Author Archives: Bogdan

This picture was taken by Veteran Army Signal Corps photographer Theodor Horydczak in June 1932. Picture location – American Treasures of the Library of Congress: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trm203.html

According to Wikipedia.org, this event was a gathering of approximately 43,000 marchers comprised of 17,000 World War I veterans and their families who protested in Washington, D.C., in summer of 1932. The war veterans demanded their cash bonuses which were granted to them eight years earlier via the Adjusted Service Certificate Law of 1924. Each of these certificates was issued only to qualified soldiers and had a face value equal to the soldier’s promised payment, plus compound interest. The issue was that the certificates, just like bonds, matured twenty years from the date of original issuance. In other words, the veterans could not receive their money until 1945.

Most of the Bonus Army camped in a Hooverville on the Anacostia Flats, a muddy area across the Anacostia River from the federal core of Washington. In July, 1932, President Hoover ordered the Army to forcibly remove the veterans. They were forced back to their camp sites. During this time hundreds of veterans were injured and several killed.