flying aircraft carriers; the Army bombed captured German battleships as a demonstration of Air Power, and conducted air races and endurance flights in a carnival atmosphere of technological innovation.
Eisenhower continued to work on tanks, met Colonel George Patton at Camp Meade in Maryland. In 1922, he was posted to that other technical marvel of the Age, the Panama Canal. His superiors noted his superb organizational skills, and pulled strings to get Ike assigned to
the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
This was a critical career gate for those young officers destined for the Army leadership, and in 1926, Eisenhower graduated as the top student in a class of three hundred eager beavers.
In 1928.on assignment to Army HQ in the Munitions Building on the Mall, he became known for his capacity to produce well-staffed action packages for the War Department. It was inevitable that he would become a useful tool to the ambitious and complex MacArthur, who would be coming back to town as (of course) the youngest Chief of Staff in the history of the Army.
That was the year after the Crash on Wall Street, and when things began to go wrong for the new Hoover Administration.
It was when the banks froze up and the working people had to live in a society where there was no cash, and things worked by barter. Gandpa swallowed his pride and moved his wife Hazel and the girls in with his Mother-in-law to get by. The stock market lost over 90% of its value.
By 1932, the most remarkable things were happening, and Walter Waters and the Bonus Army were just one of them. It is a world where memory is failing. My folks remember it dimly; my pal, Admiral Mac remembers when his family in Iowa traded meat and milk for medical care, and the bank was shuttered up tight.
Grandpa was certainly there on the grounds of the capital June 17 was described by The Washington Evening Star as "the tensest day in the capital since the war." The Senate was going to vote on its version of the Patman Bonus Bill. By dusk, 10,000 marchers crowded the Capitol grounds expectantly awaiting the outcome.
With the sun lowering over the Potomac to the west, BEF Commander Walter Waters appeared on the steps of the Capitol. With his bow-tie and jodhpurs he presented a stirring martial image, but his face was grim. He had bad news. Supporting the Administration, the Senate had defeated the bill by a vote of 62 to 18. The marchers were stunned by the rebuff of their demands, and later, when the nervous Congress paid out free tickets to go home, most of the chastened marchers took the cash.
The two thousand who decided to stay began a silent "Death March" began in front of the Capitol and lasted until July 17, when Congress adjourned and breathed a sigh of relief as they boarded rains at Union Station, or flew new-fangled passenger aircraft out of Washington-Hoover Airport.
Rumors about exactly who was protesting swirled. Douglas MacArthur claimed later that the demonstration had been taken over by communists and pacifists with, he claimed, only "one man in 10 being veterans."
On July 28, Secretary of the Treasury Ogden Mills feared that Reds among the remaining marchers might attempt to harm the President. Attorney General Mitchell ordered the evacuation of the veterans from all Federal property. This was properly a mission for the police, even if Superintendent Glassford had initially supported the marchers, and more with sadness than anything else, dispatched his officers to clear the buildings.
The DC Cops, with Glassford in attendance, attempted to clear Marchers from derelict buildings near Pennsylvania Avenue. They met resistance, shots were fired and two marchers killed.
Learning of the shooting at lunch, President Hoover ordered the army to clear out the rest of the Bonus Army. I don’t know for sure if Grandpa was still there to see it, but knowing the kind of guy he was, I think it likely he was. If he stayed here in Washington all those years ago, he would be about to meet Doug and Dwight.
Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com