The March that Made the GI Bill: The Complex, Unfinished Legacy of the Bonus Army
Most people know about the GI Bill, which has extended a number of benefits to American Veterans since the end of World War II. However, many people have never heard of the Bonus Army, a grassroots coalition of destitute World War I Veterans who fought for Veterans’ benefits over a decade earlier, making the passage of the GI Bill possible.
Imagine volunteering to fight a war in a foreign country, or maybe even being drafted, only to return home and find out your pay was less than a 10th of what you could have been earning as a civilian. That was the unfortunate experience of many World War I Veterans returning home when the war ended in 1919.
In 1932, tens of thousands of these Veterans were facing down the Great Depression after a decade of low wages and unemployment. A large group of these Veterans decided to take their plight to Washington, calling themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force, where they lobbied for the pay they’d been promised.
World War I: The Birth of the Modern U.S. Military
The United States officially entered World War I on the side of the Allied Powers just six months before an armistice was signed on November 11, 1918. Getting involved in the war required the United States to begin a massive mobilization effort to grow its comparatively small standing military.
Prior to World War I, there were at most 300,000 individuals across all branches of the U.S. military. It would need millions of service members to match the size of other countries’ active militaries.
While many Americans did enlist, a draft was also called for. In 1917, the Selective Service Act, as we know it today, was passed in Congress, requiring all men aged 21 to 30 to register with local draft boards. In total, roughly 4.7 million Americans had served in the War, more than half of them drafted into service.
Notably, while the Selective Service Act applied equally no matter an individual’s race, the U.S. military was still heavily segregated. Additionally, Black servicemembers were largely limited to working in menial support roles and served almost exclusively under white officers.
World War I was also the first war that saw American women serving their country in an official capacity. The Navy began a limited program allowing women to enlist and serve as Yeomans, doing clerical work on U.S. Naval bases. The Army and Navy both also welcomed women into the Nurse Corps, through which many served on the front lines. While these women didn’t have the formal ranks of their male counterparts, they did return from the war as Veterans.
Other women served as civilian employees of the military, notably the Hello Girls, 223 women who made up the Army Signal Corps. These women faced extreme danger on the front lines, translating between American and French forces.
Missed Earnings, Ongoing Unemployment, and Low Wages
By the end of the war, just over 100,000 Americans had died in service to their country, and an additional 200,000 were wounded. The rest returned home and attempted to return to normal life.
President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed November 11 to be Armistice Day, in honor of American World War I Veterans (it would later be changed to Veterans Day to honor all Veterans after the Korean War). However, World War I Veterans needed more than a federal holiday in their honor.
During their service, these Veterans were paid $1.25 a day for overseas service and $1 a day for domestic service. Meanwhile, workers at shipyards or in other civilian defense jobs were paid 10 to 15 times more. A Senate investigation at the time even reported that enlisted servicemembers were paid “very much less than that received by the lowest class of laborer at home.”
Even though their time in service was brief, this was a huge setback for many Veterans who returned home to face a post-war recession that resulted in low wages and rising unemployment. The American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars lobbied for a one-time bonus to be paid to these Veterans to make up the gap in pay.
In 1924, Congress passed the World War Adjusted Compensation Act, also known as the Bonus Act. Veterans were awarded interest-bearing certificates with a face value of up to $625. But there was a catch - the certificates couldn’t be redeemed until 1945.
The Formation of the Bonus Army
Many World War I Veterans and average Americans did not enjoy the prosperity of the so-called “Roaring 20s” and instead continued to struggle, many living below the poverty line. Things only got worse when the stock market crashed in October 1929, kicking off the Great Depression. While many Veterans had initially been satisfied with the Bonus Act despite the delayed payout, the Great Depression exacerbated their existing financial struggles.
Two WWI Veterans in Congress, Texas Representative Wright Patman and Iowa Senator Smith Brookhart, had been unsuccessfully advocating for an immediate payout of the Bonus Act since 1929. When Patman again introduced a bill proposing an early payout of bonuses in early 1932, Veterans took notice.
A few hundred WWI Veterans from Oregon, under the leadership of unemployed former Army sergeant Walter W. Waters, are generally credited as the first members of the Bonus Army to arrive in Washington, D.C., in the spring of 1932. Thousands more desperate Veterans quickly joined them from all over the country, and a march on Washington was planned to support Congressman Patman’s bill and demand an immediate payout of their bonuses.
According to Lora Vogt, Vice President of Education and Interpretation at the National WWI Museum and Memorial, their plan was to
“Physically arrive upon the doorstep to ask for the financial support and to ask for what people believed to be the spirit of the promise [made to them], not just the letter of the law.”
The Bonus Army’s Efforts in Washington
Estimates on the total number of Veterans who made up the Bonus Army vary, but at its height, there were at least 10,000 Bonus Army members, some with their families, living in shantytowns around Washington, D.C., and across the river in Anacostia. Some members of the Bonus Army also took up residence in vacant, federally owned buildings which had been scheduled for demolition that summer.
The two largest encampments were located on the Anacostia Flats, just across the river from Washington, D.C. One was called Camp Marks for a local police officer sympathetic to the BEF’s mission, while the other was named Camp Bartless after the owner of the private land who allowed the BEF to use his property for their encampment.
In their book, The Bonus Army: An American Epic, experts Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen explain that the earliest organizers and supporters of the BEF “had envisioned an orderly, army-style encampment and a registration system that would sift out Communists and nonveterans.” The camp had a makeshift barbershop, a library run by the Salvation Army, and even occasional vaudeville shows and other forms of entertainment. Notably, despite the fact that the U.S. military was still heavily segregated at the time, the camps and the Bonus Army movement as a whole were not.
There seems to have been a real effort to legitimize Bonus Expeditionary Force’s movement, from the organization of the camps to the creation of printed membership cards. Some Veterans created their ribbons, like one in the collection of the National WWI Museum and Memorial, which proclaims that the wearer served in France from 1917 to 1919 and would be serving in Washington until the BEF’s mission was accomplished.
The ribbon includes an image of the U.S. Capital and a quote from Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address,
“For him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.”
This is an object that tells the story of a group of people exercising their free speech, going directly to the seat of their government, and demanding that the promise made to them as American servicemembers be upheld.
The Bonus Army lobbied for weeks before the bill was finally voted on in Congress in mid-June. It passed in the House of Representatives on June 15, 1932. Two days later, despite thousands of Veterans waiting for relief outside, the bill was killed by a large majority in the Senate.
Instead, a bill was approved that would allow Veterans to borrow against their bonuses to cover the cost of returning home. While some Bonus Army members did give up and return home, thousands more vowed to stay in Washington until they received their bonuses.
The Violent Eviction of the Bonus Army
Tensions continued to rise over the next few weeks as Bonus Army numbers grew. By mid-July, the situation had become untenable. The occupation of government buildings was delaying demolition, and the government contractor responsible for the work was threatening to sue.
The city’s police attempted to evict the squatters peacefully on July 28, but when some of the BEF members began throwing bricks, the police opened fire, and two Veterans were killed. Federal troops were called in under the leadership of General Douglas MacArthur to prevent the incident from becoming a full-scale riot.
Two hundred mounted cavalry arrived, followed by 400 infantry, and multiple armored tanks soon arrived on Pennsylvania Avenue - the largest contingent of troops to march on Washington since the Civil War. According to some reports, members of the BEF cheered at the arrival of the troops, not realizing that they were on opposing sides in this conflict.
Federal troops threw tear gas grenades into the BEF encampments and set fire to them as the BEF members and their families fled across the Anacostia River to Camp Bartlett. In spite of the President’s order to only evict the protesters on federal lands, General MacArthur and his troops chased fleeing Bonus-marchers to the Anacostia Flats and destroyed their encampment there as well, despite its location on private property.
Short-term Failure, Long-term Success
By July 30, the Bonus Army had completely dispersed. By all accounts, they had failed in their efforts to secure an early bonus payout. Yet, despite this short-term failure, their efforts had long-term impacts on the nation.
The violent eviction of the Bonus Army from Washington received widespread news coverage, and many Americans were appalled at their treatment. Despite his attempts to justify the use of force, even President Hoover recognized that this would be the nail in the coffin of his already struggling reelection campaign.
His opponent, Franklin D. Roosevelt, didn’t even need to bring the incident up on the campaign trail - the damage had been done. Furthermore, the American public was more aware than ever of the Veterans’ struggle and supportive of relief efforts.
Four years later, legislation would once again be introduced calling for early payouts of the Bonus Act, and this time it was passed (in spite of President Roosevelt’s veto). More than $1.4 billion was distributed to Veterans that year, as most chose to take the immediate payout being offered.
This was clearly a win for the Bonus Army, albeit delayed. That alone would be reason enough to celebrate their efforts. However, the actions of the Bonus Army led to an even more important long-term success - the passage of the 1944 G.I. Bill.
The 1944 G.I. Bill: The Bonus Army’s (Imperfect) Legacy
Within the first two years of the US entry into World War II, nearly twice the number of American servicemembers had volunteered or been drafted into service, and it was clear that the total would continue to rise. It was also clear that the Veterans who would return from the war would need support, or else the government would risk a repeat of the confusion and disillusion surrounding Veterans' benefits experienced by World War I Veterans.
Many early calls for legislation to support returning WWII Veterans explicitly referenced the Bonus Army. An advertisement run in multiple newspapers in 1943, including the Washington Post and Washington, D.C.’s Evening Star, explicitly stated,
“Let’s learn a lesson from World War 1! This time, let’s have no more “Soldier Boy” apple vendors… no more veterans’ bread lines, no… more bonus armies.”
It was also clear at the end of World War II that the U.S. would need to remain a world power. Despite still being an Ally of Russia in the early 1940s, the earliest seeds of what would become the Cold War were being planted.
Bradley W. Hart, Senior Historian at the National World War II Museum, explained that lawmakers at the time recognized this shift and the need to manage public opinion, which had largely turned toward isolationism after World War I.
According to Hart, part of avoiding that would be showing support for Veterans who served the country, especially overseas.
“If these sacrifices were going to be asked [for] in the future, as people were already sort of predicting, then there had to be a way to take care of the Veterans who would return,” said Hart.
The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (more commonly known as the G.I. Bill) was developed to provide for these returning Veterans. Signed into law in 1944, the G.I. Bill was designed to provide for World War II Veterans so that they would not face the same economic challenges as their predecessors who survived World War I only to face continued hardship at home.
The 1944 G.I. Bill provided support in four main areas. First, the federal government would cover tuition costs for Veterans to attend college or vocational schools. Second, Veterans would be guaranteed low-interest home and business loans. Third, Veterans would be able to collect unemployment if they faced difficulty finding a job. Fourth, the Veterans Administration would provide assistance in finding new employment. Perhaps most importantly, Veterans would not have to wait to receive these benefits.
This broader scope of support with a system in place for immediate access was a huge step forward in support for Veterans, especially compared to its counterpart from two decades earlier.
As Lora Vogt argued, “You can see the clear enduring impact of the First World War and how differently they treated the crafting of the system to support Veterans upon their return from active service.”
This is the true legacy of the Bonus Army.
Bradley Hart echoed these sentiments about the G.I. Bill, but pointed out that the benefits promised by the bill were not equally accessed by all Veterans.
“The G.I. Bill was this truly transformational bill, [but] it was a product of its time… there were people who were sadly left out from those benefits because of the prejudices of the time,” said Hart.
The G.I. Bill’s Failure for Black Veterans
While the G.I. Bill didn’t explicitly exclude Black Veterans, they faced many roadblocks due to ongoing systemic racism. Many were denied benefits because they had not been honorably discharged, although the rate of other-than-honorable discharge for Black Veterans was disproportionately high compared to their white counterparts, likely reflecting institutional racism and prejudice rather than individual actions in many cases.
Others technically did receive their benefits, but were unable to use them. To get the Bill passed, lawmakers had to agree to allow the Bill to be administered at the local level, and many local officials maintained discriminatory policies that disadvantaged Black Veterans. For example, they were barred from many educational programs or faced difficulty securing the promised low-interest home loans due to redlining. Some never even received the forms they needed to fill out in order to secure their unemployment benefits because Southern postmasters refused to deliver them.
The G.I. Bill is often credited with creating the middle class as we know it. By the time the original G.I. Bill ended in 1956, millions of White World War II Veterans had received free education or training, purchased homes in the suburbs, and begun to amass generational wealth for their families.
Meanwhile, Black Veterans and their families continued to struggle, and the wealth gap between Black and White Americans continued to grow. Despite many of the existing loopholes being closed in later iterations of this bill (i.e., the Vietnam-era Readjustment Benefits Act, the Montgomery G.I. Bill, and the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill), the long-term damage had already been done and was only exacerbated by continued discrimination.
As recently as 2025, bills like the Sgt. Isaac Woodard, Jr. and Sgt. Joseph H. Maddox GI Bill Restoration Act of 2025 have been introduced in Congress seeking to restore lost benefits to Black Veterans of World War II and their surviving family members, though no new legislation has been passed.
Recognition and Benefits for Women’s Military Service
Women Veterans were certainly underrepresented in the use of G.I. Bill benefits following World War II. Of the roughly 300,000 women who returned from the war as Veterans, only about 65,000 used the G.I. Bill to get a college education, and oftentimes university spots for the G.I. Bill were reserved for men, according to Bradley Hart.
This likely echoed the experience of the many women who served in World War I. While Female Yeomans and members of the Army and Navy Nurse Corps were technically considered Veterans, it’s unlikely that many of them effectively claimed the bonuses they were entitled to. In fact, a 1980s study by the General Accounting Office found that even decades later, women did not have equal access to VA benefits, nor were they adequately informed of the benefits they could have access to.
Despite the extreme importance of their work, the women in the Army Signal Corps were not considered Veterans when they returned home from France. In fact, legal recognition and Veterans benefits were not extended to them until the G.I. Bill Improvement Act of 1977. At the time, only 18 of the 233 Hello Girls were alive to see their service officially acknowledged.
The Bonus Army of 2025 and Ongoing Advocacy for Veterans
In 2025, The Chamberlain Network led a coalition of nonprofits called Unite for Veterans as they marched on Washington to protest proposed federal budget cuts, which they believed would seriously impact the Department of Veterans Affairs and disproportionately impact Veterans, who make up roughly 30% of all federal employees.
They tied their efforts directly to the 1932 Bonus Army, referring to their march on Washington as “the Bonus Army of 2025.” According to Christopher Purdy, Founder and CEO of the Chamberlain Network, the coalition did have specific policy objectives, but their efforts in June 2025 represented a larger opportunity for the Veteran community to organize as a group around the ideas of civic engagement and protection of democracy and to speak out for issues that were important to them.
In Purdy’s view, what makes the 1932 Bonus Army stand out as an important moment in history is the fact that it represented a sustained effort for Veterans. Unlike its predecessors (the Grand Army of the Republic, for example) that served a particular generation of Veterans, the efforts of the Bonus Army spurred a long-term shift in how our country treats Veterans.
“There was a recognition that the Veteran community as a constituency had a voice and could help shape the way that this country treats its citizens… We really saw ourselves marching in their footsteps in that we weren't doing this for us as individuals… The payout honestly isn't about a specific benefit or a thing that we would get. The payout is that America is going to finally start honoring its promises to our people, our allies abroad, and our founding ideals,” said Purdy.
The Bonus Army: The Birth Modern Veterans Advocacy
World War I resulted in the birth of the U.S. military as we know it today, with a massive mobilization of troops increasing the size of the U.S. military by more than 15 times its size prior to the war. Many of the installations still in use today were built to train this massive influx of service members. World War I was also the first time women were allowed to take part in the war effort, though only some of them left the war as Veterans, and even those who did weren’t recognized to the same degree as their male counterparts.
This rapid mobilization had a major consequence - a huge population of returning Veterans who face extreme hardship at home. Millions of able-bodied men who fought for their country then returned home to find they’d been paid far less than they would have been on the home front and that jobs were hard to come by, even before the Great Depression exacerbated their struggles.
These Veterans needed support from their federal government, and they proudly practiced their First Amendment right by marching to Washington, D.C., in the summer of 1932 to advocate for themselves. In doing so, they made the plight of Veterans known to the general public in a way it hadn’t been before, and they made the government officials recognize that Veterans were a key community that needed to be considered and supported as the U.S. continued to be involved in foreign wars over the course of the next century.
Today, Veterans and their families are still regularly advocating for the protection of benefits earned through service to our country and for issues that are important to them. Like the Bonus Expeditionary Force before them, they are working to hold the United States accountable for the promises it has made. This is the ongoing legacy of the 1932 Bonus Army.
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BY DANA CONGELOSI
Military Spouse and Contributing Writer at VeteranLife
Marine Corps Veteran
Dana is a military spouse who has spent more than five years navigating the unique rhythms of military life alongside her partner. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in History and Anthropology from St. Lawrence University and has built her career across museums, public libraries, and recreation. Thro...
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Dana is a military spouse who has spent more than five years navigating the unique rhythms of military life alongside her partner. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in History and Anthropology from St. Lawrence University and has built her career across museums, public libraries, and recreation. Thro...
