The Bonus Army: An American Epic

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Summary: Bonus Army tells story of forgotten heroes
Review: In The Bonus Army: An American Epic, Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen have unearthed the sad but fascinating story of the Bonus marchers, a ragtag, determined group of veterans who changed the face of the United States.
When these men were young, they helped win World War I and a grateful nation promised to make their retirement years a little easier by paying them a bonus of a dollar a day for every day of service ($1.25 for overseas service) payable in 1945. When the Great Depression left thousands of them destitute, however, the vets banded together and asked their government to help them by paying the bonus immediately. But after the Senate refused to authorize payment, they were contemptuously chased out of Washington, D.C. by General Douglas MacArthur.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave many of the vets jobs, including about 600 who were sent to work camps in the isolated Florida Keys in 1935. There, administrators who were ignorant of the late summer dangers in that part of the world left the vets unprotected to face the most powerful hurricane ever to strike the U.S. More than 250 were killed, and the survivors were forgotten. My book, Storm of the Century: The Labor Day hurricane of 1935 (National Geographic Books, 2002, paperback 2003), also tells the story of this tragedy.
In their fine narrative, Dickson and Allen carefully and vividly explain how these woebegone men did a second noble service for their nation after their military service. The Bonus marchers called attention to the often-shabby treatment of veterans and insisted that former members of the armed services be treated with the respect they deserve. And they laid the foundations for the creation of today's prosperous American middle class by prompting political leaders to enact programs ensuring better treatment of vets returning from World War II. Among the vets' programs was the GI Bill of Rights, which put a college education within reach of anyone who had served honorably in the armed forces.
The men and women returning from military service in Iraq will be treated better than the vets who returned from Europe in 1919, and this latest generation of American vets will have the Bonus Army to thank for that. With The Bonus Army: An American Epic, Dickson and Allen remind us of shameful events in American history - the eviction of the vets from Washington and the needless deaths in the Keys - and give long overdue credit for the contribution these men made to our way of life.


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Summary: Grateful Korean GI Bill Beneficiary
Review: As one of the many whose college education was supported by the Korean GI bill, I was pleased to see the story of the Bonus Army so well recorded. The big contribution of the book for me was the coverage of the political perspective. Many of the issues are relevent to current events. The book is the first selection for our book club's 2005-6 program.

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Summary: DICKSON DOES IT AGAIN!
Review: Being an earnest and avid student of the game of baseball, I first became a fan of Paul Dickson through his books about baseball.

Without a doubt, "The Dickson Baseball Dictionary", "The Joy of Keeping Score" and "The Hidden Language of Baseball" are certainly among the best written and most enjoyable baseball texts I've ever read, and they belong in the library of any serious baseball aficionado.

Along the way, I came to realize that Dickson's superb writing skills, as well as his exceptional and unique insights into the subjects of his publications, have extended far beyond the national pastime and into many areas of modern history and culture. Among numerous other titles, Dickson's "Sputnik: The Shock of the Century" and "War Slang", are two works that employ masterful writing, applied to a fascinating subject matter, to make for an enjoyable read, and - at the same time - educate and entertain you with seamless and satisfying prose.

With the recent publication of "The Bonus Army", Dickson, (in collaboration with Tom Allen), has focused his considerable talents on a topic that's not only fascinating, but also thoroughly absorbing and altogether relevant to the current events that we read about in the daily papers, (the current events that will someday become history for future generations). In short, he makes what happened in the streets of Washington DC over seventy years ago seem as alive, vivid and dynamic as today's headlines.

This is one good book!


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Summary: "Bonus Army" a vivid account that resonates today
Review: The Bonus Army is a vivid account of a watershed event in American history, but more than that it places the 1932 Bonus march on Washington in the broader context of the fight for veterans rights and benefits. The players in this drama are well-developed in artfully-drawn portraits. With a whole new generation of veterans now being spawned by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the book's themes will continue to resonate.

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Summary: An Important Book about American Veterans
Review: The Bonus Army: An American Epic is a compelling historical narrative that reveals how a political issue during the Great Depression became part of a much larger American story. In 1932, 45,000 World War I veterans marched on Washington and built shantytowns in the city in order to lobby Congress for a wartime service bonus which they had been promised but would not be paid until 1945. Authors Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen explain the political dynamics that led Herbert Hoover to send troops with bayonets and tear gas (led by General Douglas MacArthur) to destroy the shacks and drive the veterans out of Washington. Government officials and military officers were so concerned that the protest was being infiltrated by communist and fascist elements that they ignored the glaring reality that most of the vets had come to seek relief from homelessness, unemployment, hunger, and desperation. The authors document how the routing of the vets in 1932 contributed to Hoover's defeat by Franklin Roosevelt later that year and ultimately to the passage of the G.I. Bill in 1944.

The Bonus Army really is a story about attitudes toward American veterans during the period between the end of World War I and the latter stages of World War II. At the beginning of one of the chapters, the authors include the H.L. Mencken quote, "In the sad aftermath that always follows a great war there is nothing sadder than the surprise of the returned soldiers when they discover that they are regarded generally as public nuisances, and not too honest." The narrative of the authors is filled with examples of how the patriotic "support our troops" attitude during World War I was forgotten when the troops returned home and tried to put their lives back together. Neither the Republican Hoover nor the Democrat Roosevelt displayed much sympathy for the veterans' plight. Dickson and Allen describe other political obstacles faced by the vets, including racist politicians who preferred to deprive white veterans of help if the same assistance would be given to blacks, and elitist university presidents who worried that providing tuition assistance to vets would compromise the standards of the American higher education system.

The details presented in The Bonus Army reveal the roots of some of the subsequent political events of the 20th Century and mirror many conditions at the beginning of the 21st Century. As America now awaits the return of hundreds of thousands of new veterans from the Iraq War, the gripping and tragic story told by Dickson and Allen should serve as a warning about what our current troops might encounter when they arrive home.


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Summary: Compelling
Review: This account is rich in details yet rarely gets bogged down in them. The authors keep the momentum flowing so that you nearly feel you're right there with Waters and Glassford as events unfold. More personal anecdotes from individual veterans about life in Anacostia would've been a fine touch but probably too much to ask for. Integration among the veterans, a truly unique social situation, deserved more attention, too. The bigger, political picture is the real focus of the book, however, and the authors cover several years and numerous people in a very readable, concise fashion.

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Summary: A march that led to the GI Bill
Review: We World War Two veterans, and vets of later wars, can thank the determined marchers of the Bonus Army for opportunities that no veterans before us ever received. "The Bonus Army" tells the forgotten and largely unreported story of those World War One vets and their campaign for just benefits. The strong narrative by Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen tells how the Bonus Army of the early 1930s led to the creation of the CCC, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and finally to the GI Bill. One fascinating part of the book is how two Republican Congresswomen, Margaret Chase Smith of Maine and Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts, were the real "mothers" of the GI Bill. These far-sighted women were our heroes, the true champions of veterans. They took up the cause of the Bonus Army marchers, and with colleagues from both sides of the Congressional aisle created the GI Bill, the greatest and most important social legislation in American history. "The Bonus Army" brings history to our lives.