In the summer of 1932, 15,000 World War I veterans marched on Washington, D.C., demanding payment from the Herbert Hoover administration of the bonus promised to them eight years earlier for their wartime service. With the "bonus bill" defeated in the Senate, the U.S. Army, led by Army Chief of Staff Gen, Douglas MacArthur, deployed tanks in the capital to rout the protestors.
This highly praised account of the event is based on extensive research that includes interviews with the last surviving witnesses. Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen recapture the voices of former soldiers who dared to challenge the government and demand what they were denied. The authors trace the Bonus Army's history and discuss its far-reaching effects, including how it paved the way for the 1944 passage of the GI Bill of Rights, which transformed American society by creating the postwar middle class.
